True, but it's problematic when only tanks need to know/execute mechanics...

Didn't I kill Guss? I seem to recall at least one character of the less than goody-goody variety leaving him a steaming carcass in one of the earlier chapters...

I don't believe he was saying that sin tanks are hard to play/underpowered. He was saying make tanks, in general, more appealing by changing the pressure point on encounters away from tank execution/knowledge of the encounter. One big reason "they're simply isn't any players on who know that role" is because people who might be willing to learn the role get quickly discouraged by groups collapsing around them because they don't know every last detail and make a wipe-causing error. The other roles are much more forgiving in that regard (one error=wipe) as very few (if any, haven't done any Ops since just after release) encounters have mechanics where a single DPS or healer screwing up will directly cause a wipe.

I've hated Jorgan since I first rolled up a trooper and he's one of the reasons I've never leveled one past the mid 20s (7/8 to title so I keep trying to grind one and get sick of it :/) so I'd want to choke him anyway. That said, he'd absolutely be in the brig for that stunt (and that's on my whiter than snow Shadow). If he pulled that crap on my IA or Marauder the result would be significantly less pleasant than a trip to Leavenworth...

Individual class story for sure. There's just too much wrong with the one-size fits all storyline model breaking the individual class stories. Adding more of the same only makes it worse. It also has a lot more replay value that way...

Wasn't the fight with him actually inside your mind? That would explain the guards not noticing anything amiss if you were just standing there staring into space. That said, this is what happens when you try to cram 16 (or more, not sure how many, if any "neutral" class storylines work) storylines down into 1. Cracks were happening pretty much from the start depending on your class and how you had progressed through the various storylines. For instance, my DS agent and SCORPIO got on great all the way through the original class and comp storyline but when I met up with her there was no sign of that experience. Why would I even hesitate to give her control of the ship based on our prior relationship yet I had the exact same options as my LS Jedi who didn't know her from C3PO?

I'd rate it in the average tier. It has some ups and some downs but it is far from being the worst. Best (by far) is Agent, the worst is trooper. Ch. 1 of Consular would put it below trooper but chs. 2 & 3 are really good.

Chapter one has a completely unbelievable plot hole that makes it nearly unbearable to play for me. After you get past that I thought it was a pretty good story.

1) classes being able to perform multiple roles helps in getting those roles filled. Granted not enough to get things to the point where dps isn't still waiting around to find tanks/healers, but some. Having spent time in a game where every single character could potentially fill 2 of the 3 roles I know for a fact that the choke point isn't that players CAN'T switch to tank/heal to make getting groups faster, it's that they WON'T. 2) If a sage healer and shadow tank are both rolling on the same gear either one, or both, is doing it wrong, they are so low level that gear really shouldn't matter because it will be gone in a level or two anyway, or they are rolling for a token. Tokens being shared by multiple classes is not something new or different to MMOs as they cut down on the likelyhood of useless tokens dropping (which is the entire point of dropping tokens instead of specific loot items in the first place).

...and how much of the "less fun" is because a particular class no longer allows you to ignore fight mechanics or win despite outright bad play? Everyone knows that there were raid fights that were trivialized by having sorc/sage healers pre-patch. If the game had shipped with the current state of healing would there be all the rage about how bad/unfun sorcs/sages are? My personal feeling is the answer to that is no, but people got used to ezmode and are now whining because they actually need to use skill to succeed. Healing and fight difficulty in MMOs is almost purely about numbers, the numbers were higher than desired for the intended difficulty level so they had to be changed. I don't understand why people have trouble seeing that.

100% this. Scorpio is soooooooooo much better than the psycho witch and as a heal focused agent none of the others are sturdy enough for anything challenging. Add in how wondrously easy it is to get her affection up and that she starts with almost fully moddable gear and it really isn't a contest IMO.

At a guess it's to head off complaints about either "why do I have to have a biochem to raid seriously" or "why do I have to spend all week to farm up medpacks for my 3 hrs of raiding". Much like there were in vanilla WoW days when the people that spent their time farming up the potions/elixirs/flasks and other buff consumables that would reward skilled use with better raid performance. The casuals didn't want to put in the time to farm up all the different options that were out there so they combined everything into a few types and slapped shared cooldowns on the lot. Blizz didn't change things to make it easier to balance, they changed it because of the qq from the casuals that playing a more hardcore way had advantages. You can balance around on cooldown use just as easily as once per fight-it's simple math either way. Lord knows you can't have the casuals ticked off so anything they massively qq about will get changed.

While your point is probably correct as far as which nerf will hurt "good" players more, there is no doubt that both were probably needed to change the scenario away from the sorc/sage or **** perception. Good healers don't need to spam resource management tools because they are already conserving their resources for emergencies by not wasting heals. So-so and bad healers that were using the near-infinite force crutch of no-cost noble sac will complain about that change far more I think. I think the change also gives an actual reason to use your other heal on occasion because the shorter cast time made it a no-brainer to always use the slow big heal since it wasn't really slower any more. Now there is actually a choice to be made about which heal to use.

Got it on my 2nd try as an assassin at 32. Wasn't all that hard just a lot of running out of aoes, interrupting, and knocking back with some pet management thrown in for good measure. Also used some taunt swapping, the 20 min cooldown for heals, and a party version medpac to keep khem up longer for more damage. Still a hugely easier fight than the buggy "Eagle" fight for Agents and without the do it 3 times aspect as well.

It seems to me that it depends a lot on how you are playing and which companion you want to use. I leveled mostly with a spread (ended up 5/17/19) and only rarely had problems with completing quests using Kaliyo or Scorpio. Ended up calling in a tank buddy for the avatar because of the sucky pet ai-I can't heal, interrupt, and move my tank pet out of the bad all at the same time (neither could he so it worked out). Heavy concealment and bringing Doc could work for a lot of stuff I think although I'm not sure how well you'd do tanking some of the harder hitting elites. I'm currently trying out an 11/3/27 build, again with Scorpio, and it doesn't seem to have the same capability as the spec I leveled with as I am regularly running into energy problems.