I'd go with either of the characters you currently have rolled up. Though Powertechs are slotted to be weakened in 1.2 and Marauders are slotted for a sea of buffs. If that influences your decision go Marauder, but either is fine.

Personally I've no problem with it and I play a healer, if anything pushes me from PvPing as a healer it'll be the 1.2 changes. I've never really understood people's problem with being marked, imo its not much different than being focus fired due to people in Vent/TS/etc. Just part of playing a healer, or for that matter being noticed as "effective" in PvP. If anything posts like the above is what makes playing a healer unfun at the moment.

This is a fair comparison. Please do remember that this is the "pre-season" for rated warzones, better a less than perfect system than none I figure. I don't like the idea of rateds being paired against unrated or groups at all but I'm not surprised that this is what we're getting until cross-server PvP arrives :/

This is it for me, and very good suggestion at the end of your post. The hits Mercenary/Commando are taking across the board in 1.2 might be reasonable but at least for the immediate future they make me wholly uninterested in playing my Commando in PvP, let alone healing in PUGs. The hit to Combat Medic (ie healer) is pretty rough, but coupled with the hits to Gunnery (ie Grav Round spam) and the lack of any meaningful change to the AC's huge weaknesses (no mobility, no interrupts) I'd rather play something else and enjoy it for a while.

Hopefully the next big MMO to come out won't bother with concepts like healing or tanking so we can all do what we really want to, faceroll DPS. Hopefully they will also cut back on complicated rotations 1-3buttons please, interrupt are complicated and not fun. Side note, healers should be much less of a problem in 1.2

Glad to see this sort of post now and again. There is pretty much no class in the game I dread crossing on my Trooper quite as much as a Marauder. Tankasins are annoying but manageable, a half-way competent Marauders is basically just a countdown to the rez-pad for either of these classes. Perhaps this has something to do with the class not playing at 10-40 anything like it does 40+, its an easy class to get discouraged on before you reach your face-melting levels.

Except that PvP is not designed for 1v1 in SWTOR nor should it be. Immunity is a poor idea in PvP mmos, particularly when it is illogically added to a DPS class/build rather than a tank build. Perhaps were it coupled with a 99% reduction in healing this would make some sort of sense. As is it doesn't function as a "last gasp" type of ability to beat your opponent.

I've given up discussing armor mitigation on the SWTOR forums. Heavy Armor is dangerously close to worthless atm, particularly in contrast with active defense abilities. I figure this is the sort of thing that might change with itemization in the future, maybe.

While I actually WHOLLY agree with you, this is clearly not the approach being taken by the developer team. People cry about operatives, across the board huge hits to operatives leaving the class a joke. People cry about heals, across the board hefty hits to healers. People cry about grav round (of all things) and big nerfs to that style of play. Marauder is at least as bad as any of these builds were, your feeling defensive about it is every bit as justifiable as everyone else feeling defensive about getting nerfed into the ground was. If Marauders/Sentinels are fine then all of those other totally legitimate builds were as well. There are a few pretty reasonable classes in this game (despite the lolsmash Guardians for instance are fine) Marauders pretty unquestionably are tier 1 damage in PvP. Their survivability tools are fairly unjustifiable. Yes, a solo Marauder cornered when he pops his invulnerability is dead... but so were all of the builds I noted above. It is 100% understandable why people are puzzled about the approach to class balance in 1.2

I actually appreciate this idea to a degree though I'd prefer stats just be equalized to in PvP applying expertise either as a passive stat or as a mod earned during PvP would be a nice change. I do think that PvPers should never be required to focus on PvE to compete, but at the same time having two sets of gear has always been dumb. Sucks that SWTOR took this approach but PvP is still fun and maybe they will change the underlying system at some future point.

I'd have had little issue with the changes if all three of the Commando trees weren't hit at the same time. To a degree I expected the Combat Medic changes due to incessant PvP whines regarding healers not being 1v1able by DPS players without interrupts. I have to admit I didn't expect the changes to Gunnery, I knew the build had to be changed due to cries regarding Tracer Spammers... but I assumed they'd do something about either the build's mobility issues or lack of an interrupt. Instead we got pushed into more full autos and less grav rounds with the added bonus of kicking dirt in the face of charged bolts. What really got addressed here? Is the rotation really that much more "deep" and thoughtful? All of the talent tree still keys off of grav round, it just seems like a sloppy change.

Pretty much 0 justification for 99% dmg immunity on short cooldown for what is arguably the highest steady damage class in the game. The current proposed changes in 1.2 leave little reason to expect this will be changed any time soon though. 1.2 definitely looks like "Rise of the Marauders & Tankasins" but like all things in PvP eventually it'll probably get fixed. A pretty wise approach, a few classes have been hit hard already so having a bunch of alts assures that at any given time 1-2 of them will be killer.

Seriously the constant demands for DPS to be king vs. all gets pretty tiresome after a while. Playing a healer in PvP already looks a great deal less enjoyable with 1.2, why should tanks get tweaked as well just to make things easier for DPS to focus whoever they want. I don't necessarily despise the idea of an AC or two having a Guard breaker (all DPS specs are certainly not made equal at the moment) but the idea that healer-tank combos ruin PvP just needs to end. Why have anything besides DPS if the other roles are only intended to serve as speed bumps for DPS players.

All other issues I may have with 1.2 aside, the Civil War change just strikes me as poorly thought out. Do we really need less choices and one more warzone with a giant choke point?

This is apparently being changed in 1.2 but as of 1.1x you are just wrong on this issue. PvE gear's stat array is better than PvP gear's in some instances and there is a soft-cap on how much expertise one wants. Thus PvE gear was "necessary" for optimal PvP preparation, the same can never be said of PvP gear in PvE content. The PvP forums are no worse than the General forums are, SWTOR has one of the worst forum communities I've seen to date (which is saying a ton for an MMO). A sea of hostility, elitism and general unpleasantness is what you'll discover cruising just about any part of these boards. ... ok so really dude I was right there with you, figured it was just a sensible (rare on the forums) discussion where we obviously disagreed on some issues. I have 0 problem separating RL from a video game, and am quite pleased with my successes in real life. That said games existed before WoW and they did things differently, there can and should be more to content or the point of a game than just gear grinding. The carrot and stick gear grind is not the only approach to PvP content, it is the one that's been popularized in recent years. I think that's another not so great generalization of players. Even if its true though I'd rather developments be made off of the myopic views of people playing the game than just those who troll the forums loudest.

Have you noted the huge outcry from the "PvE community" against things like a LFD tool? I know that the PvE community is no more monolithic than the PvP community (I like many players consider myself a member of both) but I think that if anything the PvE crowd has been historically much more elitist and demanding of content "their way". Look at all the incessant complaints about the lack of PvE "End Game" in SWTOR, there are to date three instances for PvP and the utter failure that is Ilum yet PvP has been arguably one of the most unexpectedly successful pursuits in SWTOR. Ideally gear should not even matter in PvP, this might be why the gear gain is a la carte (and why that grind is getting flatter with 1.2) PvE at the end of the day is all about achievement. Players need ever more content to fill the ravenous need for new gear to show off their greatness, any "competition" exists purely in how quickly one can roflstomp the content and/or complete the next set of gear before demanding more developer time for future PvE updates. Essentially what I am saying is that if PvE worked the way OP is suggesting, the forums would be even more full of rage than they are now. The culture of end game PvE is a culture of exclusivity, at least thats what board warriors always demand when they have the ear of developers. Ok on this note I agree, however crafting has gotten the shaft in basically all games that have come out since WoW. It was decided then that crafting should be secondary to both Raiding and PvP since those were the only valid paths to "end game". If anything SWTOR 1.2 offers an awesome change of pace in making Crafting not only viable but part of the ideal equipment for end game. This hasn't really been the case in an MMO for years. Unfortunately it has already been made clear that this is temporary (due to PvE and PvP elites complaining that their end game was trivialized by crafting being valuable).

I guess I just don't follow this argument at all, many of my friends do not PvP at all in SWTOR. PvPing in this game is wholly unnecessary, PvP gear is less than useful in the only other noteworthy approach to end game (PvE) while the opposite can't quite be said on the other side. Believe me, I'd be pleased were there a penalty for loss in PvP, one of the issues I personally have with SWTOR's esports approach to PvP is that it has no consequence/meaning (outside of standard mainstream MMO gear grind). Awesomely gross generalization about the "PvP community" which I'd personally challenge you to even define (the group is pretty fractitious about just about everything). Where do you see PvP players complaining about lack of rewards compared with PvE? This seriously is a post-WoW thing if anything. The issue with PvP at the moment is that its meaningless, just another thing to grind. There is no territory, there is no worth to victory or loss aside from gear rewards. If the PvP crowd in general want's anything I'd assume its actually a system of consequence and impact. One of my few worries regarding BW so far is that they probably bother to read their forums. I really hope that when making decisions about their future development they either come up with some manner of in game survey message (I've seen this in tons of other games) or go with their RL events to gather player's thoughts.

I don't want to be too critical but what are you basing your opinions on? Because the system for PvP gearing is easier or more friendly people enjoy PvP over PvE in SWTOR? That strikes me as unlikely, maybe I'm wrong but I doubt that people are grinding out PvP purely for the easy to get loot. These things might be very important to you and perhaps this even makes an activity palatable that you'd otherwise not be interested in, but it is probably not reasonable to expand that to the player base in general. I don't think the developers had any idea that PvP would be as popular as it has been in SWTOR, if they had the systems would've been much better designed. I'd use the months of crazy complaining on the PvP boards as some cursory evidence of this, PvP definitely wasn't taken too seriously in SWTOR on release, if anything the developers have been pretty amazing at addressing issues of player concern. As far as I'm concerned (based purely on my opinion) SWTOR is a good example of how popular PvP in MMOs has grown in general. PvE has the same design its always had, it is more difficult for people to get into, repetitive and designed around the elite. PvE in MMOs has been designed around the same group/style of players for more than a decade now and SWTOR is no exception. The assumption that players must be in organized and "skilled" guilds in order to access the highest end content and the system of rewards based on RNG is what people have asked for (some might say demanded) for ages. If anything I'd like to see the future of PvE design move more in the direction of LotRO and less in the direction of WoW. The skirmish system in the game is leagues more dynamic (ie challenging) and builds on lots of the same ideas you presented regarding steady progression, easy access and purchasing goods through tokens rather than RNG. Unfortunately SWTOR like many other recent mainstream MMOs has decided to purely follow the path of WoW.

I prefer slow progression to the WoW flavored "zomgyournewgearsoubaa" approach.

A while back I read this Penny Arcade comic that pretty much summed up the whole thing. As far as the OP's concerns, I think it has less to do with instant gratification than it does just how people behave online. SWTOR's forums are definitely pretty horrible but they probably pale in comparison to any news site's "comments" area, or worse still YouTube. When given the ability to speak semi-anonymously people pretty much behave like shaved apes. More than once I've wondered at why MMO companies even make MMO forums at this point. Definitely there are useful gems now and again (server forums tend to be semi-useful) but whenever friends ask me about my love of MMOs, the best advice I can typically offer is to stay away from the forums.

I'm quite pleased with the new legacy system.

A) TLDR B) Why interrupt when you could instead mash your highest DPS buttons?

My guess is an inept FOTM Marauder or Tank-a-Sin.

It definitely sounds like one of the few good things about Alderaan (fluidity of the map) is getting removed with one central choke-point being installed instead. One more step toward an awesome Voidstar-esque AE murderball I guess. I haven't seen it yet though, so maybe it'll come out much better than I'm expecting.

Fortunately totally reasonable complaints like the OP are shaping future development. Grav Round/Tracer Missile 10% debuff in next patch, totally reasonable. On the other hand moving functionality to Full Auto and Demo Round in no way addresses the class' pretty crippling issues of being focused on Channeled attacks (yes they are still heavily focused on Grav Round it just does less damage) and lacking any ability to interrupt whatsoever. Healer complaints I can see as valid (so long as one is playing with PUGs rather than a team) but seriously, Grav Round/Sorceror DPS complaints are so last month.