Were you having a lot of open world battles and events while you were leveling to max level, or did you wait until max level and getting your endgame pvp gear to do that? I think people are just having trouble letting go of their now-obsolete level 50 gear (sweet lemon). Or maybe the problem is that, while WH and EWH gear is obsolete, the level 50 PvE gear is still pretty viable for a lot of level 55 content (sour grapes).

Yeah, one of the first things that occurred to me when I saw that my pvp gear had been transformed into pve gear was the effect that would have on open world encounters. But then I remembered that for a long time we had only been using expertise gear at max level anyway. In other words, so what if a 55 with a ton of expertise can gank a level 52 with none? That is really nothing new (think 1.7 level 50 versus level 47), and I think you made the right call. Glad to see the updates; just keep honing Bolster (I am assuming this is a front-burner issue, ahem) so it actually works as intended and I think most will come around.

Healers have depended on team support since 1.2, and they still do. But at least in 1.7 if you were unlucky and got a pug match with no healers, sure you were at a disadvantage, but you had a decent chance. That just seems totally out the window now. No healers? GG. And mostly I blame the TTK. If I can blow you up in 4 gcds, and you can blow me up in 4 gcds, but I have a HoT or 2 on me, guess who is going to win. Multiply this by 5 or 6 dps, at least some of whom are hopefully focus firing, and multiply that by the numbers advantage that you get when you kill the first opponent, and the other team's performance goes downhill pretty quick.

These Dev Updates are a good read. Couple of questions: Does Saber Reflect (a great ability btw) reflect all single-target ranged, tech and force attacks, or only the ones that would have scored a hit? In other words, is the attack rolled against defense chance and not reflected if it's a miss? If so, is this behavior intended? That is something of an understatement, but I think it has more to do with the overwhelming amount of trash cc in the game, and the Defense guardian's lack of mobility/cc protection (especially when compared to Hold the Line and Resilience and root-breaking force speed). To really tank a trash group properly, Guardians should chuck their saber, leap in, and quickly Sweep, Area Taunt, and Saber Reflect. Then Guardian Slash / Riposte, and finally a Blade Storm to get Blade Barrier up (either working in a Sunder or Combat Focus for the resources). The problem is that if we are stunned or knocked back and slowed/rooted, it completely ruins our opening, and now a bunch of trash mobs are rampaging through the rest of our group, making us look dumb. With Unremitting, we had enough time to establish some control over trash packs, now we can be potentially screwed. So I guess my questions are: are you aware of this issue, and are you taking steps to correct it, either by reducing trash cc or by finding a way to give defense guardians more cc protection, or both?

Um, maybe because some of us are having a discussion about potential solutions? Thanks for suggesting yours, by the way.

Fixed.

According to the devs, it's because we all have 25 quests in our logs.

Bolster is a fine idea. If you don't think so, it means you want to squash undergeared players like bugs instead of having competitive pvp. Meanwhile, poorly implemented, buggy bolster is an unfortunate reality that Bioware is working to address, and threads like these take up space that could be better used by relevant feedback. Can we please agree and move on?

You quoted me, but I can't tell if you agree or disagree, since you were too busy telling everyone they suck while implicitly saying you are awesome.

I think I saw a good mod on the belt which I plan to purchase a lot of. I am also probably going to augment with fully defense augments, thankfully I am synthweaving!

Guess what? When thousands of people roll a 4-sided die 20 times, there is a really good chance that someone is going to get the same number on most of those 20 rolls.

Nah, not really surprised. I have enough experience with math, coding and databases to have already reached the conclusion that you so eloquently explained (not being sarcastic). I strongly suspect the issue is that the mission tracker was optimized poorly, and I would say it is not just possible, but probable that an overhaul would solve a lot of problems. Your point about the cost trade-off of development time is duly noted. That is why I think we should be exploring ways to limit the number of missions we need to track, especially the number of expensive (in terms of server resources) missions. For example, changing the weekly operation missions to make them achievement-style, or automatic, would get them out of our logs, but it would just make room for more expensive missions, and make the problem worse. (If these missions are consuming a lot of resources, that is a big red flag that the tracker is poorly optimized. Virtually no server resources should be consumed by these missions unless I am in the instance or on the fleet.) So I keep coming back to ideas like the one I had for Makeb, where you can only acquire the missions for a particular Mesa from the terminal on that Mesa.

Are you talking about the Makeb heroic 2+ where you have to disable the gas traps? It is extremely lame that you can solo your way through the whole thing, executing perfect tactics against huge packs of mobs, only to die from a stupid DoT because you can't run to 4 corners of a room fast enough.

seconded

Spoken like someone who wants to make sure there are always a few fresh 55s around to squash like bugs so you can feel good about yourself.

I thought healers were in a good place in 1.7. Having one or two was definitely an advantage. They could put out some serious numbers, and generally their place in the meta-game seemed fair. Devastating if left alone, could handle one or maybe two attackers for a little while, and crumbled under focus fire. Now, though, it seems having one or two healers is a huge advantage when facing a team with none.

It's called going after the most important targets first. Should be a red flag, honestly. As I understand it, snipers who have been knocked out of cover by Diversion can simply use their roll to regain cover even if the debuff isn't over. Personally I think this is lame (although it's also lame that you can knock a sniper out of cover with Diversion when he has Entrench running).

The fastest way, by far, to recover a near-dead companion is to activate your rocket boots. There is no cast time (1 second speeder cast is waaaaay too long for a lazy swtor player), you can speed to the next encounter, and instantly dismount with a full-health companion by activating your class buff(s). The rocket boots are some of the best bang for your buck in the entire legacy system.

At the very least, it would have been nice if trading in old gear tokens didn't count toward the weekly cap. Kind of a major oversight if you ask me.

Speaking about 9/11, Jon Stewart said this: Since by now we have probably all been reminded of the Fred Rogers quote.

Colicoid War Game was not reworked into a level 55. Now, cmon, you all know that one is your favorite!

Cool, thanks for testing and posting. Can't wait to equip these babies in an Operation and pull boss aggro.

Smuggler abilities have distinct audio cues, so you can tell what they are doing by listening. Operatives abilities all have the same sound. THIS IS A HUGE IMBALANCE AND MUST BE ADDRESSED.

Go for the eyes, Boo. Go for the eyes! RAAAAARGH!

Once your resolve fills, you get bonus resolve. It is not uncommon to have 1600 or more resolve when you are white-barred. At 1600 resolve, you get 16 seconds of immunity... Sorcerer's root-on-overload is a force attack. On whitebarred players, the knockback won't work, but the root still works. Any snare or root will work through white resolve. While I'm at it: I know this is super picky of me, but roots are considered immobilize effects, because they also prevent leaps. As a Guardian, I gotta say it would be real nice if they were considered 100% snares!