To distinguish the patch notes from my commentary, all the original patch notes are in italics and my own comments will be in bold.
Classes and Combat
-Game Update 1.2. contains a significant number of changes and improvements to the overall class balance and combat gameplay in PvP and PvE based on player and guild feedback, focus testing, and more than two months of combat interaction data from our servers. Our overall goal is, as always, to create a level playing field for our players while ensuring that classes retain their unique playstyles and identities.
These changes are not limited to class abilities and skill trees, but also involve modifications to the underlying combat math (for example diminishing returns, additional augment availability, etc.), which has an impact on combat that is hard to capture in a list of patch notes.
Since our changes involve a number of skill changes for many classes, we are refunding all skill points to the affected Advanced Classes so players can adjust the distribution of their characters' skills as they see fit with the new changes in mind. As a reminder, players can reset any character's skill points in the Combat area on their faction's fleet for free once per week (additional respecs cost credits).
Based on community feedback, we have also added a number of improvements to combat gameplay, such as more reactive animations for certain abilities, better visual and audible cues for important effects, and quality of life changes such as more useful combat revival abilities.
For enthusiasts interested in the detailed mechanics of combat and optimizing their own character, we have added a combat logging feature, which writes a machine-parsable file to disk that can provide detailed insights into what really happens during a combat engagement.
--While the changes to the game formulae may be daunting for theorycrafters, things are actually getting a lot easier; the detailed combat logs now available are very detailed--I've been told by Ginnai, who has been working on damage meters based on logs from the PTS, that the logs contain all the damage formulae and every calculation made to determine damage/healing/etc. So any changes or empty spaces in how the combat mechanics of the game are understood are going to be quickly sorted out by the theorycrafting community.
--For the record, the only classes that don't have their skill points reset are Assassin/Shadow and Mercenary/Commando.
-General
--As a result of game balance efforts, many classes have had their skill tree layouts modified. Affected characters will have their skill points refunded on login.
--Visual effects for persistent ground-targeted player attacks now reflect the target area of effect more accurately.
---Based on my experiences on the PTS, this still needs a lot of work.
--"Rest" abilities, such as Meditation and Recharge and Reload, are no longer interrupted by taking damage if the player is not currently in combat.
---Darkhorse and I observed (and bug reported) that the racial abilities that act as alternate rest abilities (like Shadowboxing and Review Mission for Ratataki and Chiss respectively) did not get changed for this to be true--ie they are still interrupted by damage out of combat.
--The movement visualization when observing players with lower performance has been improved.
--Combat Training Dummies have been added to the game. Level 50 and 50+ Training Dummies can be found on the Gav Daragon and Ziost Shadow. Level 20, 30, and 40 targets can be found on Coruscant and Dromund Kaas. Level 10 targets can be found on Origin Worlds. Players can unlock Training Dummies for their personal starship through the Legacy System.
---There's no healing training dummy as requested at the guild summit. Disappointing.
--In-combat revival abilities (Resuscitation Probe, Hearttrigger Patch, Revival, and Reanimation) now revive the target with 25% health (up from 5%) to make them generally more useful for their intended purpose.
---There's no apparent fix for when the abilities seem to bug out and are unable to be used in situations where it normally should be usable.
--Several ability tooltips have been updated to include the correct values and information (these tooltip changes do not reflect changes to the ability; tooltips that previously displayed incorrect or incomplete information have been corrected).
--Several areas throughout the game that have had line of sight-related problems ("cannot see target") have been corrected.
--An issue that could prevent dual wield visual effects from playing correctly has been fixed.
--Players are now briefly stunned if they are dismounted forcibly from damage (instead of playing a fall animation).
--Fixed an issue that would occasionally cause players to become stuck and unable to move after the expiration of a stun debuff.
--Corrected an issue that could cause players to appear to continue to be dead after being revived.
--The diminishing return formula for several stats (including expertise) has been adjusted.
--Special abilities for several classes have been updated to emit light based on their actual weapon color crystal rather.
---Rather...?
--Minimum and maximum damage ranges now display correctly on the character sheet for all classes.
--Using a stun-breaking ability no longer keeps a player that was knocked down from standing up. *UPDATED 3/23*
--Medpacs can now only be used once per fight. When a medpac is used during combat, another cannot be used until after combat has ended. *UPDATED 3/23*
---Further dampens the usefulness of medpacs in both PvE and PvP.
-Combat Log
--Players may now choose to view victory and defeat messages in the chat window. This feature can be enabled in the new "Combat Logging" section of the preferences menu. This must be enabled for combat messages to appear in the chat window.
--The "Combat Logging" section in the preferences menu also allows players to stream all combat interactions originating from or directed at their character to a machine-parsable file. When this option is enabled, time stamped log files are written periodically to the Star Wars – The Old Republic\Combat Logs directory in the My Documents folder. Warning: This is an advanced feature. Constant combat logging may use a significant amount of disk space, and players may need to periodically delete old logs.
---They're not kidding. The logs take up a ton of space and are insanely detailed. As mentioned previously, MoX already has people working on putting together damage meters; since the logs only record your actions it'll ultimately require everyone be involved in compiling the data for them however. Additionally, Ginnai and others are investigating ways to collect the data in the background in realtime.
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