SWTOR class design… no pigeonholing.
The more I play with the skill calculator over at TORHead, the more I'm coming to realize that the class selection seems more of a personal choice rather than a choice of play style. On the Republic side, three of four classes can heal (Trooper, Consular, Smuggler), three can tank (Knight, Consular, Trooper), and all have some type of crowd control (although I think smugglers and consulars are best at this).
So, if you wanted to have a group consisting of nothing but troopers representing a Republic infantry squad, you can have it with two vanguards and two commandos (for heroics and flashpoints). One vanguard spec'ed defense as a tank, one commando spec'ed medic for healing, and finally the others spec'ed damage, although they could play backup to the main positions.
With the other classes, it takes a little more work. Jedi Consulars may be able to last, but they are made more for a backup tank role even if spec'ed defensive shadow (which is the way I am working on Bel'rihi). And Knights have very little in the way of healing, so they would have to have a bit of downtime for meditation during long fights. Mixing knights and consulars in the same group can create a nice Jedi force to help bring the light to the darkest sectors of the galaxy.
Smugglers will have a bit of trouble creating single class groups, but I'm sure with the amount of damage they put out as well their crowd control and AoE skills, they may be able to pull it off.
Other games pigeonhole you into a specific roll with your class, making it so you have to find others outside of your class (Clerics make lousy tanks, warriors are not know for their medical skills). That's not the case here, and it's just one more reason I enjoy this game.
As an example of a Republic combat squad:
Squad Leader
Combat Medic
Gunnery
Tactical Assault
These are preliminary designs and open for discussion. The Squad leader is the main tank, while the combat medic is the main healer. Gunnery and Tactical Assault are both DPS, with Gunnery being a more direct DPS while Tactical is more DoT based.
It would be great to give this setup a try one day, but I guess that would mean we would have to get people dedicated to a group like this. Would seem like fun though ^_^
Heh – your squad leader is not far off from what I’m doing with Titanium, my main-line battle tank.
Titanium’s current build
Biggest changes from what you have and what I’m going for is that I’m not putting anything into any speed mods or the stop grapple as I see those being mostly useful only in PvP. Since I don’t PvP, I felt putting those points into more DPS output (which is the troopers main aggro generation) the better bet.
But I am very much loving the flexibilities in the trees, there is no wrong answer and all depends on your play style. ^.^