Im in agreement with the apples and oranges comment. Also, the group that is vehemently against this change is a very small group of players that focus specifically on bybrid builds. if you browse the threads against the idea, you will find the exact same group of 5-6 people in the forums that are against it. the rest of the playerbase is either for it, or like me and is of the principle I will see how it works out. Wow did something similar (even more extreme in dumbing down the process), and they are stil solvent as a company (and still holding higher sub numbers then most other MMO's out there). I don't play WoW anymore, im not a pro-WoW person, but i recognize that they did some things well, even if i don't agree with their method. As long as Bioware keeps enough flexibility in the system, and continues to reward players for the leveling experience (which is the biggest issue with these simplified systems...far less reward for leveling), the system will work. A small sub-group of players will be dissapointed no matter what, and will have to decide moving forward if this is the game for them. This is not even close to NGE. it was a niche game, with a specific style of player enjoying it. they turned it into something totally different, and destroyed the game. This change is only removing the illusion of flexibility in the system. And please note that i am not belittling the group of players that enjoys hybrids, nor do i think that they're opinion isn't valid. it is. Unfortunately, when games this size have to make hardlined budget and resource decisions, then tend to have to go with the bulk of the playerbase, i.e. what will net the most players with the most results. and since most of the players optimize their builds, they are going with a system that pre-optimizes for us. this is far less dumbing down then it is simply removing a process that most everyone was already using to get the results they wanted. process is removed so we don't have to manually do it. They key will be keeping the flexibility via the utility skills prevalent and interesting.

although i agree with the mathmatical difficulties, I'm pretty sure the larger motivation is Dev time and Budget vs. reward. It was simply costing them too much in dev time AND budget. I'm pretty sure this is your point as well, but digging into a bit more detail for the arguement. When a company forms a team to accomplish specific results, they need to assign it a budget that includes things such as materials, resources, employees, etc. if you've ever been in higher level management calls, these things are often aggressively fought for, as budgets are often very slim and there's only so many employees and resources to go around. so often budgets, and the accompanying developers and resources, are funneled into the areas of greatest need. Bio realized that their current approach (skill trees) was taking too much resources to balance effectively (even if it was possible). The new approach saves dev time, saves resources, and allows the company to move these resources into other areas. a good example would be to take 2-3 dev's off of the "balance" group and move them over to the "graphics and skins" group. suddenly the graphics and skins group grows by twice it's origional size, and they're putting out mesh and skin reworks at twice the previous number. the overall quality of the game improves, nuff' said. It's like putting 5 thousand dollars into rebuilding an eingine in a car thats only worth 3 thousand. you realize that your putting too many resources in the wrong areas and wasting them. so you go out and by a totally different car with a solid engine for 5k, and sell the old one as parts...and your actually ahead in the game.

And your broader point (which is a good one) is that developers don't have the same freedoms that authors and producers have for movies/books. Developers have to deal with the demons "Balance" and "mechanics" you brought up mechanics the most, ill touch on balance. in an MMO where characters will compete with each other, whether it be in a raid setting (against PvE mobs) or in a PvP setting (against each other), there has to be a mediocrum of balance, or complete aspects of the game simply don't work. classes need balance...the game environment needs balance (to remain playable for the bulk of the audience). thats the reason why certain classes can only shoot their blaster rifle 10m...while others can shoot it 30. it's based on the class, and it's intended role, and needs to be balanced as such.

The biggest reason they won't do this (in spite of how cool it will be) is this: Developer time. their budgets allow for X time. period. the reason they are actually going with the discipline route is to save developer time to spend it on other areas. simple as that. Even if the animations were "doable" and even if the skill balancing was "possible", it would be adding more load to the developers at a time when they're trying to OPEN UP DEV TIME. there's already plenty of things in the game that they need to devote that time to. adding this wouldn't help. and it would probably push the game farther away from their intended design, which is more limiting then open and flexible. keep in mind that its not my idea of how it should be designed...it's how they chose to do it. But thats why this cool idea wont see the light of day. it isn't due to listening to whiners, or catering to niche groups, or any of that. its simpy too much dev time to do this, when they could spend it in other areas that are more beneficial over the long run to them and the game.

Long time no chat! I agree with some points, but disagree on the specific application here. Just because it is different, and functions at a survivable level (a.k.a. the current system), doesn't make it optimum. Also, just because something is taken from a different game doesn't make it bad. not to bring up an old dead horse...but the original skill system and mechanics were almost photo snapshot from early WoW. does that make the current system bad? quite the contrary, i remember early dev's saying they chose it because it had been tested in current games and it worked. the whole "why re-invent the wheel" concept. onto the original post. I still think (i thunk this for many moons, as early as early launch) that they should have put in the game a similar appearance feature to LotRO. not because its LotRO and I like the game (or did, haven't played in a year or so), but because, bar none, I have found it to be the most flexible, simple, and comrehensive appearance mechanic to date: 1) separate appearance tabs, each one with a full set of gear slots (the visible ones at least). 2) whatever gear you put in that tab would not show up until you enabled that tab as your appearance 3) You could asssign hotkeys for each tab as well, to change looks on the fly. 4) once gear was inserted in the tab and saved, it was no longer required for you to have the gear. you could even sell it, and it would stay in that tab as an appearance until you removed or replaced it. of course...if you did that after you sold it...you would have to buy another of those items if you wanted the appearance back. In other words, it wasn't a "real" item once it got placed into the appearance tab, it was a virtual complete "skin" 5) the appearance sets had NO impact on your current gear or stats whatsoever. at all. you could run around butt nekked (actual gear), and look like you were completely decked out in finery if your appearance tab was enabled. that IMO is the simplest, and probably even easier then the OP's suggestion. I do not consider bandwidth or server load an issue...unless I'm wrong, the current gear we wear more then likely references a database for items, grabs the items model, and applies it to said character. this probably happens more often then we think (zoning, relogging, etc), so the process to "store" our current gear probably doesn't take allot of space...its more then likely a hexadecimal hash code that's smaller then an ipv6 address. it wouldn't kill the servers to load 2 or 3 more of those code lines per character.

reason is twofold methinks. One, already stated, is OPness. healing is a form of active mitigation. being a tanky class at the same time and you have dual mitigation mechanics working for each other. Treek is a great example of that. then in order to balance it as a class, the rest of their features would be underwhelming to the extreme. And alternative is to make a healing based tank...but WoW realized early on that this is a tough thing to balance. second reason is that if you look at it, each class has a DPS spec and an alternative (save two). having a healer/tank would upset the balance of the force, and the universe would go crazy! Seriously, a very interesting idea, but historically a balancing nightmare for most games.

yup. gear is an issue. i found that the "speedy leveling time" is deceptive. your gear loses its potency very fast. 10 levels even with blues and your struggling with mobs. that and the travel make it feel slower then it really is. best solution I think is the idea for making green mods. pick up scavenging and a second gathering skill of choice (like archeology for force users), and cybertech. start an alt with artifice. mail all the arch materials over to alt, and craft up green mods as you go. I initially was working on trying to keep myself in blue mods, but its so much effort for how fast you outpace them i just make greens as I go, and make them twice as often. far easier then having to stop every few hours and hop over to an alt and spend just as much time as you were leveling crafting your items An alternative if your leveling an alt on a server where you have all your crafters: pre-craft ahead of time. make the gear gap between 8 and 10 levels, and craft the next few tiers ahead of time (like start them at night before you go to sleep). then you have all your mods ready to go when you hit that level. EDIT: Not to advertise WoW (haven't played it in ages), but their "legacy gear" mechanic would have been great with this upgrade. gear that levels it's stats with you! once you reach a certain level before cap (I think it's first iteration was 10 levels below cap), it stopped leveling with you. then all you had to do was enjoy the game

IM looking forward to it. It's most likely more of a "unique class specific twist" to the overarching story then a continuation of the "class storyline". But its a bit of a "carrot" to those how have many alts...it's a reason to pull that X alt out of the closet, dust them off, and see what you get in the new XP.

That's probably more luck then anything else. your "hybrid" just happened to align with their intentions of class design. there are others in this thread whos skill setups are so far off the norm that they're skill setups are impossible in the new design (I know one guy who literally would spread his points about equally in all 3 trees). I think that once we get into the new setup, we'll find that there is still quite a bit of flexibility. many of the really key utilities from each tree will be available to all 3 trees, and you won't need to drive deep into a tree to unlock most of them. Hybrid as a term in this game is changing. I think that what they are doing is locking in a certain amount of class abilities in order to provide us with more options outside of those abilities then we originally had. As an example...on my DPS (Telikinetics/lightning tree) sage, if i had wanted to unlock the ability to heal others with force wave (would have been a nice utility addition to a DPS spec) I would have to spend 26 points in that tree, lose a ton of DPS potential, and add a bunch of healing bonuses that really don't help me in a DPS role. In the new design, that skill is a utility (and a lower tier one at that), which means that i can either blow monsters away, or heal my allies, or heck do both in an emergency...and still retain my high DPS numbers. though much of the feel, or "illusion" of hybridization is gone, the extra flexibility you have around the more "rigid" core is better then it currently is.

Right. I think they biggest issue isn't what they are doing now. it's the choices the made during initial development. they chose a model that allowed for choice...in a game where they didn't want players to have that much choice. As a friend said once during a discussion about WoW's changes, "it was an illusion of choice". Theme-park MMO's are very much this concept. the ability to choose severely limits your growth potential. obviously if you don't care about reaching the "endgame" or have very specific ways you play the game, then that "meta-game" concept doesn't impact you much...but it seems pretty plain from the twitch that it was never their intention that the game was going to allow that flexibility. it's like wanting to carry a gallon of water in a bucket with holes. you hate how it leaks...but some people are enjoying the leak (hey, it waters plants, i can take a shower, it works for me!). when you come along and finally get a bucket with no holes....some of those people are going to be frustrated. So what we have is a dev team who's picture of the game is different then a sub-group of players. previously, the dev's were limited in their ability to eliminate this behavior pattern out of the game as a whole with the older architecture they had decided to use. 3.0 is allowing them to change that architecture to better suit their intentions. This doesn't mean that wanting mroe "choices" in class development is bad...I still play some games that allow a huge flexibility in choices (like path of the exile, as an example.) This just wasn't meant to be one of those games. I knew this awhile ago, I was just wondering how they were going to get it done (and how long it would take them).

It's not a weakness in the game. It's an aspect of questing as you go that is exposed in a mildly painful way when the need to "quest" is taken out of the picture. something else that is also exposed is gear acquisition. I am almost spending as much time crafting gear for my alts that im leveling as I am leveling them. you'r not getting the typical quest rewards as your skipping 80% of them and only (mostly) doing the class quests. so you either buy stuff off the AH, or craft it. Either way you look at it, what it really boils down to is...if you take a "quest to level" game, and remove the quests, what really do you have left? right...everything you did inbetween the quests. woah, shocker there. I'm happy with it. for the next few months i can run a few alts and just enjoy the storyline like its my own personal Star wars movie.

I'm not directly opposed to this change. When WoW initially came out with their "simplification" to the skill trees, it literally drove me away from the game. a few expansions later, and they have changed things up quite a bit, and I don't think this is a bad approach...merely a different one. After listening to the Dev's, i understand that their intentions with the skill setup aren't an "open choice" concept. They always had in mind the desire to isolate trees...and many of the balance changes and adjustments they've done in the past speak to this concept. The traditional skill tree is what limited their design intentions. no clue why they decided to go with that idea, as there were many other ways to accomplish what they wanted...but its what they used at the time. At this point im neither here nor there. if they do it well, what we will have is clear differences in AC's, with flexibility in our utility skill choices. much better then WoW's initial attempt at this. the "hybrid" is being funnelled into the utilites. Yeah...tru hybridization is dying, but this game wasn't really set up around it to be honest. it was a "funnelled" class system with an "open choice" feel to it. the flexibility of the game allowed people to actually make oddball hybridization. But it wasn't a choice in design...it was a limitation with the model they had to work with at the time. While I empathize with those who really enjoyed the eccentric hybrid design options (like literally spreading your points out equally in the trees...ignoring top tier skills, etc.), The games design seems more oriented towards the theme-park concept, and is moving more in that direction. basically, they are rediscovering what WoW discovered with their model. Now it will be up to us to see if their version of it still encapsulates what most the players enjoyed about their classes. I'll withholding judgement until i see it in play and try it for myself. While the change effectively killed my future in WoW...I was on the way out already (last few years i was only hopping in once in awhile to play). Im still regularly enjoying this game, so we'll see how it all turns out. I'm not against it, but im not supporting it. But i can see why they are doing it, IMO it was inevetable.

While i didn't leave, i was one of those sorely dissappointed with the treatment of revan. As stated before, doing a solid story on Revan would be awesome. and so would yavin 4 or kash...kassh...achoo.

Honestly, one of the reasons that I started a scoundrel was because I could sucker punch someone and kick them in the jimmy. I find some of their moves a refreshing change from the lightsabers and blasters. on that note, I enjoy the Operatives zippy knife attacks for a similar reason. I do agree that the Scoundrel could use more interesting actions though. I too would love to see more scatter-gun actions. a butt strike or followup hit to back blast that involves a full aimed shot, or perhaps swinging the butt around to the side of the head... I don't think they're going to do a full scale revamp of the scoundrel's actions. lots of work for little return. better to look forward in all honesty...like to the new expansion. if they're going to add skills, we should push for some animations that bring us more in-line with that image you guys are looking for. new skill = scatter-gun action? for Operative, perhaps a full knife swing (like a nice finishing slice or something like that)? were probably better off brainstorming the new skills then pushing for old skills to get re-skinned. On the OP's note: you could probably survive fine without those skills. with the exception of the blaster whip. as an example, you could run up the dirty fighting tree. then your spending more time blasting things then hitting them in the kidneys. just because scrapper got revamped and is FotM right now doesn't mean that dirty fighting is useless. tolerate blaster whip (think of it as a distraction move...like clawing an opponents eyes in a fistfight, or a feint in fencing), and look to it as your lead into your more deadly attacks (the bleeds and the huge finishing move.) IMO if your going for realism, dirty fighting is far better for that connection. you can still backblast as well, and get a bit of scatter-gun action in there. personally, on my scoundrel (leveling a second one atm), I go a hybrid. skill up the sawbones tree till i get emergency medpack and emergent emergencies. the rest go into the scrapper tree for flying fists and the appropriate boosting skills. you end up running more of a hybrid healer/companion support DPS tree. let your comp engage, throw up a few heals, wade in behind the mobs, and unleash suckerpunches and backblasts, adding heals as needed. Iknow you don't like the scrapper tree, so that would only be an option if you wanted a flexible spec. I've gone full heals, and full DPS, and outside of a high end geared full DPS build, the hybrid build solos faster then both full builds (solo only...not saying it's viable to fill an end game role!). outside of that, id try a full dirty fighting build OP. less smacking bad guy, and more Han Solo style shooting.

I could see that...my Operative and scoundrel i both leveled initially as healing...then as a hybrid, so i can't say from the perspective of a non healing spec. But then again, that's why I said "one of" the least forgiving and in all honesty...I see them both as more difficult classes to level initially...the scoundrel/Op having a slight edge due to "some" healing ability....but losing in the comp category as they both get their healing comps very late...which is why i went a heal hybrid. On the flip side....the juggernaut doesn't have an healing spec option at all.And the guardian has it even worse...his healing comp isn't had until the mid to late 30's. but either way they are both tough on new players.

I'll add this to the discussion: As a new player, you also picked one of the classes that is least forgiving to a new player. 1) Juggernaut/Guardian class is slow to mature: while you are past that threshold (usually the mid 40's), the class itself matures (a.k.a it gets its best skills) much later in its leveling game. This makes it much more difficult to get an overall feel for the classes function early on. 2) Jugg/Guard is very gear dependent. Always has been (most it's damage is based on your weapon and stats). That means that stat optimization affects you more then most, and also impacts you negatively more then most when you DONT optimize. not game breaking, but it is there. 3) Jugg Guard has NO personal healing abilities....at all...period. most other hybrid classes have some personal healing Capactiy (the tank classes all deal with this limitation now... assassin not as much, but still there). And if you play MMO's long enough, you will come to know the cardinal rule....healing damage is always more beneficial in the long run then resisting damage. so no matter how tough we jugg's are, damage taken is damage taken...and not healed. Which means that unless you have a healer lying around, you will spend far more time recovering. all this aside. once you get intimate with the class, used to balancing skill use, aggro on yourself vs. aggro on your companion, timing pulls (letting your comp get A and B, you grab C and D, etc), and gearing yourself appropriately, you will see your Jugg bloom into an awesome character. In the meantime, give yourself some grace, don't sweat the losses, and keep yourself oriented on this thought: "what could I have done better in that last fight?" after a tough fight, run over your skill descriptions (all of them), and see if any of your skills could have been used slightly better (or just used period) to make that last tough fight easier. make a mental note if you find one, and promise yourself that you'll use it in the next fight. Personal example: Early in my juggs life, I realized that allot of mobs i was hitting with my leap/smash combo were still alive....but perhaps with only a sliver of life left. I would often find myself using a heavy hitting ability to finish them off, only to find myself with nothing but my auto attack to use on the next mob until my heavy hitters came back off of Cooldown. So I got used to using my Auto attack on the almost dead mobs, and saved my hard hitting abilities (that often spent rage) on the next mob. suddenly my kill speed increased dramatically! It was a simply case of refining resource use.....wasting a rage spending ability on an almost dead mob is a waste of the overall damage you do with that ability. But I didn't realize this until I spent some time in post battle analysis. EDIT: Just in case you aren't familiar with a few terms: Auto Attack - not really "auto", but it describes a basic ability that costs no resources, and you start with from the very beginning. Often referred to as "auto attack" because in other MMO's, this starting basic ability is often literally on auto pilot from the moment you engage a mob. In SWtOR, we actually have to trigger it each time we want it to be used. in the case of your Juggernaut, it's called Assault. Cooldown: term describing the amount of time it takes an ability, once used, to become available again. for some, its zero, others can be as high as 30 seconds, or even minutes. More powerful abilites often have longer Cooldowns.

I feel your pain spearo. This is one of those reasons I wish that MMO's made playing a healer and tank mandatory sometimes. so the DPS players that really are clueless would have to get a clue, or at least appreciate playing the classes that far too often have to hold the group up. But, if this is your first time healing regularly, The best advice I can give is "get used to it". not in a harsh way, but really...unless you end up playing solely with a fine tuned guild group (or even just a guild group that is decent enough to learn), you will get this allot. On the flip side, the frequency of this bad style of play really makes you appreciate those who actually play well. You end up actually forming close bonds to those who ARE paying attention, and doing their job well. Comradeship at it's greatest. Perhaps Im looking for the silver lining in the cloud...but really, it makes you appreciate a PuG tank when he can manage the adds and boss effectively...and DPS that can target appropriately, and peel mobs off of the healer. I like to call it the reality check. am I appreciating those with decent skill? check. am I appreciating those who are new but learn quick? check.

This change floors me. speechless. can't tell you how many times being able to spam that ability saved my PuG groups. inexperienced tanks + inexperienced DPS = healing nightmare. I've healed on all 3 classes since the game went live, in solo, PuG, and raid environments. This single change will relly gut the Op/Scoundrels emergency healing capacity. On my merc I always had sheer burst healing capacity to bring up low health players (supercharge, Dr shield, armor buff, fast cast heal, all on extremely low CD's). on my sage, bubble/AoE bomb/prestigious use of Conveyance brought them up in no time. my Scoundrel has none of those. EE was the scoundrels answer. All of our Ho'ts are based on stacking, and do not have real up front burst, so being able to spam EM ENERGY FREE and burn our extra UA procs closed that gap (energy free is the key....our energy recvovery CD is long one, and our energy fluctuates far faster then my merc or sage does). so what do we do now? they'd better buff Emergency medpacks healing by a ton, or provide us with a "shield" ability to absorb damage now....or a armor buff with EM. So, you know...we can be just like the other healing classes.. Sigh...the inevitability astounds me. I knew that once they actually decided to focus on competitive PvP, that it would slowly choke the PvE game into a blended mess of homogenization and mediocrity, just like every other MMO before it. It's sad to see my prediction come true...even though I knew it would, I always have a hope that they'd change direction. Guess they're not. so long unique and individual PvE classes. welcome to WoW world

I don't' see Sub-numbers as a direct indicator of a game's health. It's more like cholesterol levels. higher Cholesterol floating in your blood doesn't indicate that you are unhealthy, but increases your chances of having unhealthy issues in your bloodstream (as it's a reaction to the body of having an unhealthy state). Higher cholesterol doesn't guarantee that you will have arteriosclerosis, but drastically increases your chances that it's "there". It's not causational, its only correlational. Yet in spite of this correlational only environment, we tend to over-focus on "reducing our cholesterol", instead of just building a healthier lifestyle in our diets and activities. In a similar fashion. "X" subs don't indicate an unhealthy game...but dramatic changes in subs indicated deeper issues in the game that "could' lead someone to be concerned about the games health and the recent changes. Given that Bio recently indicated that the bulk of their monthly income STILL comes from subs (vs. f2p cash) indicates that subs are still a very impacting metric on the company's income...thus it's often used as a barometer for game "health". but like cholesterol, it is simply a metric....not THE metric...just an important one. and like Cholesterol, It is easy to overemphasis focus on the metric rather then seeing it for what it is...just a metric.

Im sorta looking forward to it actually...most the vids I've seen so far are very early crude mockups from what I can tell (no facial expressions, gross unrefined movement). But they got a ton of people from the original Clone wars CGi series, so I agree with you. I was skeptic of the CW series initially...actually didn't watch it until recently on Amazon. I thought it would be your typical movie spin-off series (let's see if we can make more money off of the same movie kinda deal). But after watching even just the first 2 seasons, I feel that the CW CGi series was a real SW product..far more then the last 3 movies were. I hope the new series continues that trend. It may not be "better" from a CGI perspective, but then again I'm not a person who believes something is trash just because it isn't better graphics. as an example, I love the cartoony style of the new wildstar game coming out, and I preferred the partial cartoon approach to SWtOR over a more realistic look. Stylized design IMO can be just as good, if not better at times, then trying to get something "realistic". so if they do good at that approach with SWR, then im game for watching them.

thank you for proving my point. wish you the best.

Fari enough. I respect your opinion, And I think you are wrong.

Your opinion hasn't changed. your treatment of other people, their thoughts on the matter, and the pointless arguing has cheapened the post. you may not think so, But as neutral person coming into this thread, at the end I almost wished I was able to decline your request purely on your approach. Are you one of those people that think that your point is irrefutably the truth and should be accepted by all regardless of how you deal with other people? I won't argue with you, it's obvious that you are good at it. It doesn't make your point right, and that's where I think you lost direction. your point isn't right because you ARE right, It's not right because you can out-argue people (or blindly debate them into rage-quitting the thread), its a valid point because you are a player, just as I am. You have a playstyle you enjoy playing, as I do. and both opinions should be respected. I was willing to respect your original point, but you've honestly not given me much reason to beyond that. I respect your opinion...your lack of respect for others opinions is whats turned this post into something that I don't feel will get much headway. EDIT: Oh and btw...it's not just you, and it's not just the PvP players in the thread. arguments can only exist if there are two people to argue, and there are others being belligerent in this thread as well. So the respect thing really does need to extend both ways. You know how to stop an argument? one of the people arguing needs to stop arguing....and the argument is over.

Yup, your right. Your OP is right. they are favoring PvE in this circumstance. I won't try to justify it, because I honestly don't care. I think you may want to re-think your strategy though. I'm not trying to belittle you...I respect your desire for a special mount (because again, I don't care). I respect that in spite of the fact that it's obvious that you don't seem to care about the attitudes and opinions of the sole PvE players and the changes in the game that have impacted them. I respect the fact that you would like to see something different and special and unique (at least initially) to the PvP area. The reason Im suggesting you change your approach is the thread really has regressed to a useless argument. you've lost the original intent of your post, which was to raise awareness to your thoughts and feelings on the mounts. I really honest wouldn't care if you got a special mount. will you get it? not solely with this thread...it's really lost its direction. And to everyone else....let the OP raise his idea. most of this thread is just baseless arguing...the OP will not give up his/her position, it should be obvious by now. the less you argue with them, the smaller this post will be. I did enjoy the read though...I may not have had popcorn, but I was enjoying my morning cup of coffee.

Leveled 3 Jugg's one Guard, all 3 specs. spent more time on this class then i dare to admit . used quinn for all 3 juggs (experimented with others, quinn was my main). I think the biggest issue with quinn is adapting to a slightly different playstyle with his aggro. once you do though, he's honestly the best comp to level with outside of treek (which I leveled my guard with...heal spec after lvl 20 all the way). keep his gear up to date, learn how to piece out mobs. hit the ones you want to keep, let a few stragglers aggro to him, pull them as you polish off the ones you grabbed initially. gear him well and he can tank a silver for a long time...he's even tanked elites for me long enough for me to polish off the adds. Again, it's a playstyle thing. you have to be aware of him, and watch his health, be ready to taunt if it gets too low...or if it start to drop real fast. may seem like allot to watch...but its actually great practice if you ever decide to tank. And I have never had issues with him being too squishy. So I think allot of it's a playstyle thing. Note on rage: EDITED - Rage has gotten tons better since pre 2.0 days, but still feels like its missing a bit until you get its capstone ability. the guaranteed crit on smash helps allot, but you do need to play it carefully. I find Vengeance an easier spec for a starting Jugg, but Rage works fine. learn to use your stuns and smashes well to keep mobs stunned. gun down the weak ones first, learn not to waste heavy hitting abilities on a mob that only has a sliver of health left (use the heavy ability on a different mob, and finish the sliver one with an auto attack), stuff like that. let Jaesa pull threat initially so you can pick and choose the mobs you want to kill. I would personally run an immortal build if i was leveling with Jaesa, but any spec is doable. just need to be a bit more careful when your a DPS spec. You WILL have more downtime with a DPS comp and a DPS build...it's the nature of the jugg. the fastest and smoothest combination I've played is Vengeance and Quinn up through 45, and after 45 Rage and Venge are about equal. Immortal is solid the whole way, but since it's a tank build, it has a different approach to gear/comp selection. They take a bit of adaptation, but it's honestly a killer class once you get into the 40's. it just matures a bit slower then most.