In addition to the class-specific questions posed to the combat team, I believe it would be helpful if we could pose some general questions about the classes, Bioware's expectations and intentions, and about how design trade-offs are judged. Just a few examples of what I mean:

• How great a loss of potential single-target damage do you see as an appropriate trade-off for better multi-target damage? Likewise, what do you intend for the healing classes in regards to multi-target versus single-target healing?
   
  
• Do you view higher survivability as an appropriate trade-off for lower potential DPS? If so, to what degree?
   
  
• Do you target more difficult classes or specs for a higher potential DPS? That is, is difficulty an appropriate trade-off for potential DPS? If so, to what degree?
   
  
• Do you intend melee DPS to have higher ideal DPS as a trade-off for the damage up-time challenges unique to melee DPS? If so, to what degree? Alternatively, do you intend for fight mechanics to balance between melee and ranged classes?
  

These are just off the top of my head, and I'm sure they could be worded better, but these are the sort of questions that I believe would be helpful in framing the upcoming class questions. Understanding trade-offs and expectations should help us ask better questions. I love the variety among the classes and specs, and I would be greatly disappointed to see that diminish because players fail to recognize the inherent strengths of "their" class. Likewise, class balance changes might not just fall outside a player's expectations for a class, but may be completely counter to that. For example, I'm still unsure whether Snipers are intended to be glass cannons or hardened turrets because the recent and upcoming changes are completely counter to my expectations for the class.

I may be overly optimistic about the community's ability to accept that not everyone has the same conception of their favorite class(es), but I can't imagine that it would be destructive in the long-term to have these concepts presently openly. I presume that Bioware already has these concepts manifest somewhere as guiding principles for class design, so perhaps it wouldn't be difficult to present them to players. Some of that is present on the Advanced Classes page of the official website, but the current pages discuss primarily story/lore aspects and touches on gameplay only in the most basic ways.

Additionally or alternatively, I would love to see the Advanced Class pages updated to include more specific information regarding class design - whether it was narrative or even numerical. See the class guides on Dulfy's site for an example of a numerical comparison. Here's a couple of quick narrative examples:

Advanced Prototype Powertechs are occasionally slow but always very durable. By focusing their power on an advanced flamethrower, these hunters unleash unmatched area damage and are deadly up-close. You aren't safe from them at range though, because this versatile class has a few tricks up its sleeve.

While Annihilation Marauders take awhile to build up to full power, they are ultimately capable of some of the very highest DPS among any class. While they do suffer from relatively low passive damage reduction, their defensive cool-downs and self-healing allows them to stay in the fight even when the going gets tough. They offer excellent group utility with raid-wide healing, damage, and mobility bonuses. Challenges for this class include managing ramp-up, mobility, and defensive cool-downs. This is one of the more difficult specializations to master, but rewarding even for intermediate players.

Again, I'm sure this could be worded better, but I'm shooting from the hip here. The first example is a little more narrative, while the second is intentionally more straightforward. I italicized keywords in the first example to point out that even in a more narrative description, it's possible to be specific. "Slow" implies that maintaining target up-time is an intentional class challenge, balanced by its "at range" abilities. "Versatile" highlights the high utility offered by having tools like Grapple, Carbonize, taunting, and more ranged abilities than the other melee classes. "Durable" obviously highlights the high passive survivability. I want to especially highlight "unmatched" though, because wording a class description in this way would specify that Advanced Prototype is intended to have the strongest AoE capability of all the classes. In other words, if a narrative description of the class is used to explain class design and balance, the wording is crucial. You would not be able to call AP PT "unmatched area damage" and then also call Rage Marauder "unparalleled group-destroying power" or whatever.

Sorry to ask you for more work Bioware people. Thank you for your time and all your excellent work. Even though you shived my Sniper, I still love the game.

TL;DR: I would very much like to hear from the combat team how they design classes in general and/or what their intentions for the various classes are in relation to the other classes. I believe this would be helpful to the community in forming questions and appropriate expectations.

I'll go ahead and give this a +1.

I don't know if these more general questions are ones we can feasibly get hard answers to, but they're good to keep in mind.