I spend more time fighting the targeting UI than I do fighting opponents

Yeah, totally agree.

But the targeting should be a much easier 'fix' than an entire engine, right ?

Another thing I hate about the "target next enemy" is that it doesn't cycle correctly.

Instead of
1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3
It often cycles as
1 -> 2 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3

It's just one more symptom of the overall design flaw of the UI: everything takes multiple clicks/keypresses when one should suffice. The UI of this game is like having to pump the clutch five times to get your car into gear.

unsubbed over this issue and others like it to be fair. Healer for 6 years in another MMO. Used Grid nearly that entire time. It is enough that you need to move in response to the environment and manage the right heals at the right time/cooldowns and cc. Healing can and should be one click. One is enough and if this game cannot allow me to heal properly I have to go play one that will.

As long as the ui isn't suggesting a heal or a heal target this is where the line should be drawn. like the ORIGINAL healbot used to many many years ago in Molten Core

Grid is simply amazing.

The issue of what changes to the healing UI are needed or desirable depends a lot on whether or not the devs intend to include targeting time as a factor in PvE and PvP difficulty. For PvE, this is manageable since they directly control the rate at which damage is dealt: if they don't want to reach the incredibly high-speed healing that was required in WoW's Wrath expansion, they can leave damage relatively slow and not change the UI much.

The real problem, as others have pointed out, is PvP. There is no easy way to predict PvP damage, so being able to respond as a healer in one motion rather than two is highly desirable. For this reason, I'd very much like to see mouseover macros added. It doesn't need to be Healbot (which is really just Grid + Clique for people who don't want to spend a lot of time configuring add-ons), although clearly displaying status ailments would be good, as well.

Perhaps others experiences raid healing in WoW differed from mine, but I'm not aware of any decent raid healers that didn't use raid frames and mouseover macros or equivalent add-ons to heal. Targeting with a keyboard simply isn't practical when you have 25 potential targets, any of which might need healing at the drop of a hat. In TOR, your mileage may vary.

Love how you say another MMO and then you mention GRID which 1st appeared in WoW lol.
Just call it the way it is- you played WoW for 6
years.

Its a feature.

I seem to have probs with this as well... for instance on SOA his hit box is so large that trying to target something near him or even mind traps you cannot always click on them and target nearest enemy sometimes doesn't work at all it just keeps targeting the boss even when you're standing right on top of a mind trap and the boss is in the center of the area. Also, when I'm fighting mods if I use target closest or next enemy it sometimes targets a friendly party member.

Another thing if you use the setting to auto target nearest it will most of the time pick a mob across the room instead of the one beating on you. Instead of having it choose the one you're facing it should choose the one nearest like the setting says.

Total fail!

I'm not sure I've ever really had target next enemy target a party member....

Nonetheless, tab-target in PvE for DPS classes is still a very problematic in this game. It's not quite as bad as tab-target in PvP, simply because stuff moves a little more deterministically and generally has bigger targeting 'hitboxes', but it's still an issue that needs to be fixed.

Target of Target will help in some ways.

It would fix or alleviate the problem with tab-target, though. Or the inability to target by clicking on nameplates/healthbars above character's heads.