Good for you having some extra difficulty. I solo'd the Heroics on Balmorra/Nar Shadaa during Closed Beta using a Darkness Assassin and Khem Val. And that was hard. Had to swap aggro at the right times, use multiple medpacks and use every CC available. And abuse Line of Sight constantly. I personally feel that it has gotten considerably easier to do the Heroics solo; more so with the Companions being made comparatively stronger. Player Character strength has taken a bit of a hit with 4.0, but solo ability isn't as tied to specific classes any more. Having access to a Healer early is AMAZING. The companion Tanks are able to hold their own with a bit of healing on the side. Solo'ing is still a massive timesink though and does not approach the efficiency of good group.

But good Sir, you forget healing. Your changes bring glory to the Empire, but left unchecked the peon Sages, Scoundrels, and Commandos will try to gain medals via healing. The same goes for tanking; we must ensure the supremacy of the high level master race.

Not leveling to keep a certain gear state on a particular level. So someone being particularly abusive, being level 57/59 would refuse to gain any XP, credits and comms from a warzone. Simply leave the Warzone at the end before the stat screen comes up. I used a variation of this to maximize my WZ comms income as I neared cap back around level 49; I would fight to the end, but wouldn't accept the rewards from bad games. Because you do absolutely nothing else to gain XP on that character, you never level thus keeping a fully optimized gear build relevant forever. Pretty sure that WoW had the same problem.

The only people who might posit a defence of this are the same people who would leave Warzones to stay in the sub-60 bracket because they are unable to cope with the more balanced fights at level 60. Spend less time molesting lowbies and you might learn to play at level 60. See? I can make unwarranted straw-man accusations too! And it is ideological, derides the target and does nothing to further the discussion. On topic, I feel that the bolster affect at 55-59 overbuffs the character especially in conjunction with the high-end skills and talents. To actually die meant I had played exorbitantly badly, rather than being outplayed by my opponent. Previously when the level brackets were 10-49, I could create an ungodly twinked level ~12 sniper which would hit for upwards of 12k and could actually compete. I have yet to meet a sub 50's character that posed a challenge to my geared toons. I think that balance has rather gone a kilter with 3.0.

My theory is that the optimal twink would be a level 59 with that penultimate Discipline talent. Level 57 would be another option, with many specs gaining a game-changing skill. So either you would have to avoid gaining EXP, or you'd delete the expansion from your account once you hit 59. Is the latter even possible?

Regarding DOT's. Does each individual tick count as an attack for the sake of the "reduce cooldown 3s once every 1.5s when attacked" ie Evasive Imperium? If true, unsure about the net effect of this towards Lethality DoT's.

I used to twink out my alts when Lord Adraas was still around, but the difference was that I let myself level. Every ~2 levels I had to get BIS purples for my character. I took them into higher level planets to grab extra datacrons so bolster would have an augmented effect and used the best shard datacrons. One of my old friends was my supplier (who made a few million off of me) and was also the only character who could beat my twinked Lethality operative reliably in a 1v1 (he was Concealment). I miss the good fights I had against peers, but there's no beating around the bush. It was undeniably seal clubbing which was not fun to the clubbed.

It's nothing about wanting fair play and all about being a pedophilic apex predator forever. Why do the grind at all when already sitting on top of the foodchain to begin with?

Why would they level at all? Experience is awarded at the end of the match iirc, hence the oldest twinking here was sitting at level 47-49 permamently.

Theme song? There is only one themesong. "Cajoling, they cry that I am fightin dirty..."

Now that the speeder bikes to the side nodes are gone I can't recall many games that have been won by taking both side nodes. Your best bet is harassing a side node and trolling reinforcements while switching to mid quickly.

Ahhh, allow me. The "silver problem" is a phenomena where the mobs on Belsavis forget who they are, where they are and who their friends are. It is a most regrettable condition that the years of interminable imprisonment have imposed upon their now-fractured minds. The condition is most prevalent among the people known as the Esk-Ka This race has been imprisoned since the time of the Rakata Empire and, as a result behave most erratically. In my Consular's observation of these inmates, she noted that some walked with underwear on their head, others balancing their peculiar melee staves on said heads. A noted aggressiveness was present when talking of restructuring the medical facilities BelsaCare for better longevity. The more stable ones she was able to persuade to her cause, but now thousands of inmates stand in place or in eternal patrols, staring and trying in vain to remember their former identies. If any in the galaxy have heart to change their plight, please send donations to my guild's charity. EDIT: ((I noticed that on my 12x characters I could get to level 47 on Makeb while still using gear from Coruscant/Korriban. It was too easy previously, some scaling up was necessary but might have been too much)).

To be more specific the way that it was stated they have a goal for each specific damage role and each spec's optimal rotation is meant to fall within 5% of that goal. Thus, going by the statements in the OP/Sniper livestream, the difference between specs could be 10% and that would be working as intended.

What is the total area that Carbine Burst covers? I ask because this tells how many mobs it can be expected to spread to assuming that they are pulled to be directly in front of a tank. Second, will trying to reach an optimal spread place the Operative outside of any healing puddles that would be expected to hit both the tank and the melee group?

Given the number of times you have been "stunned", I am surprised that you have not been unsubbed. 1v1 capability does not translate into effectiveness in a Warzone. The only time that a 1v1 might matter is contesting a node, in which case burst matters more than sustained damage (unlikely, would be interrupted by reinforcements). Instead, the developers' vision of sustained damage stealth suggests a continued pressure DPS in the midst of a fight, for which the Operative's defensive capabiliies give it little staying power to apply that pressure. The defensive utilities were designed around a bursty skirmisher rather than the persistent brawler that the developers are trying to make.