I'm at work so I can't describe the horribad experience in great detail but I'll sum it up. I recently returned to the game after a long hiatus and I'm leveling up both a Healer (Smuggler ) and a tank (Guardian) which is my main. I was running Hammer Station with a friend that has only just now discovered the fun of MMORPG'S so I decided I was going to play my healer in the flashpoint, to avoid him being screamed at for standing in the fire etc like most news do. I figured if I'm healing I won't scream about it I'll just heal him and let him know he needs to move, etc in a more friendly manner. Well lo and behold we're rolling through this dungeon and the Shadow is not tanking well at all. In fact, the random sage in our group is tanking every mob. Not because he's pulling before the tank but because the tank is so horribad. Finally after the sage literally tanked the first two bosses I finally asked the Tank if he was taunting and whatnot. He responds with, "What's a taunt?". I literally facepalmed IRL. Anyway we all took a second to explain basic tanking mechanics to the wannabe tank and he ended up swapping to his tanking saber stance and actually began to use tanking abilities and we wound up completing the flashpoint with him actually tanking the bosses and it went relatively smoothly. Sometimes it's worth taking a second to explain things before you assume they're one of those noobs that ignore advice and don't want to learn.

An assassination droid healing? I hope you're joking.

I don't like the idea of Advanced Class respecs at all in any form. They were designed to play differently for a reason. They're supposed to be completely different classes. If anything we should be asking Bioware to distinguish them further, not meld them together my allowing you to swap between them like you simply want to change your specc.

I didn't realize there was even a visual indicator that Retaliation was available other than looking at your quickbar. It would be nice if they had one, or like you said, if they already do make it more noticeable.

Exactly. But my assumption is that they wont remove the requirements so it would still be better to remove the skills rather than have us waste 49 leveles working them into rotations and wasting credits on skills that we'll never use during endgame PvE (ops) or endgame PvP. Therefore they are pointless. Either remove them from the game or warn us that they're useless at endgame so we don't waste our time. And for the guy that tried to point out that I created a "strawman argument" (oh noes), I apologize for accidentally confusing champions and elites. But my aggravation and point still remains the same. These skills cannot be used in Ops and PvP which are (arguably) the main attractions of the game once you hit level 50.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that when you reach Light Side V or Dark Side V you get stat bonuses to your character. Not to mention some of the most powerful weapons require Dark Side V or Light Side V depending on the item to even equip them. That doesn't seem meaningless to me. Or do you mean meaningless in the context of the story? I'd still disagree but I just didn't quite understand what you meant maybe.

That doesn't seem to be the case though. Most bosses seem to be immune to stuns like Backhand. But I can Backhand a player in PvP combat and it'll stun them. Also Force Choke allows Gold Star Elites to still attack while being Choked. Players cannot and are considered stunned. I don't understand why I've played MMORPG's for years and never had several skills just completely useless and literally unusable in PvP combat but work properly in PvE. Probably because it's a horrible idea. WoW did this for a very short time with the Paladin class back in the day when Exorcism was changed. Thankfully it didn't take them that long to fix the skill instead of leaving it broken like the abilities are in ToR. Scaling and lowering of the power and damage of abilities are understandable when it comes to PvE and PvP. It makes sense. Completely removing it from one aspect of the game is just horrible game design. I feel like they should also suddenly create new abilities that can only be used in PvP but then don't work in PvE just to show how broken that whole system is and how horrible of an idea it is.

Maybe you didn't read what I posted. Pommel Strike is situational. Yea....meaning in order to use it in the proper situation the enemy must be stunned. I have two skills that stun opponents. When I use either of them on a player I can't Pommel Strike them when they're stunned. Working as the tooltip suggests? Not really. It took me saying it twice for you to understand? Maybe reading and comprehension isn't for you.

Well that's all fine. I realized that they had designations for weak, standard, strong etc. But if that's the case why don't they just classify players as strong and make the strong attack balanced in PvP and PvE rather than rendering several class abilities as useless (and therefore I removed them from my action bar). I mean I just spent 49 levels learning how to use several skills in rotations that I'll never be able to ever use in PvP. If I would have known this from the beginning I would have saved my credits by not training them and I would have never bothered to rotate them in my skill chains. This is a horrible, horrible design decision. Locking out skills like Heroic Moments make sense. Much like WoW or any other MMORPG that has a dev team with common sense lock abilities with anything more than a 20 minute cooldown out of use for Warzones and etc. But instead what we get is skills that simply don't work as the tooltip describes and we're left confused with abilities that simply don't fire off.

Since both skills mysteriously seem to stop being active on random targets in PvE and evidently NEVER work in PvP. Why give us abilities that just simply never activate? I'm just hitting level 49 and I've not done any PvP because I usually wait until I'm max level to do any PvP. I've come to enjoy Savage Kick and Pommel Strike and assumed they would be useful skills in all aspects of this game. Then I queue up for a Warzone and force jump to a target and mash my Savage Kick....and nothing. That's weird...it usually works in PvE. Well that's okay I'll use Chilling Scream that will immobilize him then I'll be able to use....OH WAIT...he's immobilized AND I can't use Savage Kick???? WHY? Okay well I'll just Force Choke him since I'm a Juggernaut and I can Pommel Strike him while he's being Force Choked since I'm specced for....wait what? I can't Pommel Strike him while he's being Choked? That's okay I'll just stun him with Backhand then I'll.....OH WAIT...he's stunned and I STILL can't use an ability that requires targets to be stunned to use it???? For the love of God, Bioware if you're going to give me two Class skills and then make them unusable in PvP at least have the decency to put a huge note on them that says "We're sorry, we decided to make this skill pointless and a waste of space on your action bar if you're fighting other players". A little forewarning would have been nice rather than joining a pvp fight then suddenly realizing all of my burst DPS combinations were broken and unable to function since you decided to make said skills simply not work as advertised. /rant Okay so now that that's out of the way can anyone seriously give me any real, logical reason for these abilities to simply not work PvP? It's agitating to learn that certain skills they just decided to make unusable by purposefully breaking their use. I would have rather never had the skill so I wouldn't have wasted the time of working them into rotations.

It's too late to write out a long winded logic filled post. So just throw me in the "No cross server LFG tool" crowd. I've been there....several times. And regretted it every time it was implemented. Could we please at least give the regular server wide LFG tool a chance to function before we start screaming for it to change.

That's how I like them.

Actually unless I'm mistaken, I'm pretty sure that vanilla WoW had a level cap 50 or so before it jumped to 60 sometime real early after release. I started playing WoW the patch before the opening of Ahn Quiraj so the level was already at 60 by then but I could have swore I talked to people that were playing when I first joined that claimed the level cap had been increased recently. Regardless it's not completely unheard of for level caps to be raised without expansions. Just rare with most recent common MMORPG's. I think it's going to be a nice change. This will at least add new abilities/builds and such giving us more options in talent trees, which is never a bad thing so long as proper time is given for balancing.