Because, like you said, it puts a wall between PvE and PvP, creating unintuitive gameplay. Plus many developers (BW's included AFAICT) consider split functionality to be bad game design and only a tool of utter last resort.

Sedatives is pretty much there for making it easier to solo heroics as far as I can tell, not much else. Though it might have some pvp applications in civil war.

In theory you're right. Managing resources effectively can make healing more skillful and dynamic. This is not the case as far as I've seen in 1.2. The problem here is that the resource bottlenecks cause your options to be severely restricted from the get go. You have trouble managing resources because your tools to do so are so limited, not because it's hard. The issue with pre-1.2 raid content isn't that the healer is too versatile. It's that the content doesn't pressure you enough for those options to truly matter most of the time. Taking away options and increasing pressure, both of which 1.2 advertise they're going to do, doesn't make you more dynamic, it just pigeonholes you. If they had merely increased pressure without restricting options (either through better content or restricting nerfs only to output ) the class would be in a far better place IMO, because then you'd be able to use your resource managing tools in a meaningful fashion. There's even an example right in front of us. The 1.1 Medicine Op and Sawbones. They have limited tools to regen their resources and questionable healing abilities. Does that lead to more dynamic gameplay? No, the opposite actually. The Op's playstyle devolves into rotating your two most efficient heals, with the rare filler thrown in. There's no choice here. There's no meaningful resource management. It's just doing what's efficient because every other choice is a false one. 1.2 BG/CM wont quite be that bad, but the situation is similar. It really bothers me too because I was hoping they'd do the exact opposite. The bodyguard was a fairly Intersting design, and could easy be a really dynamic and exciting spec with a few minor changes. Personally. I could ignore the field training nerf and the kolto residue nerf. But cutting supercharge in half? Two ammo Trauma probe? Whhyyyy?!

Looking back I realized I was tired when I wrote this and the post came off way too dickish, so apologize for that. I agree with this sentiment though. The changes make the spec much less dynamic and made the standard healing procedure much less interesting, which by extension makes the spec less fun and makes healing itself less fun because you can't have dynamic encounters if you force healed to play static. Funny to, considering that the second biggest complaint about Operative healing behind concerns over AoE and burst healing was that the spec didn't have much to do other than rotate KI and SP. I just think there's more constructive (and dignified) ways to try to fight this.

The choices they made with BH healing were a bit questionable and I really wish they'd handled it differently, but hardly gamebreaking. Not like healing high end raid content wasn't trivial anyways.... So not sure why I'd stop over something as inconsequential as this. Hope y'all get some catharsis from the pity party though.

Lightning storm seems a bit odd of a choice, since it's not an inquisitor skill, it's sorcerer specific. Seems like warriors/consulars/bhs get the short end of the stick in this regard though. For moves with short cooldowns like force project, can you use it continuously throughout the duration of Heroic Moment?

The changes in 1.2 don't remove the unlimited mana 'problem' though, it just reduces the number of non-HS buttons the commando can press in a given interval. The WOTLK comparison is disingenuous from the start though, because we're not actually talking about a class with truly unlimited resources. We're talking about a class with very finite resources who happens to have a completely sustainable rotation. The problem in Wrath is that, barring a catastrophic raid failure, a healer could essentially do whatever the hell they wanted and not run the risk of challenging their resources. That's not even remotely an issue in TOR, as it's extremely easy to resource starve yourself if you overcast your heals, and the regeneration deficit is extremely punishing. If anything I think we have the exact opposite problem with these changes. By making the commando less dynamic of a healer, you're forced to make encounters less dynamic as a result.

Short range mage is what the class is though. You're TOR's battlemage. If you want pure melee, that's what marauders and guardians are for.

The healer makes the tank look much worse... This isn't WoW where you can slowly bleed a healer dry of resources. Burst to either out-damage the healer's healing or to force them to heal so hard that they break their regeneration is much more effective.

Has anyone tried comparing what the parsers are spitting out from the PTS to the Spreadsheets we were using beforehand to try to figure out why there's such a noticeable discrepancy?

Only if you put a talent in T5 or T6 lightning to give that damage back.

If I'm reading that right.. the OP's suggestion would be a ridiculous amount of damage upfront. I'm not entirely sure we should even be looking to give madness burst. doesn't fit the spec very well imo. Everything it does is DoTs except death field. IC thundering blast is a good idea though, at least as a start.

Extremely high cool factor ( throwing lightning or using a saberstaff ) and extremely powerful. Seems like an obvious choice for an overpopulated class... Also doesn't seem like a very good set of reasons not to roll one.

cloak of pain's duration extends when they take damage. and you don't want your breakable CCs to end early because of your dot.

Why is that sad? it's okay for different classes to be different. Sorcerers are not being "Nerfed out of the game"

Your main is an assassin and you still think you should be mauling outside of duplicity procs?

Uhh.... Lightning Strike does energy damage, which is effected by armor.

This is a ridiculously pretentious way of just saying you prefer sandboxes. A bit silly too with the "adult" angle juxtaposed with the bit about not liking unsafe sandboxes.

Best solution is to add high tier valor/rated WZ ranking vanity pets. No gear imbalances, and everyone knows your WZ team is 2200 because you have a baby nerf following you around. Everyone wins.

I'm sorry, but that's a horrible idea. No matter which way you go with such a design change you're going to upset part of your playerbase, and why do something like that?

OP for PvE? I disagree. Outside a few bugs skewing their DPS they're ( according to simcraft ) fairly similar to sniper damage. I think the easiest solution here would be to slightly nerf TM's damage (no more than 10%, and even that's probably stretching it), and then add onto "Light 'em up" something along the lines of "For each stack of Heat Signature on a target, increases the damage of Power Shot by X%"(1-2% per stack) and to slap Charged Bolts/Power shot onto Tracer Lock / Charged Barrel too as an activator too. Combine that with fixing the inflationary bugs and you'd be golden. Other than something like that, I can't really think of what you could do to change the spec anyways. Unless they tried something really weird like altering the talents radically enough to make explosive round/missile blast part of the arsenal rotation.

Given the right circumstances, yes.

The lore doesn't need to change though. The only issue present here is that you seem to be under the impression that every member of a given species must follow a predesignated template, which frankly doesn't work very well for sentients. Good RPers will have a good explanation for why their characters exist, and the bad RPers? You'd be avoiding them regardless of what class/race combination they picked. This seems to be a really common issue.. where people see what the lore describes as normal and some people decide to extrapolate that that's also the only possibility... like with the race issue.. and with the color crystal issue. The "Verisimilitude" thread was built around this issue too. There's also ...

And of course, people interested in legitimate competition.

My first agent was almost pure darkside and I still hated Kaliyo. She's a miserable little wretch, and she's made even more insufferable by the fact that she has companion plot armor. When Kaliyo does all of that and then some more? My only response is "Hurr. Kaliyo you so silly"