Why is nobody asking for advice on how to play?

Downtime.
With the worthless heal companions needing an eternity to heal back at full health even out of combat, and most fights on serious planets (Starting with Alderaan) taking health to around 75 to 50%, I end up spending more than half the time I play in regeneration.
The rest of the added time is from fights that are longer because DPS companions are as efficient as mosquitoes, tank companions die so quickly that you must forego DPS completely to keep them alive (And they do little damage).
So from a previously 5 minute long Heroic, I now get to at least 10 minutes (And that's a minimum, it's more around 15 to 20), but those are not 5 (10/15) minutes of fun.
Those are 5 (10/15) minutes of sitting down and waiting for CDs and health to be at an acceptable level.
There are exceptions, like always, but every heroic with a high mob density and/or patrolling Elites have turned from relatively easy to teeth-grindingly annoying.

Serious over exaggerations like that hurt your case. Even at near death, you regain full health and power in 15 seconds by using your out of combat heal.

All right, not half. A third.
However, add to that waiting for defensive CDs to be ready again (Sometimes up to 1.5 minute) and you get half of my play time... Fun!... I guess?

Why would I need your advice, I beta tested this game Im a founder and I know how to play and yet I hate the new patch AND I want companion nerf to go away. BECAUSE you short sighted people, the F'ing grind on OLD content is BS and the uber companions allowed you to blow thru them even with lvl sync. I have 12 other alts to run thru the new content and I am NOT going to grind all them slowly on old BS. As far as Im concerned they can allow us to put gear and mods back on them and return the companions to pre 4.0 because this nerf is stupid and they did not realize the backlash this is causeing. So no keep your advice, my ADVICE you want ingame Advice join a guild and ask them , most guilds will gladly help members and if they dont, drop them and find one that will.

That's why you hit most of them at the start of a fight, and they are mostly cooled by the time you finish. Don't wait until half your health is gone to take that 40% def increase (or whatever your specific class has).

But why use a defensive CD when I don't need one? Then, when it is required (When my Comp either uses all his heals at the wrong time or stops doing anything), it's not there and I die.

Advice on HOW TO PLAY.. Please tell, me, SENSEI, how to complete Belsavis heroics on sorcerer class, madness spec, rank 10 with Khem Val! I asked POLITELY, almost begged for help 6 times in world chat but no one answered.. So DO NOT say "find team".

Well, I KNOW how to play my toons just fine, thank you.

My own personal experience: so people are saying they're having issues on their level 65 character with whatever rank companion they're using. While I'm not having any issues at all except my companions are healing for ****.

Now, let me say I've been playing FOUR years, have all the legacy and buff unlocks one can and ALL the datacrons. I've done Sm, Hm, and Nim operations and some hm flashpoints. BECAUSE of this, the PLANET heroics are STILL fairly easy as hell for ME even with ****** *** healer companions.

BUT, JUST because **I** can do the PLANET heroics without a single problem pre or post nerf, DOES NOT mean there is NO problem with the companions. DPS comps may be all fine and dandy, but the HEALING companions are worthless *****.

I haven't tried doing the H2 Starfortresses yet because I'm trying to get the companions I originally had: Scorpio, Lokin, T7, Forex, Yuun, etc to rank 50. (Takes a godawfully large amount of crystals for companion gifts etc.) I'm farming the crap out of the weekly heroics because I have EIGHT people to do this for. I got ONE out of the 8 to rank 20 with the specialists. But I'm used to mindless grinding.

So, you can consider me an 'expert' on playing my class/role/spec/character and I STILL think the companion nerf was WAY too damn much.

In other words, I KNOW how to play just fine, but not everyone has been here four years with all the unlocks, there are GASP!!!! actual NEW players playing.

Voss Heroic Rock Eaters. Did it yesterday on my Lightning Sorc, Vengeance Jugg, Concealment Operative and Innovative Ordnance Merc for the feedback thread. Sorc was business as usual, but well, it's my most played class and I have static barrier and the self heal. The rest? Wait to heal because comp healing is useless. Wait to heal because comp is DPS or tank because.... comp healing is useless. Watch my health plummet because.... comp healing is useless or can't keep aggro as tank. (I can't even blame Vette, really, she's tiny and stick thin and my Jugg is a bt3 pureblood, if anyone should play meatshield it's him. Except for the part where I haven't liked tanking much when I tried it.) Offheal almost as much as much as I do DPS at times because.... companion healing is useless. (I like healing, but when I'm specced DPS it's not cause I wanna heal right then.)

But nothing about it was actually more challenging (ok, I did die once on my operative but temple was in dps stance and I haven't played the spec much. Second time around was easy as usual.) it just took *longer*. And doing the Heroics for the Alliance is already nothing but a grind and making a grind take longer and be more boring is not fun to me, like I said. Maybe we'll never get more for doing the grind than the small quest rewards and the achievements, but maybe they'll actually make your influence levels matter and I didn't look forward to grinding that thing (and doing the star fortresses) on at least 7 more characters (main force users, main agent, 2 more alts to romance Lana and Koth, replay of my main hopefully without romance bugs this time around) already, right now I dread it.

I'll answer the question in he thread title without reading seven pages:

Because that would mean that one has to admit that he is below average. Right now people who quit mostly assume they are the average casual and the people who manage are the elitist raiders. That isn't the case. Even average people from my guild manage quite well, without augmented gear or OP rotations.

It simply means to finally realize that you are below average instead of just casual average. But we can't have that, can we?

Keep up your static barrier and off-heal your tanking companion as best as you can. Supplement some of his heals with your own instant self-heal and keep your DOTs up on as many targets as possible. Use dot spread wisely and infect many people at once, it increases your slight off-heal. Try to cc any hard hitting abilities like "Ambush" or "Snipe" and you should get the mission done within a reasonable amount of time.