Indeed. It's amusing the image some people build of Dev teams; like the ENTIRE team is only dedicated to ONE thing at any one time. Heh. There will be a team of people dedicated to content, and it would be great to see more events.

To be honest having spent some time with the GW2 Beta i'm coming to the realisation that what I actually want isn't a 3 or 4 day slow-paced quest driven event, but several 1-2 hour events spread over a few weeks. Guild Wars two has had three beta weekends that ended with a fun, unique and well executed event. I'd like to see more of that in other games. The worlds feel stagnant without change.

I just want to comment on this briefly; it's clear from your response that you're a PvP player, but it's not OK for a single class to be the off-anything. Off-tanking is a role, not a class. Assassins have been built with a tanking tree; it should NOT be worse at it than other tanks, and the sooner Bioware realise that an avoidance-focused, self healing based light armor tank is impossible to balance (nightmare in PvP, under powered and spiky in PvE) the better.

DARKNESS 1. Overpowered PvP damage with PvP players running around in DPS PvP gear using a tanking build (which the last round of nerfs did nothing to solve). In PvE it's seen as an off-tank. This isn't just the perception of random people; this is the belief of my guild (a very long term PvE raiding guild from many MMOs) after extensive raiding in TOR. 2. I feel like the class is gimped. The defensive cooldowns are either weak, useless or entirely overpowered depending on the situation. Our mitigation was already poor in PvE and has been nerfed further (there's a reason you added 20% armor at the end of the Beta; every Assassin tank felt squishy). I don't play it any more. It's too heavily based on a rotation, the survival is too chaotic and random, and it feels as though the changes being made by BW are consistently way off the mark; solving problems that don't exist and making real problems worse. I haven't had the motivation to log into TOR for weeks; all I play is tanks in MMOs.

Yeah, would love some kind of droid class. Lots of mech-based abilities and movement... they already have droid parts in the game

Healing is impossible to balance. It's situationally OP, situationally weak, and really impossible to predict. Removing the healing means the class can, at least, be balanced by stats that matter and not around a mechanic that has RNG factors associated with it. Tanks will wear DPS gear in PvP while they can do high damage, and while tanking stats are of limited value. Bioware seem to think that Darkness survival is the problem, when in reality it's Darkness survival coupled with high damage and insane burst potential. Remove the situational healing, buff the survival to bring it passively inline with other tanks and nerf the burst and the class would be fine. The class is broken when a tanking build in DPS gear can do as much damage as a DPS build in DPS gear; non of these nerfs address this. In other news: The Guild Wars 2 beta weekend was a ton of fun.

Pray tell you never have anything to do with class balance. As an aside it's not fine as it is for PvE. The healing mechanic is still unpredictable. Overall metrics and moment to moment gameplay are not the same thing.

Mitigating through healing is impossible. Those two things are at odds with each other. By definition we must have taken damage in order to heal, so the idea of taking more damage to then (hopefully) heal some of it back in a few seconds is fundamentality flawed. Personally i'd like to see a few changes; - Self healing REMOVED (from Dark Charge and Harnessed Darkness). It's impossible to balance (too powerful in PvP, too weak and unpredictable in Ops against bosses, too powerful solo'ing H4s, etc). - Dark Charge increases your threat by 100%, but decreases your critical damage by 25%. - Dark Ward changed to add 30% armor while up. No charges, just a buff to call on/maintain that increases our survival as it's needed. Increase the duration a little so it's not spammy, keep the CD a couple of seconds behind the duration so it can be maintained. - Swelling Shadows no longer increases your chance to heal on hit and instead increases your chance to shield by 3/6%. These changes remove self healing, meaning we can be balanced around true mitigation and survival. The change to Dark Ward removes the bloody awful stacked shield improvements, and balances our mitigation to come very close to other tanks. The change Swelling Shadows adds in a little of the Shield % we'd lose from the Dark Ward change and makes it passive. Harnessed Darkness doesn't need reworking even once the healing is removed; it's still good damage and threat for 2 points. The net result would be no unpredictable and situationally strong/weak healing, no seemingly huge crits from uninterruptible lightning and shocks, a nerf to our shielding, a buff to our AoE tanking, and better on demand mitigation on bosses as needed. The PvE play style wouldn't change, either.

We're not talking about PvP. If you've missed that point so far then you have nothing to add to this thread. Secondly you're taking about the mis-use of a tanking tree. The changes made do nothing to prevent that. Darkness still offers better survival than the alternative trees, with the same damage output. Anyone playing Darkness now will continue to do so in PvP, because frankly it's better than rolling the other two. Bioware need to stop mindlessly nerfing the builds Assassin players are migrating to in PvP and ask themselves why no one actually wants to play their pure DPS specs instead.

Amen. To even attempt to reach the other class's DR values it takes more than just armor. Even with Buffs and set bonuses we're still nowhere near. It's amazing how short people's memory is. Before this game went live, during the Beta, every single assassin tank agreed the class was too squishy. It still is with RNG. It was a frequent topic of discussion here and on theory crafting sites, and BW agreed with it. So they added 20% armor to the class by tacking it on towards the top of the Darkness tree (EotS). Dropping DC down to 115% makes us worse than Beta. Getting so bored of the way classes are being handled in this game. There are so many ways they could have nerfed PvP of this problem but keep PvE intact. It's just lazy.

For someone who claims to have both an Assassin and a Jugg, you don't seem to know much about the differences between them. Assassins have the lowest DR. That's undisputable. These changes hit Assassins where they're weakest. Also, personally, i'd happily see the self-healing removed. It's a gimmick, it's impossible to balance, impossible to predict in large group content as it's meaningless against bosses and more than anything it's used as a way of justifying lower DR. Kill self-healing, buff DR, feck flavour. Tanks at their very core should be built to survive.

... stop and re-read please. You're embarrassingly obtuse. I want to play a tank. I like my Assassin. I've played it since beta. I consider these changes to be brutal, as do you. Your question was which of the two remaining non tank specs are people going to move to. As a tank, that's not possible. So as a tank our options are to eat the nerf or move to another class. So, the answer to your question for this particular tank is to move to another, already superior, tanking class. As an aside; the PT tank isn't a ranged alternative. It tanks in melee, just like the Assassin. I love how you've decided i'm some kind of troll based on the fact that I actually answered your fecking question. Swing and miss, amirite, <insert drivel here>, etc.

Their forum? You know you're not actually an Assassin, right? I answered your question I could, because frankly it doesn't make much sense. Your question was essentially "Now that the tanking spec has been nerfed which of the two DPS specs are you going to choose?". The answer to that, for me, is neither; I want to play a tank, so will look at playing a different class in order to tank.

It's more likely going to make me do one of two things; gear up my Powertech again or quit.

Then prey tell; do you feel like your Tankasin had too much survival and needed a nerf? Do you raid with it? PvP with it?

News Flash: Bioware don't balance a class around a specific set of heroic quests... so to believe that these are not PvP motivated changes is short sighted. They can solo it because of the additional healing and a companion. No one cares about the healing; in large scale PvE, against hard hitting bosses the self healing is unpredictable ****. The self healing was a way of justifying the lower mitigation. Nerfing both invalidates the justification. It's lazy class design on a class that suffers with these problems the most.

Do you play an Assassin tank? I'm not denying the existence of an explanation, i'm saying that as some one who has played this class extensively, and other tanking classes too, it makes no sense. But hey ho, thanks for your input.

No, they don't. I have a PT and an Assassin. The PT's general damage reduction and survival is noticeably better. The Assassin feels fragile on the same content. It was noted by my guilds healers how much more unpredictable it was to heal. etc etc. They nerfed the class's weakest aspect, and buffed it's strongest.

Indeed. These nerfs make no PvE sense.

I don't understand these changes at all. These are PvP changes, they make no sense to PvE tanks. Dear Bioware; no one cares about have crappy self healing as a way of justifying lower survival. Seriously, it's crap. A small amount of healing every few seconds is utterly pointless. The nerf damage mitigation AND sealing healing with the justification that self-healing was making tankasin damage mitigation too strong is moronic. Remove the self healing. It's impossible to balance, impossible to predict, and foolish to rely on. Remove it. As an aside; ask any Tankasin on live what their current strength is they'll tell you threat. The threat buffs are threat fluffs. Back to the PT for me, if I come back at all tbh.

Good job on completely missing the point. I don't want this game to be WoW; if I did i'd be playing WoW, which i'm not. Why is that people defending this game always fall back on the same tired responses "well go play WoW then!". Secondly I care enough about this game to take the time to write why I cancelled my subscription and what I find lacking. It's not a question of liking; I liked levelling, liked the acting, liked the setup, however having done all that and levelled an alt or two I don't find there's enough to hold my interest; new dailies isn't going to change that. I'm also not the only person who feels this way, am I? I never said Dailies suck; I said grinding isn't fun for a portion of the player base. I never said people don't want to do dailies; I said options are a good thing. I do love the "the game is only five months old argument!" because it's not; it's six years and five months old and it's been in testing for a long, long time. In the time it's been in development other games have introduced innovative and interesting features. Those games are out in a matter of months and I do hope Bioware pull something out of the bag because I want this game to do well, otherwise i'd have never bother getting into a discussion about this very topic in the first place.

Or perks could be granted from quests unlocked via the legacy system. Something to do and a reason to do it without it becoming a resource sink.

Oh sweet forum poster, it's great that you love this game and will continue to play it. I'm happy for you, really. But don't mistake feedback and the oppurtunity to express it as spreading negativity; this thread is about why people are nolonger playing TOR, and these forums are an outlet for the player base to express their feelings. If you came in here expecting anything else you're a fool. I, along with the vast majority of my guild, have now cancelled our subscriptions. I won't be going back to WoW, i'll instead go and play something else in future; TSW or GW2, for example. As an aside and something for you to think about; if people are cancelling their subscriptions (as I assure you they are), yet the player base totals remain about the same, how is that a healthy playerbase? That's churn my friend. 30 days free? Really? You think that's the sign of healthy numbers? Have a month completely free as long as you're still a subscriber after the sub renewal date! Oh, and have a tauntaun! Bioware have crafted a great story telling experience and I enjoyed it very much... however as an MMO this is lacking and needs love. I'm sure they'll do it, and i'll check it out again in the future. People are choosing to leave this game for very valid reasons. It's not whining to express them; it's honest, and as there is no other way to express our feelings to Bioware then you're being a troll by belittling and marginalising the people that do.

You took a long time to write many incorrect statements. I played WoW for four years. I raided many capital cities, explored many regions, took part in lots of open world PvP, etc etc. I never took part in grindy activities in WoW; I didn't do dailies, I never stockpiled gold, I didn't grind reputation. I did what I wanted, and when I couldn't I logged off and did something else. I've played TOR for four months. My subscription is cancelled and expires tonight. You can type and second guess my words as much as you like; not everyone has the same motivations... and again the inclusion of those things do not remove dailies or more grindy elements, do they? (a question you managed to side-step quite expertly). Again; legacy didn't need to be a credit sync, it could have been an incredible quest list. 1.2 could have dropped and the galaxy could have been flooded with people playing new quests, with specific goals that they deemed important. Options in an MMO is a good thing. Repetition isn't. Don't begin to assume you know how everyone will react to them.

I'm a player; i'm not happy. That alone invalidates your argument. Also it doesn't need to be either/or. The option of raiding the enemy faction's capital doesn't mean dailies should be removed; it's another thing to do. Explore. It's that bored friday night where your guild is sat around with no purpose. It's an option in a game genre that is built around options. Everything I suggested provides a purpose above the individual grind; that's the point i'm making. Players may be happy to grind DNA for a lightsaber crystal, good for them and i'm happy they enjoy it... but it's not fulfilling, exciting or ambitious. It's not Star Wars.