Why oh why do so many NPCs have CCs or Knockbacks?

Look, troll, no one here needs you to show them the ropes of gameplay when facing TRASH MOBS with way too many stun/knockback/root/cc abilities, most of which are on insanely short cooldowns, instant-fire and are chained to go off one after the other when they're in groups. The game isn't hard in these situations, it's annoying and BORING, just like you and every other too cool for school fool who have a defense for any possible criticism of BW. Go start another one of those "Aww, shucks, thanks for being great, BW threads," if you want to feel super important. Just don't expect it to stay on the front page for very long.

Operations bosses are a different thing, agreed. But I simply don't see the big deal with KotFE. The fight against the 2 Knights (I forget their names) was difficult only in that while 2 of them were up it's hard to avoid the kbs. Things like aggro drop and spreading them out helps here, to make sure you are only fighting one at a time. Once you are down to one its a simple interrupt as needed fight.

And I don't see a problem there. In neither case is the fight 'hard', just if you are able to gain control it's a bit quicker and a lot more satisfying, because you beat the mechanics. If you aren't able to, just focus on one and it'll still become a 1-on-1 and its interrupt as needed. Would I still like to see these, and others, not have immunities? Absolutely, as I said 3 or 4 times now.

And the question remains, if you take these abilities away, what's left? To take it to the extreme, every encounter may as well be a series of static dummies. Do you really want mobs to simply be hp pools? The OPs question and complaint was never about mobs having immunities - if it had been I'd have been completely supportive. It was about mobs having CCs and KBs, which I don't see as the insurmountable issue others do.

You don't seem to get the point.

People her don't complain about the fights being hard. At least I don't. As others have said, all these fights can be easily won by just pressing the basic attack.
The point is, that these fights are:
a) super boring
and
b) super annoying
They are so because being stunned or otherwise incapacitated leaves us without any option to act and we can just watch our companion take care of things. This is boring. It is also annoying because it clashes with our role as the biggest hero of the galaxy who finds himself (or herself) suddenly at the mercy of nameless mooks. Again, this is not a complaint about difficulty.

What I complain about it is, that first of all our characters do have the tools to deal with such situations only to repeatedly run into a number of enemies that circumvent our abilities like hydraulic overrides or entrench. That is immersion breaking and annoying. It is also annoying to deal with stuns, knockbacks and pushes pack after pack because we get to feel like pushovers which we are not supposed to be in these situations - as we are fighting TRASHMOBS.

It is NOT the difficulty of these fights, which is nonexistant even with the pulls, stuns and pushes, but the immersion breaking annoyance that aggravtes me to no end.

Edit: And to make it clear: I would love to have harder fights, but please make it harder by forcing me to ACT and not by making me UNABLE to act. That's my point.

I've been wanting to make this thread for a while. Going into melee against a pack of trash mobs while leveling that proceed to spam their little pissant knockbacks is pointless. I've played MMOs a LONG time, and I can say without a doubt that losing control of your character is not a fun or interesting mechanic. I don't know about removing the abilities entirely, but something to reduce the spam is warranted. A shared cool down in packs, forced player immunity after being hit with one that's unavoidable, changing any such mechanic to have a hard counter (interrupt, dodge), something. Instant CC spam has no value and it teaches nothing. Imagine if you're trying to walk to the bathroom and every 5 steps you're surrounded on 3 sides by invisible walls that appear without warning. Under no circumstance would that be fun and it's certainly not going to teach you something. The only function is annoyance, and that's not a smart thing to knowingly and purposely include in a game.

Mobs having more health in exchange for not being flash-banged 8 times a minute is still better. At least the extra time spent killing the mobs is me being interactive and using my rotation, not waiting for some pointless CC ability to wear off while my companion nukes the mobs down in 4 seconds.

For me, being irritated in a game that's supposed to be enjoyable is a much more severe problem than a fight being boring because they take 2 seconds longer to kill. And yes, there is a difference. CC spam from NPCs is not strategy, it's not annoying. Interacting and participating, that's fun. Being spammed with CC by pissant mobs, that's not fun.

OP I also wondered that very same thing. Bosses can't kill my toons I just get knocked around every 4.5 seconds like a hockey puck for 15 minutes till they're dead. I quit doing any of that. It is quite simply not fun in the least. Don't know who on the dev team thought this was a good idea in the first place.

Wait, don't tell me. "Metrics" told them it's what players wanted?

You know, I'd never really run into this problem, but I can see how it would be annoying to some people-- mainly, any class that's not a Commando/Mercenary (or Vanguard/Powertech). Which, ironically, are the only two mains I've bothered to get through the first 10 chapters. You wanna hit me with some CC? Lol, nope. Hold the Line and Hydraulic Overrides are my best friend.

I imagine that Juggs/Guardians also don't have this much of an issue, as they have CC immunity on their leap, and a couple of other ways to get resistance to CC. But pretty sure most other classes don't have that luxury.

I've just run my fourth character through KotFE and I'm finding it hard to relate to the OP.
Granted my sniper is next in the queue, but my powertech, sorcerer, marauder and commando romped through the content.

The specific fight in question against the two Knights, if my character has a decent crowd control (sorcerer & commando) cc one and dps down the other with the aid of companion. If the character doesn't (powertech & marauder) set companion to tank stance and sic them on one while character deals with the other.

Some of the other comments regard Heroic content that was devised for groups such as the H4 on Hoth where there are numerous silver and gold mobs, one has a knockback the other a force choke. While your companion or your own cc can deal with this I would say the better action if it's just about earning credits is avoid it altogether.

More general knockbacks from solo content, again companion in tank stance soaks up most if not all the cc and kbs that come their way, allowing the character to focus on and take down the mobs.

I'm not saying all the issue goes away, but a little bit of timing and using the companion alleviates the majority of cases.

I can't say I had any issues when I ran my Guardian through kotfe, but I took my sorc through the other day and it was a completely different experience for me, my sorc needs to channel 3 of the major moves in the rotation (crushing darkness, thundering blast and lightning bolt), which when mobs seemingly have infinite instant cc's and knock backs you really cant find a rhythm to bring some of the silvers and golds down quickly which makes for a frustrating time.

So to me its likely to affect channeled classes more.

For group content it would be nice to encourage teamwork by giving each player a 5m range "Free Teammate" type skill. So that another player can free us from CC if we have used our own CC Break.

All The Best

My Lightning Sorc tends to rely more on procs for when I'll use certain abilities rather than a set rotation.
I rely on Force Speed to give me access to two instant cast Lightning Bolts (and they proc off direct damage as well)
I'll only bother with Crushing Darkness on gold mobs, whirlwind them at the start of combat and there's still usually enough time left to cast Crushing Darkness before the cc breaks.
Affliction is instant cast and all that's needed to get the auto crit from Thundering Blast.
I tend to go a bit heavy on CC, using the utility choice to bind more standard and weak targets when using whirlwind and then just work my way through them using single target attack.
I save AoE/Chain Lightning when I know the companion has all the mobs on them.