Patch 1.2 of Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to bring a lot of welcome content and features to the game, but many players are also going to feel a bit less powerful after its release.

During the weekly Q&A session Lead Combat Designer Georg Zoeller explained the design philosophy that led to what many see as a "nerf" of their characters. 

Zoeller mantained that currently a well played sage/sorcerer can continue healing without ever running out of force (and by personal experience I can easily attest the truth behind that statement. It gets even worse when multiple sorcerers/sages heal each other, and beating on a basically invincible character until someone kills you gets fairly tiresome), while mercenaries/commandos are much more effective in their healing output than intended.

While some would think that, when this kind of problem arises, the developer should simply bring all the other classes up to par with the overpowered ones, that's simply not a feasible course of action, as balance doesn't influence only PvP, and a rebalancing towards the highest common denominator would also require a complete rebalancing of the whole PvE contents of the game.

Ultimately Zoeller said that there isn't much BioWare can do to keep everyone happy with the balance of the classes, as most people on the receiving end of a nerf obviously won't like it. Despite that the developer will adjust the patch further prior to its launch on the base of player feedback, and an internal debate has been reopened about giving Mercenaries and Commandos a combat revive ability.

Other highlights include the possibility of the addition of an interrupt ability to mercenaries/commandos in the future if PvE content that requires interrupting a lot will be implemented, the creation of a further timeline series in the Holonet to further dig into the lore of the game, an explanation of the mechanics behind the "vote to kick" feature coming with 1.2 and a possible implementation of a cross-faction chat feature between alt guilds on opposite factions (yes please!).

You can check out the full Q&A here.