OK! Just finished my class storyline at level 49 and I have some additional thoughts. TLDR: The new ability choices are very fun to play with, and it's great how easy it is to switch between them. Certain decisions about when abilities are learned and how certain perks work confuse me, but it didn't affect my playthrough to a significant degree. The difficulty of playing through the class storyline seems perhaps a little more challenging than it is currently, but is still at a good place. - First and foremost, the ability tree works great for me. I wasn't sure about it when I started and it took a bit too long for my taste to begin seeing progress, but once I started getting to make choices it was great. Being able to switch easily between the different skills was awesome and made me more confident in just playing around with different stuff to see how I liked it. I really liked the perk that makes Force Scream into a cone, very cool! - The skill tree interface itself worked great, but I don't totally agree with how some the the abilities have been moved around, and how some perks function. Saber Throw is an iconic and very useful ability! Even on my main character I sometimes use Saber Throw simply because it looks so cool. Why is it now unlocked at level 47? I only got to use it in a couple fights before I finished the class story. The passive ability Sundering Throw, which modifies the Saber Throw ability, is unlocked like 15 levels earlier. Seeing Sundering Throw in my abilities page even though I hadn't yet unlocked the ability it modifies was pretty confusing. I mentioned earlier how I really liked the perk that makes Force Scream into a cone, and while it is SUPER COOL when it works, getting it to work is kind of awkward. From my experience using it, instead of turning Force Scream into a cone that begins at your character model, the cone instead only spreads once it hits your target, and then continues in a cone in the direction your character was facing. This is suuuuuper awkward to space in order to hit multiple enemies effectively, and is not at all intuitive. It's awesome when it works and you hit a whole group of mobs, but it doesn't work at all like my brain thinks it should and it's quite hard to use because of that. - Lastly, the difficulty of story missions seems just a tad harder, and I think this is for the best. I found myself being a lot more careful about aggroing multiple groups of enemies, and I had to treat elite and champion enemies with much more respect than I would have in the current patch. I found my health bar getting much lower than I'm used to in story content, which I personally enjoy. This playthrough has only made me more excited to see the final product! So pumped for 7.0!

I started a sith warrior with a vengeance juggernaut combat style and have leveled up to level 22 so far and am in the middle of questing through Balmorra. TLDR: Feels good! Almost indistinguishable from early leveling in 6.0 for the most part. Early game progress down the ability tree feels too slow, and the distillation of raw stats into Damage/Survivability/Support numbers really bothers me. Otherwise, I like the changes. By and large, leveling a new character feels almost identical to how it did in 6.0. This being said, I have two main thoughts at this point. Both are relatively minor, and I think easily fixable. - The first thing that stood out to me is that you don't start down the ability tree for a pretty long time after you select your spec, at least for vengeance. Even though I've been gaining abilities as I level, I'm no further down the vengeance ability tree than when I chose it. If I were a new player, I don't think I would have a great sense of what the identity of vengeance is even though I've put a few hours into playing it. To be fair, I'm still pretty low level, and I don't think this will continue to be an issue after I can see visible progress through the ability tree. - The second thing is that I have absolutely no clue what the "Damage/Survivability/Support" numbers mean when I open up my character sheet. I understand that we want to make things simple for new and more casual players, but these numbers are largely meaningless as far as I can tell. It doesn't tell you what numbers contribute to each stat, even if you go into the "Details" menu to see your raw gear stats. There is no context for what these numbers should be, when they will be factors in gameplay, what I should be focusing on given my combat style/spec. The thing that bothers me about this is that it attempts to distill the raw stats from your gear into easily understandable numbers, but these numbers don't actually answer any questions or make gearing/stats easier to understand. I don't really think these numbers add anything that item rating doesn't already accomplish. - Additional aside, I'm loving the new interfaces. I will continue to edit if anything else comes to mind. Great job so far y'all!

I went in on story mode with 306 gear and a 50 comp. I was on a vengeance juggernaut. Do you find the fights themselves too challenging? --- I thought the fights were fine until Heta Kol. The grenade whooped me LOL. I switched to immortal and tank gear and still couldn't make any headway. Other than Heta the fights were fun, I really enjoy being able to reflect boss' abilities so this was great. Are mechanics clearly indicated? --- There were pretty clear audio cues I thought. I think some of the effects are missing on certain bosses, so I don't feel like this was a problem for me. Is the jumping puzzle too hard? --- It was the hardest jumping puzzle I've seen in a flashpoint that's for sure. I got through it without much trouble, but I was chatting with a player who was stuck on it for minutes. I would probably make the jumps a little closer together, so that it still feels thrilling but doesn't have as much potential to make players ragequit. I liked the idea though, it was very cool. Were the mechanics of the sniper trap clear enough--was the encounter too easy or was it annoying? --- I was totally fooled LOL. I had reflect on and was running towards the snipers and got dunked. I liked it a lot. Difficulty felt about right for a class that has good defensive cooldowns.