The color is because of the saber type being used by the npc, not the crystal itself. The npc is using the normal white-black crystal. I have the crystal and there is a very wide range of appearances it gives through different hilts. Hilt types have always had impact on the blade. Everything from blade sharpness, color distinctiveness, blade length, blade width, blade sounds, and blade effects. Viewing a crystal in preview is a far cry from actual look in-game.

I've noticed an across the board nerf to cool down times post-3.0. It just simply takes longer to do everything ability wise. I suspected they nerfed it all in order to force us to stack alacrity to stop us from buffing other stats and making us too strong. I'm not the least bit surprised that alacrity is borked, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't intentional with the hopes that players wouldn't notice.

My BH (Pyro-PT) has been my main character since launch and it has been one of my favorite classes by far. I could play it in my sleep. I had a great feel for how it it played and at what speed for which I could do things in. However, there seems to have been a stealth nerf across the board that I'm not sure people are picking up on. It's one that appears to affect all classes now. All the cool downs for all of our abilities seems to be slower Post-3.0. I have the same amount of alacrity pre and post 3.0 and the same mods etc. Except every ability is taking longer to come up. I've been waiting to see if anyone would post about this issue, but I have yet to hear anyone mentioning it. So, I'm wondering if it is just me, or if there is indeed an increased cool down timer that was put in as part of their calculations to reduce damage output. Also (to me anyway), it appears the increased cool down time is just enough that it has an impact overall damage output, but still not enough to make it completely noticeable unless you are paying attention to it. /thoughts?

You obviously do not know the scope of what is being discussed here. It's not a 4 chest run near quest objectives, and if you are doing that, then your farming is really getting screwed. What we are talking about is a 6 chest run in pretty much a straight line string that you can run beginning to end and back in 5-6 minutes. You make 120-180k per single string run of 6. Roughly 1.4 to 2.1 million credits every hour. Also to give you an idea of how bad it is, I know a few people that have made the following just since it has been live. 15 million, 12 million, 70 million, 2 million, 8 million. That's just people I know, but there are people in every instance all day and night farming. Sometimes you fight for it, sometimes you take over someone's shift. I can hardly imagine Bioware wanted single players to attain those kind of credits easily. Maybe if it were spread out amongst players it wouldn't be an issue. All they would have to do is randomize the location and the spawn time and it would effectively end it.

If you know where to go on Rishi you can get 120-180K credits every 5-7 minutes, literally! I posted a thread yesterday about the millions being made and that they need to fix it, but all Bio did was delete my thread and give me a warning. So see if I try and help Bioware again. I'll just keep my creds and happily ruin the economy, since that appears to be what they want.