Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight Starter Guide P1

Given I am playing the Sith Warrior (SW) and Jedi Knight (JK), let's get going with some guides.

This first one given an introduction to the classes, but only talks about the base class, not the Advanced classes available for Sith Warrior or Jedi Knight.

Game Play At Early Levels
The game play for the SW and JK is exactly the same. The classes are both melee heavy, with little ranged abilities. You are up close and personal, waving your light saber in mobs' faces, hitting them to do damage.

One ranged ability worth mentioning however is Force Leap/Charge, which is an awesome charge effect where you leap through the air and land on the targeted mob with a smash. This is usually ready for each mob pull, and gives the JK and SW great mobility across a battle field.

You have no direct healing spells apart from the out of combat one, so you are quite reliant on killing mobs before they kill you, or using a healing companion when you get one.

Having said that, you have a number of powerful defensive cooldowns to use when the stuff hits the fan, such as a 40% damage reduction, or a very slow heal over time which can sometimes make a difference.

AOE damage for the JK and SW are quite weak. You get Force Sweep/Smash which damage mobs and stun weak ones, but it is for 5 mobs only and limited to 5 meters. It is on a 15 second cool down, so is only useful once during a typical fight. After that there is nothing at early levels.

Resource
The JK and SW use Focus and Rage as a resource respectively. They are the same thing, just different names. Each starts at 0 and builds during combat - some of your attacks will generate Focus/Rage, and some will consume it. Your maximum Focus/Rage is 12, so the combat involves using basic attacks to build it, then spending it on specials.

Force Leap/Charge builds 3 Focus/Rage, which is enough to pull off a Force Sweep/Smash straight away, thus doing a load of AOE damage to a mob pack and stunning them.

Reactive Abilities
There is Riposte/Retaliation, which can be used when a mob dodges or blocks your attacks, costs 3 Focus/Rage, never misses and is off the global cooldown. This means as soon as the icon lights up, you can use the attack, and should do so.

Part Two
Part Three