I don't think Merc healing abilities should be buffed for PvP or PvE. Sorc/Sage healing should be nerfed a bit and Merc/Cmdo utilities could be looked at to offer better survivability in PvP. I don't think the changes need to be drastic.

They could just make Force Mobility affect Dark Infusion rather than innervate. I think it would actually make the spec less robotic to play as well as less powerful, particularly in PvP.

I generally agree with the overall result. I think they went slightly over the top with Assassins/Shadows and I don't understand the Lethality nerf at all. They probably didn't go far enough with Annihilation and maybe not advanced prototype but I don't mind them being conservative with a nerf just to see how it goes. I'm not even sure Carnage was a nerf. And they will need to look at Sorc healing soon. I do think the classes will be more balanced than before the patch which is the most important thing.

Carnage Marauder is probably what you are after because they get to pop a +30% alacrity buff fairly regularly.

I think it would be pretty cool. It will likely only be around 30 minutes of easy combat and several cutscenes though. It won't be worth 8 months of subs and I can see quite a lot of disappointment when it drops due to unreasonable expectations.

My guess is a BB-8 pet.

A companion buff I could actually get behind would be to give a permanent and significant DR to AOE effects, I think that would actually enhance gameplay.

Lightning Strike (and because of that Lightning Bolt since it is an improved version) should both have increased damage. It is intended to be used in the rotation but because the damage is so low it turns out it simply isn't worth it. Phase Walk should never have been given to sorcs/sages. The damage they are capable of needs to be capped because of their power in PvP, so they shouldn't have added what is primarily a PvP ability. Is it too late to remove it?

Obviously dismissing a companion, which can heal you for several thousand points of damage per second, is not just a tweak, it is a massive change. The companions are so OP that removing them can make something that is trivial become impossible. I like to solo stuff, it would be about 60-70% of my time spent playing SWTOR. I still want to enjoy that and have a challenge playing against the set of parameters that the game designers have set. I have no interest in GSF, it's a completely different game. I do Ops and FP's but waiting for queue to pop isn't particularly fun and with limited time available, maybe say an hour at a time, it is not even practical since by the time the queue pops there is no time to complete it. Bioware have created hundreds and hundreds of hours content for solo play and will continue to create more in the future. I like the game with a large amount of solo content. At the moment that is their main priority. Yet none of it is remotely challenging with OP companions. It isn't even really a game because you can sit there using less than 10% of your abilities and be in absolutely no danger of failing at all. In most places you don't even have to do anything.

Companions seem excessively overpowered again. I admittedly only had about 30 minutes to test it on a couple of heroics, but once again it seems impossible to die with a healer companion so long as you hold the agro. Or even go below 90% health. What makes me saddest about this is that it seems largely because people were complaining they couldn't solo the heroic version of star fortress, meanwhile all the rest of the solo gameplay becomes a complete joke. I understand that Bioware had to undo the nerf because of the overwhelming complaints but it feels like the wrong way to do things for the health of the game. I hope Bioware would consider creating some content for players who like a challenge and like or need to play solo from time to time. Perhaps a different mode on tactical flashpoints where if you solo them you get a bigger reward. Because there is literally no solo content in the entire game that has meaningful content at the moment.

You can destroy them on solo mode for the story.

I was talking about in tank mode, they will absorb around 100,000 damage that would come your way if you didn't have a companion.

The companions can still heal well over 1000 life per second. They can still absorb 100,000 points of damage or deal an additional 1000 dps. I think the heroic Star Fortress, one of the only challenging parts of the game for single player play, would be impossible without a companion. There is probably only 2-3 hours of content in the game set at that current challenge level for SPer while there are hundreds and hundreds of hours for easy SPer experience.

I think they are in a good place right now. Those challenge levels listed are generally pretty much spot on although those medium level challenges might be closer to easy. I do like the Heroic Star Fortress solo, it is a good challenge now and there is so little content at that level in the game, please do not make it easier. I would like to see more content like this in the game. I do have high presence (though low 208 gear and influence just over 10 at the moment) so it might be significantly more difficult for those that don't, if you were going to increase companion power at all I think you should also decrease the effects of presence so it doesn't become too easy.

He doesn't use the word meant, he uses the word can. If they are designed purely as solo content why even call them heroics? OP's are part of story arcs. Being part of a story arc has nothing to do with how many players the content is designed for.