100% agree on this one. Slash should be the first on the chopping block - and the fact that is Bioware clearly don't agree is worrisome.

It's nothing like this mate. Basically the loadouts will turn your Guardian into the class of your chosen loadout. If you play a Sage and pick Defence, your character will play exactly like a Guardian, with Guardian animations and everything. You'll just still be a Sage when doing story content.

Testing PvP wouldn't help much either way as you'd be playing against an overweight of Guardians. Even if any other classes are present, you'll be fighting classes that haven't been "nerfed" yet.

Which is really the issue here. Either we'll see a "generally best" preset of choices that 99% of players will be picking, or we'll see players use specific loadouts for specific fights and thus potentially swapping loadouts many times every day.. I'm not sure which is worst. At least with the current system you're dealing with the choice during the fight - which defensive cooldown will you be using right now to best deal with the situation, while knowing you'll have a couple minutes where the other cooldowns will have to do the job. With this new system, you'll just be using the cooldown you have.

It's pretty clearly explained though:

Yes and no. These are predefined loadouts, but some skills will be exclusive. For a Focus Guardian, the choice at Level 70 is currently between Saber Reflect, Blade Blitz and Enure. The Loadouts reflect this somewhat as Focus Loadout B has Saber Reflect and Focus Loadout A has Blade Blitz.

That depends on what you throw it at:

A lot of it still feels like the Guardian, but I'm disappointed about which skills you decided to prune/keep. I'm also really concerned about survivability when you're removing so many DCDs from the specs. What I'd remove: (Vicious) Slash: As much as Slash is a starting ability and always has been, Slash is basically bottom-of-the-list once you're higher leveled. I'd either want to see Slash reworked completely or removed. What I'd modify: Riposte/Retaliation: This one seems fairly useless in Vigilance Guard: I suppose others like this skill in all specs, but I'd rather have this skill pruned from Focus/Vigilance rather than some of the skills you actually removed. What I'd return to base Guardian: Saber Throw: it seems straight up ridiculous to me that you'd make this skill optional. It's a skill with a ton of uses and the idea of throwing your lightsaber is part of what makes the class IMO. Saber Reflect: Same reasons as the above. Being able to reflect with your lightsaber is just one of those things I like being able to + it can be really useful.

I thought the 10% dmg reduction with BF set bonus only worked when you were not using Ion Cell? For PvE I'm mostly considering Amplified Champion so I can stack some more dmg reduction amps, but I'm not sure if that's the wisest choice

When you buy an item, it has a 2 hour refund timer, that only ticks when you're online. That makes it possible to: farm 3k fragments on another toon - log on sniper/gs - buy 1 item - log off - repeat

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=966750 generally states what to test and what is not implemented yet, including:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgu6SAz6KG8

Set bonuses: I'm generally really disappointed, most of the bonuses are just plain boring. Some of the bonuses seem great for PvP, but PvE bonuses seem meh at best. For PvE I don't really see an alternative to the Berserker set, especially as you can combine Berserker set with another 2-set bonus. Escape Artist: This one seems fine, though quite dependant on Reestablishing Range utility to be of much use. Established Foothold: This is what, a 2% increase in damage overall in best case? The bonus seems weak and extremely boring. I'd rather see a more extreme version, e.g. "Reduces your damage by 5%. Sitting in Cover builds stacks of Offence, stacking up to 12 times" so you actually have to consider the pros/cons of moving and losing your damage boost. Outlaws Parlay: It's fairly situational but seems alright. I'm not sure how energy management holds up here, since Takedown is fairly costly. Perhaps add a -energy cost to Takedown as well? Precise Targeter: It's possibly better than our current set for the first minute, then starts dropping off. Perhaps make it restore like 5-10 energy when you use Laze Target to restore the energy regen we have on the lvl 70 set bonus? Quick Thinker: Easily the worst set bonus. I'm not going to waste Adrenaline Probe just to stun someone for 2 seconds, and the chance I need energy and need an attacker stunned at the same time is just very small. Repositioning: This set bonus feels very strong, especially for PvP. On one hand I like it, on the other it seems a carbon copy of Marauders Predation - not a problem in itself, but we're already stealing Phase Walk from Sorcerers too. The Slow Road: I don't see myself using it outside of PvP, and I very much prefer Repositioning over this one

Not that I'm a fan of arenas to begin with, but I do not like this arena at all. I don't even know where to begin to make this arena any fun, and frankly I'd prefer if the arena was just scrapped. It's closer to being a decent Quake 3 map than a decent SWTOR arena at this point I like the decoration theme though.

AFAIK you can still use a macro to grab the ball in current Huttball games and have a vast advantage over regular players. With the knockback, the advantage of macros will be way smaller.