I defy anyone to have two of the same sort of thing and not compare them – it’s impossible. I’ve been comparing warcraft and swtor since I first set foot on Hutta and surprisingly both have come out rather well. Swtor is different enough from warcraft to be able to stand on its own and the reverse is also true. I chose to play a bounty hunter first in swtor and I chose to play a mage first in warcraft. It’s far too early to say whether that bounty hunter will be my main or not but for the time being it is.

I don’t know for sure but from what I have observed I think that all classes in swtor have mob movement skills. My Bounty Hunter (level 40) quite a few levels ago got an ability to pull a single mob towards him ala the death knight’s death grip. Recently he gained an ability to jump to a mob ala a warrior’s heroic leap. My Jedi Knight also has a heroic leap type ability and I’ve seen other classes do similar hence my assumption.

My paladin can’t jump to a mob or pull a mob to me. I don’t think until you’ve played a class that can do one of these things, let alone both, that you realise how useful and fun it is. The number of times I’ve wished I could move to a mob either jumping or through moving fast like a druids feral charge. It’s something that could be unique to a spec although whether it would go prot or ret would then be the issue. As I play prot I’d like it but an argument could be made for ret as well, holy doesn’t need it.

My Bounty Hunter is specced into the tanking tree of powertech so I can make even more comparisons between it and my prot pally. Now I’m not talking about styles here as the bounty hunter has abilities that can be used at range or up close. Though this in itself has advantages. A taunt is a taunt it makes a target attack you for 6 seconds and after that it’ll go back to whoever is highest on it’s threat table. In the absence of mob moving abilities, a ranged attack on top of a taunt, could be enough to make a mob decide you’re tastier than the squishy class. Anyway, I was thinking about cooldown’s. My initial thought was that paladin cd’s were more for survival and bounty hunter’s were more for burst damage. However, that is simply untrue. The damage comes in bursts depending on what abilities are available to use, nothing to do with cd’s. In fact the cd’s directly correlate in many respects.

I’ve not tried tanking as a bounty hunter yet and in truth I don’t really know where to start. In reverse paladin tanking has been called, unfairly I think, idiot proof. It does have a heartbeat rotation and quite a simple one really. There’s no complicated priority deal, not debuffs that have to be kept up on the target, there’s also little to no difference between tanking one target or several. How do bounty hunter’s tank? I really do have no idea and given the newness of the game and unpopularity of the powertech spec there’s little information out there. This is what I always felt envious of in warcraft. People would talk about the legendary events of the past, the first few days and the pioneers who basically defined each class. Though I’m under no illusion that I would have been able to do that being part of it, being there when these things happen, is enough.

You would think that having tanked everything from 5 man pugs to (unwillingly) portions of normal Dragon Soul that I’d have enough confidence to try tanking as a bounty hunter. I don’t though, not at all, not with strangers at any rate. The game wasn’t even two weeks old the first time someone had a go at me for poor damage. Although, I would like to know how they worked it out given that there’s no damage meter in swtor yet. The game is a lot older than that now and so people’s patience is bound to be even lower. If I manage to find a guild then maybe, just maybe, they’ll group with me long enough for me to work it out.

Having got almost completely off point I’ll end it there. My paladin is jealous of my bounty hunter but aside from nerves the reverse isn’t true. Food for thought perhaps. Will Mists bring a mob movement tool to the paladin class? I’d put it on a wishlist for sure but I wouldn’t bet anything I cared about that we’ll get it.