in 6.x he was most useful for rare drop tacticals

Definitely, since right now the only way is if you have multiple toons in the same guild and using the guild screen.

The star fortress loot has been bad since 6.0. The Praetorian Sky Trooper drops a deco, Ephemerus (on solo) drops a deco, and the Exarch drops stabilizer with a small mount chance. In 5.x, they at least dropped the CXP tokens, matching fps at max level.

and they still haven't delivered the long rumored /wished for tech blade style

It was a good thought to have a fresh start server but not at the same time as re-expanding into APAC.

Several patches ago they did do an undocumented tweak to dps comp ai. (or at least it appeared they had) Generally speaking they made it so they attacked enemies you weren't attacking (unless there was only one). It wasn't a big deal when you were running dps yourself, but if you were a tank, it made things much smoother

And certainly letting sm ops use comps is something that could really help people complete some story content. These days unless you're in a dedicated raiding guild, you can't do the kp>ec>tfb>sv then dp>df chain and complete the story elements of those naturally. And by naturally I mean within their correct place in the story. And to say nothing of the fact that you can't complete the story part of Gods on your own. It would be far easier to enable comp usage versus doing a more substantive realignment to provide some alternative for those (like the Yavin 4 stuff does). Current design certainly trends that way since FREE-DOM and Kithrawl don't knock out comps. Of course, those could have been bugs/oversights that favored us.

You could argue that the current "story" is setting up an end state maintenance mode. It's using the Mando stuff to try to curry current favor, but the whole idea of the holocron and machine seems to be heading towards something that would allow total character flexibility. <Quasi Spoiler for those not through Kessan's Landing or at least Ruhnuk> With the whole idea of a machine that finds/awakens hidden force potential, they may be setting up that non-force toons can become force users.

if you do an iPhone changeover and are still using the app security key (I know not recommended anymore,) the transfer switches the security key integration.

I think 2 simple but major changes could improve things (whether or not Broadsword implements them is another matter) On the penalty front, leaving early penalties are essential for reasons stated above, however, they could be tweaked. It wouldn't be the worst thing to have the first early leaving be no penalty. This covers the broad spectrum of connection issues and does provide an escape route for various other issues. However, the second tier penalty does remain and perhaps is increased particularly if the second early leaving is within a certain window of the first. However, there should be an exception for early leaving while ahead, particularly while ungrouped. Someone who "leaves" early while their team is ahead almost certainly was a crash. On the blowout front, it makes sense that they add more mercy rule early endings. And maybe cut the Huttball mercy rule to 4 from 6. Implementing mercy rules helps solo players who end up on the wrong side of a premade by reducing the time to be farmed as well as making it easier to reach their weeklies since the matches would be shorter in that case. The specifics for each wz mode depend on many factors, and Voidstar couldn't have one (and you could argue it already does by the nature of how it works.)

Getting a set of gear that makes you look like Kephess would be a nice Level 100 valor reward... lol

Yep, Turret, heroic moment and drop the heroic orbital strike and then pop the zakuul knight box (blanking on the name atm) when the boss is close. And some of the bosses of healing abilities you need to interrupt. And remember the turret is acting as a tank with threat, so attack accordingly.

Those custom animations/abilities are the issue. They haven't really touched them as levels have changed and they tweaked other comps. But in one test someone did, which was standing mid-mob in Objective Meridian, Greek couldn't even keep herself alive, while all others could at least do that.

Probably the most likely thing is letting the non-rakata gear reach 344, whether or not they raise implant rating (which they probably won't based on past gear ceiling change cycles)

They did do the right thing with 7.0 and push off the launch 2 months because there were still so many issues. Now, you can certainly argue that there are still so many issues, but it would have been 10 times worse if they launched on the original date. And I imagine they are having to do more under-the-hood changes if they are further tweaking conquest in response to the 7.4.1 fiasco. Adding the infinite heroic was easy since it was likely just changing a level restriction value in the code.