The Forcemaster
This is my second build and the polar opposite of my Sabermaster. Whereas that build was focused on lightsaber combat, this one is all about using force powers. Truthfully, this build is pretty overkill in that regard, but as they say, there’s no kill like overkill.
The basic battle plan for the Forcemaster has you disabling enemies with Fear/Horror/Insanity while Bastila and Juhani take on the immobilized enemies with Power Attack augmented by Knight/Master Speed while you follow up with blasts of Force Lightning and other offensive force powers. It’s quick and devastating.
Class: Scoundrel or Scout -> Consular. You’ll only be in your base class for two levels (the only reason why it isn’t one is because you’re forced to take a levelup on the Endar Spire), so it’s not terribly important. For console players, I recommend Scoundrel because you get Persuade as a class skill from the get-go as well as Scoundrel’s Luck. For PC players I recommend Scout because then you only need to spend one feat to get heavy armor (this build’s ideal headgear for PC players is heavy armor). You could go with Soldier to have heavy armor from the get-go and thus save yourself a feat, but doing so is unnecessary and I prefer the Scout’s starting bonuses over the Soldier’s for this build anyway. Regardless of your choice of base class, you’ll ultimately want to go Consular for more force points and stronger force powers.
Alignment: Dark Side. The core of your offense consists entirely of dark side force powers, so it only makes sense.
Skills: If you’re playing a Scoundrel, put everything into Persuade. If you’re playing a Scout, save your skill points until you become a Consular (thus unlocking Persuade as a class skill) and then put everything into Persuade.
Teammates: Bastila and Juhani. As you’ll be quite frail, you’ll want these two up front keeping enemies off of you. Just make sure they get the power attack feats and a double-bladed lightsaber and they’ll be good to go. As for force powers, I recommend having them pick up, in order of priority, Cure/Heal, Burst/Knight/Master Speed, (Improved) Energy Resistance, Stun/Disable/Destroy Droid, and Force/Knight/Master Valor. Bastila likes to be absent for some major sections of the game, so I recommend Canderous in those situations. You’ll want to aim for a melee rather than ranged build with him though. If you want more details on how to develop these party members, this guide has good builds for all three of them.
Surviving the Earlygame
The problem with using a build that’s as heavily focused on force powers as this is that until you get them, your character is next to useless. Needless to say, this will necessitate a shift in strategy until you can start using force powers. On the Endar Spire, you’ll want to take control of Trask and have him take the lead with melee weapons while your character hangs in back and provides support with a blaster. The same thing applies on Taris, just replace Trask with Carth. Despite being built for ranged weaponry, Carth works well enough with melee weapons for the earlygame. Once you get Mission, she can help out for a little bit, but you’ll want to swap her out for Zaalbar as soon as you can and have him join Carth on the frontlines with a melee weapon. Once you get Bastila you can swap Carth out with her (you’ll want to have her use her lightsaber, obviously) and once you get Canderous you can swap Zaalbar out with him (have Canderous use whatever melee weapon Zaalbar was using). This should be enough to get you through the earlygame.
Attributes
STR:8 DEX:9 CON:8 INT:8 WIS:17 CHA:18
That’s what you’ll want your starting stats to look like. Put whatever attribute points you get on levelups into Wisdom. Like I said, this build is all about overkill force power, hence why Wisdom and Charisma are essentially maxed out. This does leave you with a point to spare though; I recommend putting it into Dexterity. If you want something less overkill and more defensive, drop Wisdom and Charisma to 16 and put the extra points into Dexterity and Constitution.
Feats
Listed in order of priority. All of them should be maxed out unless indicated otherwise.
Toughness: You’re gonna be frail as all hell, but at least this will help out some.
Jedi Defense: Being in the rear during combat, you’ll usually end up having to deal more with blaster bolts than you will melee weapons, so you’ll want to be deflecting or reflecting as many of them as possible.
Conditioning: A boost to your saving throws is always nice.
Armor Proficiency – Medium or Heavy: If you focus on picking the above feats, at level 3 you’ll have a feat to spend but nothing useful to this character to spend it on. If you’re on PC (and therefore started as a Scout), you’ll want to unlock heavy armor so you can use the Sith Mask endgame for its force point regeneration bonus. Unfortunately, that effect doesn’t work at all for console players (it was patched on PC), hence why I recommend for PC players only. Thus, if you’re on console (and therefore started as a Scoundrel), you’ll instead unlock medium armor and use the Stabilizer Mask.
Force Powers
Listed in order of priority. All of them should be maxed out unless indicated otherwise.
Fear/Horror/Insanity: As mentioned earlier, this is a key part of your strategy as you’ll be using it to disable groups of enemies.
Drain Life: Being on the dark side, you won’t be able to use Cure/Heal very cost-efficiently (though your allies can) but this is a good alternative power to use when low on health.
Force Lightning: Your primary offense, plain and simple. Once you’ve disabled your foes with Fear/Horror/Insanity, you’ll want to start spamming this.
Force Choke: A great single-target force power, this is a great alternative to Force Lightning when you’re dealing with fewer but stronger enemies. Kill disables the target and deals DoT equal to 50% of your target’s vitality, so if you use it twice in a row on the same target and they fail to resist it both times, then they’ll stay paralyzed until the DoT kills them. Well, that’s only if they have an even amount of Vitality. If they have an odd amount then they’ll survive with one point of Vitality left.
Throw Lightsaber: This power doesn’t deal much damage, but the damage it deals is completely unblockable. The vast majority of enemies won’t be able to resist your force powers, but you can always use this power on the few that do (the final boss, namely).
Force Push: Force Push is nice for keeping enemies away from you, while Force Whirlwind can more or less disable them. Lategame, Force Wave is a great power to use if you get surrounded. It’s also, if I recall correctly, one of the few powers that can be used effectively on the final boss.
Slow/Affliction/Plague: Probably the least useful of the dark side powers, but debuffing enemies can be a useful tactic.
Force Suppression: Lategame, some enemies will start using self-buffing powers, so you can use this to dispel them.
Energy Resistance: This is a weird one. Judging by its name, you’d think it would provide resistance against energy-based attacks, but according to its description, it doesn’t. However, if you actually use it, you’ll see that it does, thus making it a very useful power to grab. Ordinarily, I would make getting this a much higher priority, but with this build I just have Bastila and Juhani get it fairly early on instead. By lategame though you’ll have picked pretty much everything else useful and you won’t have any party members to use Energy Resistance on you during the final boss anyway.
Equipment
Weapon: You’ll want to use the glitched version of Darth Bandon’s Lightsaber with the Bondar and Jenruax crystals. If you want to learn more about this glitch, this guide has a nice section about it, but to sum it up here, if you make Manaan the third planet you get a Star Map on after Dantooine (so your fourth Star Map overall), thus making the Darth Bandon fight happen on Manaan, any crystals put into his lightsaber will have different effect than usual (with the exception of Rubat) provided that you never take out its red color crystal. In this build’s case it causes Jenruax to lose its +2 damage bonus (which is irrelevant to this build) but it boosts Bondar’s chance to stun up to 100%, making this the ultimate defensive lightsaber. Note that enemies can still negate the stun with a successful saving throw.
Head: In the early going, go with whatever you find that gives immunity to mind-affecting powers and/or boosts to saving throws. Ultimately though you’ll want to use either the Stabilizer Mask (if you’re on console) or Sith Mask (if you’re on PC).
Body: As a Scoundrel/Scout, go with whatever armor you come across. As a Consular, go with whatever robes you find that provide the best defense. By endgame this will be Darth Revan’s Robes.
Belt: For most of the game you can just stick with using save-boosting belts. The absolute best belt for this build though is the Adrenaline Stimulator.
Hands: Brejik’s Gloves are a good choice for most of the game. For endgame you can go with either the Karakan Gauntlets or (if you have access to Yavin Station) the Advanced Stabilizer Gloves.
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