Gunslinger is to weak compared to other classes

To fire a tracer missile you have to root yourself (stand still while you cast) for 1.5 seconds (minus "haste" plus pushback from damage taken and hope nobody interrupt you before you land your tracer missile).

To fire Snipe you have to root yourself for 1.5 seconds (minus "haste", snipe is immune to pushback from damage and interrupts). Crouch is instant. You can Instant start to snipe after you hit Crouch.

I bound Crouch on F and I bound Snipe on F while in cover. I press F. Twice. And my toon will stop and start snipe. Behind cover. That give me interrupt immunity and 3 defensive buffs with an internal CD of 1.5 seconds.

The only difference is that bounty hunters need to press their Tracer Missile button once, you have to press your Snipe button twice (but most PvPers I know spam their buttons a lot more than that).

A merc have to stand still to fire his Tracer Missile. If you move before you land your tracer missile you will abort your tracer missile. After you land your tracer missile you can move and then stand still to fire another tracer missile. A sniper have to stand still to fire his Snipe. If you move before you land your snipe you will abort your snipe. After you land your Snipe you can move and then double tap your key binding to fire another Snipe.

I honestly does not see the difference here (other than Cover sometimes does not work, but that is a bug - not a design flaw - a bug that will eventually be adressed)


All your abilities can be used while you stand still (you just have to press your key-binding for Crouch first). You never ever have to roll into cover.

Most your abilities are not useable while on the run. But we are a ranged nuker class. Would be imba if you could snipe, ambush and take down while running. If you want mobility while dealing damage, play Leathality Spec.

I dont get it why so many in this thread think you first have to enter cover. Then you have to wait for a long period of time before you can start dealing damage.

Run. Double click your key-binding. Instant start to cast Ambush. Land your Ambush. Feel free to move. You don't HAVE to stay in cover if you don't want to, no more than Mercs have to stand still to spam more than one tracer missiles if he does not want to.

When having a shoot-out with a merc you probably should move out of cover and place a new cover (and instantly start to fire) once every 6 seconds. This will give you a fresh stack of 3 ballistic dampers (that will reduce tracer missile damage done by 30% once every 1.5 seconds - which happend to be the cast time of tracer missiles).

Snipers WANT to enter cover (as entering cover is instant anyway, you don't really lose damage per second just because you have to press your key-binding twice) because you gain ballistic dampers and immunity to cast pushback, interrupts and force leap.

Why not stay in cover while you channel your attack? Not like you can RUN and use snipe, ambush or take down anyway. If you have to stand still to use an ability you might as well be behind cover while you use it. It take not extra time to enter cover.

We enter cover because the ability we are going to use require us to stand still while we use it. And because cover give us... cover. You can run and snipe with a sniper just as much as you can run and use tracer missiles with a merc.

Don't sit in the same cover for a long period of time unless there is a tactical advantage to do so. The only reason to sit still while using abilities that does NOT require cover is for the defensive buffs and immunity to force leap etc. Normally you are perfectly fine to move while throwing that flash bang or using Leg shot. Often it is even an advantage to move while doing it since you will refresh your ballistic dampers when you crouch again.

Now... if only BW could fix so it doesn't bug out

The differences are:

1) If you start casting something immedtiately after entering cover it will most likely fail. You HAVE TO wait about half a second before casting anything to make shure it will fire. Even instasnipe.

2) Your snpe (and other damage) is mitigated and deflected by anything and everything while tracer is not.
Assasin/shadow in BM gear can have 99% deflect chance for 12 seconds. Sniper in BM fieldtech gear have about +12% accuracy. So what are you supposed to do for 12 secs? Spam frag grenade? And don't tell me about dodge. It's 3 sec and it is NOT protecting you vs lightning/rock.
It's just one example. I can bring up much more.

I have no complaints about my gunslinger, I enjoy it and I certainly have put the hurt on others as much as they've put the hurt on my gunslinger. It's fairly well balanced in my opinion. Paired with a good healer once they and I decimated an enemy team for a while before they finally took us down. It's not too weak unless you have a bad rotation or habbit. Make sure you're not just spamming strong moves in a row, make sure you use some less consuming abilities inbetween and use your CC/knockback/defense abilities to keep people at bay, don't pick up and run so much or you'll go down.

Agreed. However,

This is not by design. This is a bug. A bug that [eventually] will be fixed.

Tracer Missile deal kinetic or energy damage same as Snipe deal kinetic or energy damage. Both are mitigated by armor.

Tracer Missile is a tech or force attack while Snipe is a range or melee attack, so immortal juggernauts with shield generator, darkness assassins with shield generator and shieldtech powertechs with shield generator will have a good chance to reduce damage with their absorb after a successful block.

But once sniper have enough accuracy, then other advanced classes (or even the three advanced classes i mentioned if they spec dps, use dps stance and don't use shield generator) will have 0% chance to avoid being hit and 0% to block the attack.

Having a hard time to deal with 3 specs, out of 24, isn't that bad. Just shoot his pocket healer instead...

Most assassins currently use dps pvp gear instead of tank pvp gear, even if they are tank specced, because shields really only work against snipers that don't spec into engineer or lethality, marauders/juggernauts that are not speced into rage and assassins don't spec into madness. 7/24 specs, that is 7 specs that are not even fotm specs. Using tank pvp gear sacrifice a lot of damage for very little survivability.

Also, lv 36 Assassin/Shadow get Force Shroud that give them 3 sec of 100% immunity to all tech and force attacks (such as tracer missiles) but not melee or ranged (such as snipe) - and with Disjunction, a talent many pick to remove snares and roots when you use force speed, the duration is 167% of that. Different class though, assassins are not even a ranged class.

An assassin will also shut down tracer missile spam from a merc as well btw.

And lastely, compare Sniper (a ranged class) and Assassin (a melee class) is very much Apples and Oranges imo.

Dodge, perfect to use when you hit <30% against an assassin/shadow as you will avoid his 5k execute move (Assassinate). mercs don't have that btw... shurg.

Yes, there are differences. Mercs and Snipers are not the same class.

But the play-style is very similar. Mercs are not really any more mobile than Snipers and Snipers are not really any more stationary than Mercs. By design. Yes, cover bug out sometimes - but once again, that is a bug. A bug that will be fixed over time. All classes suffer from bug-related issues at this point. Trust me. Designwise and play-style wise mercs and snipers are very similar.

A difference is that Sniper deal more damage per second against light and medium armor classes and Merc deal more damage per second against heavy armor and tanks...

sniper melee stun causes 800 resolve. Merc ranged stun causes much less than that, and its ranged.

No they aren't. Why post if you don't know what you're talking about?

/false

This is also false. Why do people keep posting nonsense? You can avoid shield chance by hitting a critical hit. Accuracy increases armor penetration but does not stop shielding. Accuracy reduces deflections as well but does not stop +100% deflections like dodge. Etc.

I play a level 50 gunslinger. Hunker down blocks knockbacks. It has a visual...L2P. If it is on CD you can knock them back just fine.

Eventually all the classes will be reballanced but we have to live here and now. And discuss that "here and now" at least until we see the changes in pending patch notes.

Point taken.

True. But:
1) every class/spec has abilities that are bumping their defense or reducing your accuracy greatly. You can only partly compensate this with +accuracy relic sacrificing relic cooldown.
2) I have to stuck +accuracy equipment instead of +power/alacrity.


3-5s. << 12s.

I can also be interrupted with mezz/stun/kb.

I'm comparing defenses against sniper and merc.

Yes, but it's much harder to burn 70% of merc's health. Shall we discuss survivability?
I agree in case of burst. But what about long run? I'd say this is questionable.