As caster I always target the enemy caster first, as they tend to have less armor and higher resistances and may be more difficult to cc or break cc earlier than melee/ranged mobs. Started by throwing them all back with a Force Wave, don't like to be crowded. Then I lifted the melee guys (specced to lift more than 1 mob, Pinning Resolve in the Balance tree) and interrupted the caster's lightning storm. Ate a few lightning bolts from other skills but the Force Armor took most of it. Then it's just a question of healing up the companion and picking down the two lifted mobs one by one. Remember to turn off the companion's aoe skills (with rightclick) otherwise they will break the important Force Lift.

I can't remember Tharan trying to make any advances to my male Jedi Consular, but he does try to be witty and convince you of his remarkable and irreplaceable genius, plus beg money from you for various harebrained science projects. I chuckle when he asks "Do I get a grant for this?" when you send him off on missions though. He really wants tenure.

I know what you mean! I'm getting that with Val Khem's "Glory to Death" line, which he says a lot. With Qyzen I really liked that he says his threats, prayers to his goddess and asking for healing in the same tone of voice. He's a hard man. I suspect Qyzen was written to (maybe) antagonize or be an opposite to the diplomatic Jedi Consular, but I liked his story and comments a lot and ended up not using any of the other companions much.

I think anyone who tries the Jedi Consular will find out if they like the story or not within the first 10 levels. The story is consistent throughout, and is about helping others and finding diplomatic solutions whenever possible. As other posters have mentioned, that's not everyone's taste, but it's not as if you lose anything game wise for doing so either. I enjoyed the Consular's story quite a lot, especially the few times when angry NPCs come running and you say "We're here to talk" and they do accept it and put away their weapons. In many games the caster or healer starts out relatively weak and doesn't improve till late towards max level. Not so the sage. They have nice dps, lots of utilities, plus healing, and do very well throughout. At max level they have great survivability (PVE) and solo capabilities. However, playing them does require that one enjoys using cc skills and don't just rush into every group of mobs. They are easier to play than casters in other MMOs though. Also, the sage/Inquisitor skills are very similar to the sorcerer/wizard's skills in Warhammer Online. Minus the painful backlash damage and the instacast DoTs.

As others have mentioned, save the interrupt skill for when rocks start to fall from the ceiling and everything starts to shake, that's Syo's oneshot killing skill and MUST be interrupted. He doesn't do that more often than the cd of the interrupt skill, though. Force Stun can also be used if the interrupt skill is on cd. Other than that, keep Qyzen shielded with Force Armor and just heal him through the damage, shouldn't be a problem if Qyzen is well kitted out. Add a few DoTs and pebbles and Syo will go down in no time. If you need a little more leeway, spec Kinetic Collapse that makes Force Armor explode and stun. It can interrupt Syo's attacks (he spams Disturbance) a little. Syo will also Force Lift you, but he won't do his one shot kill at the time. Use the air time as a chance to regen some Force, but be ready to interrupt right after. Good luck!

Thanks a lot for the info. Was sure I had hurt the mob first, but I guess not.

Have had kill steals happen a few times on elites even when the area was not crowded and it was outside of "rush hour". And I'm not level 20 yet. Quite annoying and just bad form by the players that do it. Is a mob tagged once it's damaged? Or can another player tag the mob if they do more damage than you down to a certain level, say 5/6 of the mob's health?