I'm starting to think you're right. That's the only explanation I have for how different the claims are versus the reality.

Yeah, the OP is kidding, right? I'm getting 5 minute pops max on all of those things. Game is doing great. Perhaps the OP is on a lot of ignore lists? That would ruin pop times for sure.

They'll come around. Looking at their forum right now, though, you'd think the world had ended, all their attacks do 0 damage, and their heals damage allies. In game, though, I still see all the same players do the same amazing job. Not a whole lot changed, in practice. The nerfs were as soft as they could get. My juggernaut couldn't be happier with 2.7, though. Vengeance is finally big time material with those defensive boosts we got. Rage spec gets no sympathy from me.

I like this change. It's been needed and makes sense. Being able to see item ratings on everything should have been done long ago. Before, if you looked at a mod you couldn't see it's level OR it's rating, just its number (which is different from both) until it got slotted, where the primary slot would show its rating, and the others would show its item level. Item level was inconsistent -- was a 33 green better than a 31 blue? How about a 29 purple? No idea, unless you look at all the stats. And earpieces? Implants? Forget about it! No ratings OR levels. No way to tell at a glance if it was decent without a comparison item. I agree that in the short run, those of us used to the old system will be disoriented. Eventually we will learn to cope with it, and everyone will be better off.

Walked up to a bunch of mobs with my companion, they looked at me and ran towards me. I used AoE taunt, they immediately lost interest in me and ran after my companion instead. Works fine.

That's... not the thread. That's a necro from 2012. This is the thread you're looking for: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=713398

It works as a defense cooldown should: amazing when it's up, but it's gone for a good while afterward. It also scales off of Bonus Healing, which scales off of Strength and Power, making it more effective in the hands of a DPS. All the changes have made Vengeance go from kinda tanky to super tanky. Deafening Defense makes Endure Pain your first line of defense, and once that's broken down, Enraged Defense is your next. It makes cooldown cycling so much easier, because before, Endure Pain was kinda useless without another layer of defense, like Saber Ward. Now it makes you as tough as a tank for 10 seconds on top of the temporary heal. We might just see Vengeance become a new FotM.

Darth Vorrecht sounds cool! I like that one.

Grow a pair, realize the world didn't end, and that Concealment is still powerful? I don't know what else to tell you, dude. It's really not that bad.

I hear that a whole lot anytime I say I enjoy a class. "Play ranked, you'll see how much it sucks." Ranked outcomes are more often than not determined by the quality of your teammates than what class you bring, and sometimes when you get beaten, it just means that player was better, not that your class was worse. I've been playing my Vengeance Juggernaut in Ranked since before 2.7 -- considered by many to be the worst melee spec to bring to ranked -- and anytime I didn't end up with PvE-geared knobheads on my team, my team would win, and I'd likely get top damage, didn't matter what their composition. The Juggernaut forums still do nothing but tell me I'm wrong and that Vengeance is garbage in ranked. Why? "We don't have a high burst opener, stealth, or a reliable escape mechanism." Those are things Operatives still have. And you're telling me Operatives are worthless in ranked now because they don't have a knockdown on their high-damage opener? Maybe some matchups became less certain, but you guys are blowing this waaaay out of proportion.

They... buffed us, actually. Significantly. The buff was to our defenses, even. I think because of NiM DP and DF, the easier modes of both are bugged and instakilling people.

I'd rather augment for defense. Those Augs give power too.

That's what I keep telling people! I've been swapping back and forth between healing and concealment all night, having a blast in 55 regs, doing great and topping charts, winning games, getting MVP'd, and the forums are like "No, you don't understand! It sucks now!" All they got rid of was the freaking knockdown. I had it before the nerf, thought it was awesome. I never once needed it so much that I'm going to stop playing my favorite alt just because it's not there anymore. I'm going to play it even more now that they fixed a lot of other issues I was having with Concealment. The forums have an opinion on that too. "No, you don't understand, that sucks too!" Read past the first few sentences of his post and he starts complaining about medicine. Yeah, it doesn't, you know, do damage or anything. It can absorb a few attacks directed your way, it's on a 20 second cooldown, and doesn't break stealth. You can pop it before the fight, absorb some counter damage, and then pop it again if the guy doesn't die right away. I've used it to escape from a hopeless fight with multiple melee DPS more than once tonight. I've used it to get into position as a fight is starting, as well as to roll back into range when knocked back and slowed. I've used it to get behind someone that isn't directly next to me when switching targets in a team fight, so that I can backstab immediately. I've used it to chase down runners using their escape moves. I've even dodged a hit or two with its defense boost. I've been using it to monkey around in melee all night, and it's fantastic. If I didn't know you were serious, I'd think this was a parody. They're plotting against your fun, are they? I guess they gave it all to me, then, because the first thing I'm going to do tomorrow is play my Operative again! I know the knockdown was awesome, but you know what's even more awesome? That feeling of satisfaction when the Sorcerer panics and misses you with his knockback because you ran through him as he was turning around, then destroying him with the rest of your opener. I've done that a few times too.

...I already do that when I'm capping... SO WHY HAVE I BEEN DELETING THE TEXT WHEN I'M DONE!? I'm an idiot. Rage has always been derpy like that. It takes no brains to play, and takes no brains to counter. That's why I've been Vengeance since 1.1.

If it was that much better than what I'm playing right now, it deserved to be nerfed. I'm still doing great in regs and my op's a fresh 55 with only 2 pieces of pvp gear. You want to mourn, great. Just don't delude yourselves into thinking it ever died in the first place.

If you're seeking refuge from nerfs, you're never going to find a shelter.

There's no cooldown on Surgical Probe... you can use it all you want as long as you have TA, you just can't regain TA with it more than once every 10s. I've been healing on my Op all night, and I'm practically spamming away like I used to. The SP regrant isn't on the same ICD as the hot proc, so you often get 3-4 tac procs while using SP anyway. Honestly, if you can't save people now, you probably couldn't have saved them before either. Operative healing... STILL the best healer, honestly. Even better with all the other changes, and the SP change giving TA regrants at any health level really helps my burst healing at all times. I'm still practically immortal, running around hotting myself up and spamming away with SP. Not a whole lot changed. The exfiltrate changes are anything but weak. I've been using it to get in and out of range more than I ever have tonight, and it is now VERY good at closing caps and escaping quickly when slowed. Whether heal or DPS, it is now REALLY good, not to mention when you are spec concealment, it gives you 80% melee/range defense with every roll and 50% defense against force/tech. I've been doing better than ever tonight. These changes taken together are a net positive.

Unless you're running away from someone, Barrel Roll really doesn't need to be used more than once every 20 seconds. Scout pilots like myself aren't even noticing its increased CD. Gunships with BR could seriously get to middle sats in Domination before a Scout that didn't have it, and they could run away indefinitely. Guess what, now you have to learn to shoot in close range too. It's not like you instantly die when someone gets in range, and if that person that catches you is a scout, you can one shot them with BLCs. It's forcing GS pilots to actually learn to dodge, weave, and dogfight, and it's about time. The problem isn't that railing someone twice would win the fight, the problem is that railing someone once was often enough to drain what little energy they had left, and that's with easy lovetaps. That person would then have no way to get in range to fight back. Now imagine 4 people on the other team have it and are all hitting people at the same time. You can't fight that. You literally can not. You can float there until one of them switches to Sluggers to finish you, but that's it.

Let's be perfectly honest, how many times have we ever actually revealed someone with smash? I think my first time was yesterday, and I've been playing since beta. Most stealthers are smart enough to roll/run the hell away as they hit their button. Life goes on without Super Smash.

He just hit 55 today. I'll reserve further comments until I get him kitted out in augmented Obroan, as I am with my Juggernaut. Cry. me. a river. It sucks to get nerfed, I know it does, but really? If you want to know why the devs won't take you seriously, it's probably because you act like such victims when things really aren't that bad. But hey, that's how things are on the Juggernaut forums, too. Nothing but whining about lack of burst this, Marauders that. Would you laugh at them if you saw what they were complaining about? I'm sure you would. You might even get mad that they have no idea how good they have it in some regards. That's kinda how it feels being here, reading this.

"Should," or "did"? This is true. It doesn't prevent a win, but it can delay your opening salvo. That's... all good teamwork, honestly. DPSers ganging up on someone going for their healer is pretty rare, since they tend to tunnel vision the other DPS before noticing they aren't seeing any green numbers -- and they may never notice the lack of healing because bad DPS are that used to dying. DPSers ignoring the healers in favor of the DPS is also pretty common, even before the patch -- DPS are kind of dumb like that. It's not a conscious decision of "oh hey, that healer is harder to kill than his DPS", it's just the way DPS fight -- they like nothing more than to kill each other, and when the other team's DPS is of superior quality, your DPS will get rolled and theirs will rout you. I'd sooner blame your teammates for bad equipment than attribute it to weak healing. If your DPS and tank get killed so fast that the enemy DPS would rather hit them first, there's just nothing any healer can do to save them. All Medicine lost here was Surgical Probe spam, and if you've reached that point, their death is almost always inevitable. Jugg Tanks are defensive monsters in this patch. Don't forget that Enraged Defense got significantly buffed and is now roughly 5 times as powerful as it was before -- Jugg Tanks were already very hard to kill, and they got even better at surviving, as now they have a VERY strong self heal. The fact that you came close is not a slant on Operative DPS at all -- the fact that you almost had him before help could arrive is on its own commendable.

You know what, guys? I just can't agree with any of this. With the changes made to roll making it free (and granting a small "evasion" effect with EVERY use with no ICD), and the shield probe cooldown at 20 seconds, and being able to backstab from any angle, my operative seriously feels better than before. All I lost was a small knockdown. People still get caught off guard and do nothing for a while, especially in a team fight where targeting you fast is the hardest part. I can still 1v1 with ease, and getting into position has never been faster. My Concealment operative feels like a whirlwind of death, rolling all over the place and striking fast before slipping away. Everybody I talk to in game have expressed the same feelings. One even said "we got buffed, not nerfed." Have you guys even tried the patch yet? If you have, are you sure you aren't looking at it through a biased lens?

This. Each resource pool has a unique challenge to mastering it. In BH/Agent, the challenge is balancing your output with your regeneration, and failure to do so can result in entering a downward spiral that is difficult to recover from. For Sorc/Sage, the challenge is in proc management. Lightning/TK has almost no challenge at all in this regard, because their main attack builds stacks that regen their energy faster, as well as proccing an ability that makes the next 2 force attacks cost 75% less, with no rate limit. This effectively gives them UNLIMITED POWAH!! Neat mechanical pun on the part of the devs. Unfortunately, this over-reliance on a single move can also be their downfall when they're locked out of it, or otherwise not in a good position to actually use it. Warriors' build/expend mechanic is all about timing your rage-expending moves so that one of them isn't coming off cooldown right as you run dry and need to Sunder. The penalties for missing a beat are VERY minimal, so warriors' energy management is much more forgiving, though it can be locked out entirely if the warrior is unable to enter melee range (but at that point, he has bigger problems than lack of rage).

Oh please. My operative does just fine and is a blast to play.

Because it's part of learning to play the class? If a powertec overuses heat abilities, he will be stuck at recovering 1 per second, and if he already used vent heat, his DPS is gone. This allows for greater burst when sustained is no object, but if misused, you get left SOL. A warrior's attacks on the other hand are almost all on cooldown timers, and there are procs and filler moves that either remove a move's cost entirely, or rebuild rage just as the cooldown abilities become ready again. This means less control of your burst, but no situation where you can do nothing but flail your free auto attack. It's different for a good reason.