First Impressions

[Ramalina]

After about an hour on Onderon:

 

Defense A: still feels more or less like a Guardian tank, mostly. I had been very worried about available DCDs for tanking based on BW posts, but it's ok so far.

 

Crap gear makes testing survivability a bit problematic. Between legacy perks, Datacrons, 306 gear, augments, etc. I can't really make an apples to apples comparison with any of my characters. FWIW, I think my level 56? DPS shadow on live wearing ilvl 80ish gear feels like it has more survivability in Heroic [2] missions on Correlia than my PTS Guardian in set bonus gear in Defense A does on trash dailies on Onderon. Haven't died this much on a character since Oricon dailies were brand spanking new and I hadn't geared up for them yet. Keeping aggro is also a bit harder on the PTS tank than on a lowbie DPS on live.

 

However, that may be influenced by the level 1 companion, who seems to die a lot more than a lvl 1 companion does on live. Onderon wildlife is deadly, but it's still surprising when a breeze blows a small butterfly past your companion and the result is that the companion is decapitated with extreme prejudice.

 

That's aggravated by some possibly buggy NPCs? Or companion aggro radius? Not sure what what going on but on the Capture and Release quest groups of mobs from hundreds of yards away were swarming me, well actually swarming my tissue paper companions, like a recently kicked hornet's nest. Can confirm that AOE taunt does work, can also confirm that DCDs significantly increase time to death after booger flying from a Pritarr sneeze violently splatters companion's brains all over the landscape. Possibly I should just buy a medpack and set companion to tank or DPS?

 

Number one pet peeve so far isn't that default settings are really poor for comparing with live. Also not that PTS companions are almost entirely useless. Number one pet peeve is that Defense A does not seem to have a short cooldown Interrupt. There are some cast interruptions baked into other abilities, but they're sort of rotational, and don't really lend themselves to holding off until there's a hard hitting attack that you'd rather not eat. Normally on live this isn't an issue and I can faceroll through dailies just mashing basic rotational abilities. With the squishy dial turned up to 11 on PTS right now though (this isn't all bad, having not quite as much challenge as new ungeared Oricon dailies is sort of fun for me, sort of like Vet/Master chapters) I actually find the lack of an interrupt meaningful. In a bad way. On live I interrupt during daily quests just to keep in the habit even if it's not needed, on the PTS with squish soft enough so that mechanics can actually matter a bit, like you have to be awake while playing, lack of the dedicated interrupt for the NPC ability that you really don't want to get hit by is a noticeable dent in survivability.

 

Lack of ability tree/utility UI is really annoying. Did some tooltip reading when setting up the UI and keybinds, but an organized format is nice to have.

 

Quickbars feel very empty. This is partly good. There are no awkward modifier combos that are easy to fat finger anymore on my setup. On the other hand, I have 7 empty spaces on easy to reach keys that now feel empty/missing. So obviously I want a dedicated interrupt back on one of them, so that leaves 6 more abilities to get me to a "Goldilocks" number for my quickbar setup. Then I have 8 more semi-convenient overflow slots, and 6 decidedly clunky slots. Plus another 6 that I don't usually keybind but could if needed.

For actual numbers on keybound abilities: 24 feels a bit too empty, about 30 is really nice (with room left for dessert), 36 is feeling nicely full, 42 make one start thinking about looking for ant-acid tablets, and 48 is definitely onset of bloat. 60 is doable, but not fun. Of course, that's highly personal, depends on how you set up keybinds, etc.

[MordredSJT]

I feel like this is actually a pretty good assessment. I didn't have as much trouble staying alive in Guardian A as you apparently did. I had Shae with me on heals if that makes any difference, I'm not sure. The aggro problems are due to a bug with the passive that makes blade storm aoe in a cone. It's apparently hitting things hundreds of meters away.

 

I do really echo your take on the goldilocks zone for abilities and keybinds though. I have a razer naga mouse, and I'm super comfortable using modifiers for keybinds at this point. So I have 36-48 abilities that I can use without too much issue. I always have at least 36 keybinds for each class. I didn't even have abilities to fill up the standard quickbar though. So, I went from the 36 abilities I use regularly or situationally on live, to maybe 12 that I was using here. That's way too much. If they cut it down to something around the 24-30 range, it would be perfectly fine and we would retain much more of the functionality that we have and need on live.