I know that it can be used as a maneuver once per session with The Force Is My Ally, and once as an incidental with a Control Upgrade in the power (only for Light Siders), but it seems fairly weak otherwise having to spend your action to put up a defense that works similarly to the Parry/Reflect talents. Some of the abilities in the tree are pretty cool, and it's great that you can use this to protect your allies, but turtling up is rarely a very good strategy in any game, let alone one as fast-paced as this tends to be.
And it's never fun to sacrifice your turn in the hope of being able to withstanding an attack that never came.
I'm also not really thrilled about these powers being combined...I mean, I like that Force Lightning is tied to a power most powerful Force users would be looking to at least dip into, because we have several instances in the EU of characters taking a sharp turn to the Dark Side and using Force Lightning out of nowhere, but these don't really feel like they go together, and the tree provides much more to Dark Siders than Light, giving them a potent offensive ability and a decent defensive option, whereas the Light Siders are getting only the defensive option, even if it's a little more robust.
I'm kind of hoping some things get changed here between the Beta and final release.
What do all of you think?