In Star Wars: the Old Republic, damage disciplines are broken into two general subtypes: burst and sustained. In most cases, burst classes excel in upfront damage while sustained classes deal less up front damage but carry that damage out over time, which means they’re often called “DoT” classes because of how most of their attacks apply debuffs on enemies that deal damage over time (DoT).
It’s important to note that these are basic descriptors and there are some classes that straddle the line between the two subtypes, and that a skilled player can make either type of DPS type work in most situations.
Burst Damage #
Burst damage is the ability to deal a high amount of damage in a short amount of time. This means that burst DPS deal damage during “spike periods” or “burst windows” after which most of their strongest skills go on cool down and they rely on less powerful skills until their next burst window. Their rotation and skill priority systems revolve around maximizing the number of powerful abilities and class buffs they can use (by aligning cooldowns and chaining skill usage in an intelligent way) during those burst windows.
Burst classes are either reliant on a set energy source (based on their class or generated by certain skills) or are limited by skill cooldowns (or both). Thus, many burst classes may struggle with energy unless (in the case of a Sage/Sorcerer) skill cooldowns compensate.
Additionally, while some burst classes apply damaging debuffs to their enemy, they tend to be present only to buff their highest damaging skills. How these DoTs function can also change depending on which tactical a player runs.
Burst classes usually have priority systems versus defined skill rotations. Compared to sustained classes, Burst classes tend to be better at single-target damage and target swapping and have comparatively weaker AoE damage capabilities.
Burst classes can be divided between disciplines that deal massive up front damage and others that require some build up, as well as those that have strong rotational AoE damage and those that do not.
Sustained Damage #
Sustained classes deal a consistent amount of damage over a long period of time, and in most cases, excel at dealing with things like adds and extended fights that do not require target swapping. They typically need more “ramp up” time to reach their full damaging capacity, but can output consistent damage that allows for movement and dealing with mechanics in ways that result in minimal DPS loss.
The play style of sustained DPS classes revolves around damage over time, or DoT, abilities. which apply debuffs to enemies that deal damage over time at different rates and for different lengths of time. Some burst classes have DoTs, but their core rotation does not tend to revolve around them.
Ensuring maximum uptime, ensuring that refreshing or reapply a DoT occurs near the end of the DoT’s lifespan, and continuing to DPS with filler abilities as DoTs are ticking is the core function to how sustained classes deal damage. DoT classes also have abilities called DoT spreads, which are AoE attacks that spread any of their actively ticking DoTs from one enemy to the enemies within the range of that AoE. It’s important to note that DoT spreads only spread the DoTs of that player.
Sustained classes tend to be better at focusing a single, high health enemy “spreading” their DoTs to any enemies grouped relatively nearby. Sustained classes also often have more leeway with energy usage and tend to have a set skill rotation versus a priority system.
Sustained classes can be divided between classes with DoTs that tick individually for consistent damage, or a skill that forces applied DoTs to tick for additional damage when used. There are also a couple sustained disciplines that take a more hybrid approach and bridge the gap between burst and sustained DPS.
