maybe old news for some.. but

clicky

The intent of the Expertise System is to allow players to differentiate themselves from others within their profession. Expertise can impact a wide variety of properties of a character. They can grant new commands, abilities or schematics, improve existing abilities and actions or increase overall performance in a given area.

In most cases, a specific expertise can be increased successively by spending multiple points in the same expertise "box", with each point spent granting an additional bonus to the properties that a particular expertise effects. Every "click" or "purchase" in the expertise interface will cost you one Expertise point. You will begin to accrue Expertise points to spend at level 10. At level 10 you will start out with 5 Expertise points to spend which will put you well on your way to customizing your character in the manner of your choosing. After level 10 you will receive 1 expertise point every other level.

The combat classes will initially have two seperate trees available to them - one “Path” and one “General” tree. This is slightly different from the original plan where we were going to have three trees per profession. At this point we feel it may be better to do the GCW trees closer to when the GCW content will come online. As a result, it looks like we might be able to publish as many as 4 professions worth of trees per publish, with the GCW trees coming online after the initial batches are complete. This is just a projection and is subject to change, of course.

The Path tree deals with very class specific differentiation, such as a Dark Path and a Light Path for Jedi while the “General Tree” will include abilities such as weapon specialization bonuses that are more generic in nature. As mentioned above, after all of the Combat classes have received their Expertise upgrades, a third tree dealing specifically with the Galactic Civil War and PvP conflict will be rolled out and made available to all classes.

Once the combat classes are complete, we will move on to the address the non-combat classes (Entertainer & Trader).

You will be able to respec your Expertise at any time by visiting a Profession Counselor and paying the requisite fee. Freebie Expertise respecs may be offered from time to time in situation where new trees are added or if a profession’s Expertise undergo any major changes.

Each individual tree offers choices in Expertise that are divided into tiers. A number of points must be spent in the previous tier before you are able to purchase Expertise in the next tier. The relative power of the Expertise in a given tier increase as you advance through the tree with the most potent of abilities in the final tier.