Is this true? If so, why would our AOE taunt skill be moved away from our tank tree to our dps tree?

So let me get this straight, people who are forming conclusions based on the patch notes are dumb, because they should just assume (or worse- hope) that it will be fixed by changes that aren't on the patch notes? Yeah, great idea man. Do you know what knee jerking is? It's a natural stimulus-response reaction. So yes, if BW nerfs the class I play while my class is unequivocally the worst tank in the game (as in, it is practically unanimous that Guardians were already the worst tanks before), I'm going to ask questions. The ridiculous knee-jerk reaction is defending every horrible change BW makes to the game. It doesn't make you look more mature, it just makes you look stupid.

Um, I tank 10/10 HM ops every week so I know what an extra 15 seconds to my AOE taunt is going to do with pulls. No, it won't cause any wipes, but it is a terrible design that some tanks are just all-around better than guardian tanks. For people saying "AOE tanking doesn't matter in this game:" Are you stupid? First of all, how do you know AOE tanking won't matter in future ops? Are you just assuming you know all the mechanics of all future fights in this game, and AOE tanking will never matter? Secondly, even if it doesn't "matter" it's still an imbalance. If I can't tank a spread out group of ranged mobs, and Vanguards can, then they're the better tanks. So funny seeing all these BioWare apologists. Guardians were, by far, the worst at tanking in AOE scenarios. This patch will make it worse. You don't need to "test" with combat logs. The only change to our AOE tanking is our AOE taunt CD is increased by 15 seconds. You don't have to test to know it will make our AOE taunting worse, unless you have no experience tanking in this game whatsoever.

Why is the CD of warding call being basically increased by 15 seconds when Guardians were already bar-none the worst AOE tanks? Was Guardian AOE tanking over-powered before?

True, if there were a "godlike" class it would have good DPS, good heals, good defensive cooldowns, good mobility, and amazing CC, and would be ranged. No class has all that so there definitely isn't a "godlike" class. Oh wait...

So I've been using my BM saber and just got a Rakata saber tonight. I was disappointed to discover that the Rakata PvE weapon has LESS endurance (16 less endurance) than the PvP equivalent. Why is this? Is the BM saber better for tanking than the Rakata saber since it has more endurance, which is our primary stat?

I just rerolled an imperial character. Despite having been on the Republic Fleet for dozens of hours with my 50 Republic character, my jaw dropped when I entered the Imperial Fleet... It is unbelievable how much more well-designed the Imperial Fleet is than the Republic Fleet. How does BW get away with such blatant lop-sided attention to design? I mean, it isn't even close. The Republic Fleet looks like a last-minute, brown, globby afterthought compared to the attention to detail on the Imperial Fleet. I think assuming the Devs favor a faction is extremely stupid, but what defense could BW possibly have for making one Station well-designed and vivid while making the other a blob of brown? They're mirrors of each other, it shouldn't be that difficult...

IMO the imbalance goes farther than BW's love for AOE around the boss. Basically any encounters in which adds spawn favors ranged, any boss encounter that requires quick target switching favors ranged... For example, mind traps on Soa. I played a bit of WoW and ranged were favored as well in PvE, but the discrepancy feels WAY larger in SWTOR. Also I completely disagree that ranged and melee are balanced in PvP. There are so many mechanics that can reduce melee dps to 0 for a significant amount of time, and melee has nothing to show for it. A slow/root takes our dps to 0 while it doesn't affect ranged DPS at all. If this is the case, why should our resolve characteristics be the same when many CCs have FAR greater marginal utility against melee than against ranged? It's so frustrating to be kited at the exact speed I'm running wherein I'm too close to force leap, too far to hit him with freezing force, too far to hit him with force push. So I have to create MORE separation to hit force leap. It's ridiculous how much DPS we lose in these scenarios in PvP and we have nothing that makes up for it.

Hence, "it's time." SWTOR has an enormous draw to melee through the Jedi Knight archetype, meaning it doesn't make sense to let their bread-and-butter Jedi heroes fall victim to the melee-is-worse-than-ranged syndrome that afflicts nearly all MMOs.

Whether it's PvE or PvP having a full-ranged composition is optimal while having a full-melee composition is the worst possible situation. There are numerous advantages to being ranged and no disadvantages, while at the same time there are no advantages to being melee and there are numerous disadvantages. In an MMO nothing should be strictly superior to something else, but the fact of the matter is that ranged in its nature is strictly superior to melee. Every single (at least important) PvE fight in this game is easier with all ranged DPS and some fights (HM KP droid puzzle fight) are impossible to do without substantial ranged firepower. In PvP it doesn't matter how good you are, you will lose DPS to kiting and positioning (getting "you must be facing target errors" which I bet ranged don't even know exist because they don't have to worry about positioning at all). Please BW give melee something that makes them worth bringing along. Give them better resolve characteristics for PvP, faster passive run speed, SOMETHING that makes a substantial tradeoff between ranged and melee rather than simply ranged > melee in every scenario.

It's bad enough I only actually feel like a tank for about 10 seconds every 3 minutes (in PvP) but how can guardian tanks not feel gimped that our best defensive cooldown is shared by our pure DPS counterparts? Can we get sentinel's greatest damaging ability if they get our best defensive ability?

I play tank spec, I'm decently geared, and I have absolutely no idea how we are supposed to beat sorc's 1v1... Their main attacks CC us that doesn't add to our resolve and our defensive stats provide no mitigation, they have a sprint that has a 20 sec cooldown, they have so many heals.... even if you interrupt inervate right when it pops it still ticks healing them for well over 20%. They have a bubble that provides 100% mitigation against my long-CD damaging abilities that itself has a very short cooldown... Am I just supposed to not beat a sorc as a guardian tank?

Or how about balancing PvP around PvP and not carrying a hutball across a goal line? What could possibly go wrong?

BW please, please don't listen to people who want the game to be balanced around hutball. The game should be balanced around open PvP, not objective in WZs.

The problem is that melee is strictly inferior to ranged. There is no tradeoff, or no ways that melee has some advantage to ranged– ranged is better in every way. Have a full ops of melee? Good luck with that. Have a full ops of ranged? Ez mode. BW really needs to give some advantage to melee classes, like better resilience stats or even a slightly faser passive run speed both in and out of combat. As far as PvE, sentinels are pretty good except they still have disadvantages to ranged. Guardians are currently not viable for PvE DPS, and they are currently lacking tools for AOE threat and the skill tree is screwed up. The only good thing is that these problems are blatantly obvious even to BW. There is no way both Jedi Knight classes won't get an overhaul. I can't speak for sentinel, but the Jedi Guardian is very, very poorly designed in almost every aspect, especially skill trees.