Welcome back to the barracks, grunts and gruntettes – cool off those assault cannons and grab some pine. It’s time for another installment of Trooper Weekly, your always-welcome dose of hard-nosed Republic army tactics and intel. If you’re new to the column, check out our Trooper Newbie Guide, but if you’re already out crushing Imperial scum in Star Wars: The Old Republic, read on!

Today, we’re going to go a bit more in-depth about one of the two advanced classes (ACs) available to Troopers once they’ve completed basic training on Ord Mantell: the Commando. You’ll get the choice for your AC when you hit Carrick Station, and once you make the choice to go Commando, there’s no going back.

What is seen cannot be unseen...

Planting Your Skill Tree

Picking Commando as your AC isn’t quite enough – your new rank also lets you specialize in one of three skill trees as you level. While you can choose options in any of the three trees when you have a point to spend, common wisdom holds that you should pick a spec and stick with it; get good at what you do, solider, and don’t get distracted.

The three trees you can access are Assault Specialist (shared with the Vanguard AC), Gunnery and Combat Medic. Assault Specialist gives general improvements to your ranged weapon capabilities, Gunnery makes you a grenade-lobbing, explosive-causing maniac and Combat Medic lets you shoot to heal as well as toss healing bombs. While you could viably take Assault Specialist all the way to the top of the tree, most Commandos pick either Gunnery or Combat Medic.

Choose wisely!

Gunnery’s Great Guns

Each skill tree gets a few “special” abilities and for Gunnery Commandos, the most important of these is Grav Round. This ability not only causes a high amount of Kinetic damage but creates a Gravity Vortex which crushes the target’s armor. Higher-level talents allow extra vortices to be applied, gives High Impact Bolt extra damage against Grav’d targets and the final Gunnery ability, Demolition Round, deals out significant punishment on its own and is also increased by 5% for each stack of Gravity Vortex on your target. In simpler terms: vortex hard, and shoot often.

Combat Medic Madness

If keeping your comrades up and carrying a big gun is more your style, then the Combat Medic tree is for you. You’ll still put out a decent amount of DPS thanks to the basic abilities the Commando AC grants and get the benefits of heavy armor, but you’ll also become invaluable in a serious fire fight. For Combat Medics, healing revolves around the use of your gun as well as bombs and probes that help keep your allies alive and kicking. Several skills of note for Combat Medics include Kolto Bomb, which lets you toss a healing bomb that has an AoE splash radius of eight meters. A talent upgrade for the bomb gives it the chance to leave Kolto residue on party members, increasing the healing they take for a short while. Further up tree you’ll get Trauma Probe, which latches on to a target and heals them every time they take damage until all ten of its charges are used. Combat Medics will find that they get not only increased survivability from their tree but also reduced pushback on healing abilities and eventually skills that prevent heals from being interrupted.

I saved everyone! Or killed them. Either way.

Making the Command Decision

Once you’ve chosen the Commando AC, you’re stuck with it for the life of your character, but you have bit more mobility when it comes to your skill build. At any time you can visit Carrick Station and have your points reset by Skill Mentor Leuro-Khian, located in the Combat Training section. Going Commando makes you a force to be reckoned with in the SWTOR universe, either through sheer DPS power and cool factor or as an incredibly versatile healer/DPS combo – no matter how you build your tree, you’ll be a valuable asset to the Republic Army.

Be sure to come by the barracks next week when we’ll take a look at the tank/DPS powerhouse that is the Vanguard!