How does the saying go? Give an inch and they'll take a mile?

The cannon. Makes a nice contrast with my Scoundrel and Jedi alts. I like the Clone Wars-type white heavy armor, too. Though I'm less a fan of looking like a troupe of circus clowns while I don't have matching pieces, and 1.2 won't fix that for my companions.

Your best bet is to track down some Jedi headbands and replace the mods. I do that with all my medium/heavy armor companions to keep their faces visible.

That's a little convoluted, to be honest. Originally Defense could put 3 points into Pacification for +15%, and the hybrid just had no damage bonus. Now, however, with SSM and Swelling Winds adding bonuses, both builds gain +26% damage, and the full Defense can take Pacification to tack on another 8%. So really the hybrid gained more Cyclone Slash damage than Defense did from where they were before, but Defense can throw down 8% more damage in total.

So your character looks like a 50% crit chance, 77% surge? Current version 0 crits, 100% damage: 12.5% 1 crit, 125.7% damage: 37.5% 2 crits, 151.3% damage: 37.5% 3 crits, 177% damage: 12.5% 1.2 version 0 crits, 100% damage: 1.6% 1 crit, 112.8% damage: 9.4% 2 crits, 125.7% damage: 23.4% 3 crits, 138.5% damage: 31.2% 4 crits, 151.3% damage: 23.4% 5 crits, 164.2% damage: 9.4% 6 crits, 177% damage: 1.6% So you can't say that your "Chance to crit is being lowered by 3%" as a flat nerf (I assume you mean all three hits crit here, because your chances to crit at all are obviously way higher), because your chances to not crit anything were just as high, and those have also been modified. You'll crit for full surge damage a lot less, and you'll not-crit for no surge damage a lot less. The overall average damage done remains the same.

Swelling Winds in 1.2 also buffs Cyclone Slash by 20%, and it gives you the old 3s Force Sweep cooldown reduction. For AoE buffing it's way better than Pacification. Cyclone Slash got some nice potential buffs for Defense in 1.2; with SSM becoming stance-agnostic and Swelling Winds adding damage, you can now potentially buff it for +34% damage while running Soresu.

So the problem is that you won't hit as super-hard 1 out of every 20 times you use a power that has a cooldown of a minute? How useful is that really to obsess about?

C'mon, complaining about not being able to crit all of your hits as often is a little silly, isn't it? Your chances went from really small to really, really small; you're much more likely to not crit at all. Six hits instead of three just means your per-use damage is less swingy. Your expected damage per target is still the same. Example: 30% chance to crit, 60% extra crit damage Current version Chance you will not crit, 100% damage: 34.3% Chance you will crit 1 time, 120% damage: 44.1% Chance you will crit 2 times, 140% damage: 18.9% Chance you will crit 3 times, 160% damage: 2.7% Expected value: 118% damage 1.2 version Chance you will not crit, 100% damage: 11.8% Chance you will crit 1 time, 110% damage: 30.2% Chance you will crit 2 times, 120% damage: 32.4% Chance you will crit 3 times, 130% damage: 18.5% Chance you will crit 4 times, 140% damage: 6.0% Chance you will crit 5 times, 150% damage: 1.0% Chance you will crit 6 times, 160% damage: 0.07% Expected value: 118% damage

So your suggestion is to make it into a superpowered Guarded by the Force? - 100% damage reduction instead of 99%, which is important given the penalty for GbtF. - No damage done, which isn't even a penalty half the time because you'll be using a medpac or running, instead of 50% of your HP sacrificed. - Skill that further reduces your penalty so you can still attack while you're at it. (I assume, of course, that this skill is in the Vigilance tree, and can be taken by the hybrid.) - 60s cooldown instead of 90s. - Toggle so you can turn it off and not be inconvenienced by the no-damage penalty too long. (Also a confusing usability issue that doesn't match with the standard toggle-able power behavior.) - And a threat dump to boot. Sounds more like you want a PvP Get Out Of Jail Free power than a threat dumper. If Sentinels have to cough up half their health to have a 5s near-invulnerable buff that can still get them killed, why do you think BioWare would give this strictly better power to all Guardians, particularly when it outperforms one of the Defense tree's core powers in Warding Call?

So since other classes have it, Guardians should have it? Why don't we give the rest of the classes heavy armor, too?

So what you're saying is, you're not willing to trade your easily-acquired Focus for your attacks to possibly save yourself from being killed when you draw too much aggro? Who are you going to attack when you're dead? The point of Focused Defense is to shed threat and do a bit of damage control so you stop getting whaled on by mobs and stay in one piece. It's the Guardian equivalent of the Smuggler's Surrender ability, except it's got more moving parts. If you throw up Focused Defense and then proceed to throw out massive threat-generating attacks so the mobs continue to attack you and you don't have any Focus for the healing/threat shedding, you're rather defeating the point of using the ability. And for better or worse, if you think about how the ability works, chances are you're not going to trigger the heal/Focus drain for all ten possible ticks anyway, because if it's working right, the mobs should start ignoring you once your threat drops.

How does it screw the other two specs? It's not like there was another heal-yourself power anyone had to use before 1.2. I can understand complaining about Protector being gone for Vigilance (which I totally believe was to break the hybrid's hopping mechanic), but what did the other specs lose to get Focused Defense?

That's not a fair comparison. One, Focused Defense is for all Guardians, not just Vigilance Guardians, who were the only ones who got Protector. Two, Vigilance specifically got the Commanding Awe buff to add +15% DR to Focused Defense, so Vigilance gets both the Focus-eating heal and a flat +15% DR for the duration regardless of how much healing is done, and which doesn't require a teammate to activate. And the DR buff is available to Vigilance now as early as level 30, well before the level 50 players would need to wait to see the benefits of self-applying Guardian Leap. Which may not matter to you if you're already level 50, but I'm sure it was a strong design consideration for BioWare.

I'd wager the posters on their forums would disagree with you. Of course, outside perspective is always different, no? Because it's part of the upcoming patch and not part of the current live build? Are you trying to imply some sort of malicious intent? I'm far from naive when it comes to game development. Yes, games are made to make money, and games are made fun so that money is spent on said games so the devs can make said money. But you have the wrong viewpoint; game designers balance against the system as a whole, because they see the game's entire ecosystem. Players experience the game from their personal viewpoint, and that's important to keep in mind, but devs don't divvy up their time based on class popularity. The goal of the designers is to see how classes are doing against their established baseline and to try to keep all of them with spitting distance of each other, because players ultimately keep playing competitive games that are balanced and sufficiently entertaining. Paying more attention to the most popular class is a snowballing problem where players using other classes will quit from frustration, and the top class will get bored and also stop playing.

Have you actually taken a look at the patch notes for other classes? Sorcs got nerfed, hard, and that bug was fixed. It's really not in BioWare's best interests to play favorites, because it's a self-defeating mechanism; if you continue to favor one class over another in PvP, eventually you kill your own competitive game by funneling everyone to take a particular class. If BioWare is nerfing the Scoundrel in some fashion (and this is a way lighter nerf than some of the other advanced classes got), then it's because they think the Scoundrel still needs tweaking, simple as that. You may not agree with the tweaking, and they may not get it right, but it's still because they think it's for the good of the game in the designers' minds. The whole why-do-they-hate-Scoundrels conspiracy thing is silly and is not nearly the good business practice you believe it is; these people keep their job by trying to make the game as a whole fun, not by making it fun for a certain class and crapping on the others.

Note that Georg specifically pointed out that Sorcs were also overpowered, and their Force management was indeed also nerfed (heal buffs changed, Force regen power now costs health again). So your experience in relation to Sorcs in the current game may not reflect the post-1.2 experience. I suggest taking a peek at the Sage/Sorc forums, where they are similarly wailing about how they've been ruined and they're the weakest healers now. (Operative healers aren't complaining, but they've considered themselves the weakest healers to begin with.)

Well I was saying the hybrid (and here I'm talking about the current 14/27 hybrid, modified for 1.2) would play more as a real hybrid, someone who can play offense or defense, but not be tops in either (in PvE, anyway), and that it's still a viable spec that can take Swelling Winds; 14/25/2 is basically the exact same hybrid as before. The spec always suffered from Focus starvation, 1.2 didn't change that. And the full Defense tree was always potentially better at AoE damage, with access to both Swelling Winds and Pacification (though that's sorta faint praise, all things considered). The threat generation should still be similar to before, too; one of the rarely noted effects of Guardian Leap Protector hopping was that the buff also reduced threat on application, so Focused Defense's threat shedding isn't all that much worse, though it does do additional shedding with the healing aspect. What the hybrid offered was higher damage through Overhead Slash and a faster Blade Storm, plus DoTs, and thus more threat generated from damage done. That hasn't changed, either; what's changed in the head-to-head is that Guardian Slash now generates high threat, too, so it's worth a lot more threat than the damage it does. So it's not so much the hybrid-as-is losing threat as it the full Defense tree gaining threat. As for Shien, yes, it would turn off your defensive benefits, but it's now possibly a 1-point investment instead of a 4-point one, so it's easily taken for flexibility, with an eye towards the hybrid being, well, a hybrid, and not a full-on tank replacement.

I wouldn't go that far. Removing Protector also means you don't have to put those two points into Vigilance Tier 6, so the hybrid can now go 14/25/2 and still get full Swelling Winds (now 2 points), plus those three points that used to go into Swelling Winds can now be put into Single Saber Mastery or Stagger, or both if you take some points out of something like Accuracy. Heck, I'd consider taking Shien Form for the hybrid, if you're going to throw down those points into SSM already. So the hybrid's skill tree remains largely intact, though the leapfrog chain of Guardian Leap/Force Leap buffing being broken, making the hybrid of old into more of a real two-way spec than a tanking replacement, IMO. Now, a new hybrid layout that tries to be a proper tank would possibly be a 17/24/0 or 18/23/0 spec. This spec would give up points in Swelling Winds and either one or both points in Force Rush to take Pacification, Blade Barrier, and possibly Stasis Mastery in the Defense tree. So you'd have the 4% full DR from Commanding Awe, plus you'd have Blade Barrier on a shorter 9s cooldown from Vigilance (the skill), so you can throw it out faster than a full Defense Guardian. This also allows for the bizarre combination of Blade Barrier and Shien Form should you choose to take it. That being said, the revised full Defense Guardian should come out ahead in threat now that Guardian Slash has extra threat generation. That's a pretty big bump in extra threat, given that's it's the top damage dealer in the tree and is on a 15s cooldown, plus full Defense now has access to SSM to boost its damage a little further. My guess is that a lot of full Defense Guardians go 31/5/5, taking SSM, ISS, Insight, and SW in the off trees to get a little all-around boost to their offense. Not sure where the usual point distribution will go in Defense now that Command is Force Push only; either Solidified Force or Momentum would be my guess.

It's better to think of Focused Defense as an alternative form of damage resistance rather than a heal, IMO. The difference is that the resistance is essentially based on your own HP rather than on the incoming damage (and that it costs Focus); it's damage resistance by a set value, not by a percent of damage. So it will not be particularly useful against a few burst damage attacks. However, note that it's independent of damage type and amount and is based on the act of taking damage, which means it will find more utility as a way to manage DoTs, which will regularly activate the heal. It will of course also work with the telegraphed usage, which is to survive in PvE after drawing too much aggro and being whaled on by a bunch of mobs. Example 1: You have 10K HP. You get hit by one burst damage attack for 5,000 damage. FD heals you once for 3% of 10K, or 300 HP. Equivalent damage resistance against the burst: 6%. Example 2: You have 10K HP. You get hit by a DoT attack that does 5,000 damage over 5 ticks that all fall in your 10s FD window. FD triggers five times and heals you for a total of 1500 HP. Equivalent damage resistance against the DoT: 30%.

The latest Q&A has the answer to why healing changes were made: simply put, Commando/Mercenary healing was too good compared to where they wanted healing levels to be.

Kolto Bomb does have a prereq. It requires that you spend 10 skill points in the Combat Medic tree. Every single skill that's not on Tier 1 has an implicit prereq of points spent. What you're proposing is actually flattening almost every tree out to a long list of Tier 1 skills, which would be terrible for balancing purposes, because there are clearly more powerful skills at higher levels. There would be one or two optimal builds that have all the good powers, and that's it. In an effort to increase your choices, you have in fact reduced them, because now there's not even different trees to spec, just one big bucket of skills with no prereqs and clear skill imbalances that will lead to a dominant strategy. Here's a little secret about player choice: it's not about what players can take that creates choice, it's about what players have to give up. Choice is about opportunity cost.

What you're talking about is power creep and indirect nerfing. Raising players up to an overpowered class makes those other players feel more powerful, but in a PvP match where they go head-to-head, the stronger class will still end up being indirectly nerfed, because they will lose more against the other classes, and they will not be happy and demand their own buff. PvP is a zero-sum game; if one class's power is increased, then the power of the other classes has been indirectly decreased in head-to-head class matches. Raising the enemies' power to match will also ultimately mean the players feel weaker, again by indirectly nerfing them in relation to their ability to fight against the enemies. So by raising everyone else up to the level of the overpowered, you have essentially nerfed that overpowered class, except now everyone generates bigger numbers. Plus, more importantly for BioWare, the second option to buff everyone else and the enemies is a massive amount of extra work for the devs over simply knocking down the few outliers that are too good, and extra work means more man-months of time spent doing wasted work just to make sure players always feel like they're getting improvements to their own class as opposed to the system as a whole. Drawing a line in the sand and promising never to nerf something in the name of balance is just bad business practice. Example: some overpowered class does 20k damage per hit, and opponents die too quickly. You've decided that you should buff everyone rather than knock that class down a peg. Now everyone can do 20k a hit, and everyone dies too quickly. So now everyone's HP has to rise to compensate for that 20k hit, and all the healers have to be buffed so that they can heal more because of the increase in HP, and all the powers have to be scaled so that they also work with more HP. So now you've just created a massive amount of extra work and blown out everyone's stats, all because you chose to balance around the overpowered initial power rather than just knocking it down to balance against your original baseline.

Point being, it's only an issue because of the peculiarities of how SWTOR PvP rules work. In PvE it's a boon, and common sense in real life would say that making your opponent unable to do anything, instead of just unable to move, would be a good thing. However, I would say that things that are counterintuitive like that often indicates a flaw in the rule design.

I find the whole discussion humorous. Only in a strange PvP-rule world would getting a stun be considered a downgrade from immobilization.

You talk to the Skill Mentor on Carrick Station in the combat training area, or near the GTN consoles on Coruscant, to reset your skill trees for respec. The first one is free, and the costs go up for each one after. However, if you've not respecced in a week since your last one, the price resets to 0. Unfortunately, the interface is terrible and doesn't tell you that your cost has reset until after you accept that you want to pay.