Shoulder Cannon nerf Game Update 3.1.1 PTS

That would be horrific if it was true. Except it's not.

Wether you do X damage every 1.5 minutes spread over 3.5 seconds or spread over 10.5 seconds is no difference in dps (if you were actually using shoulder cannon on cooldown, which you probably are not, a very marginal and barely noticeable decrease would result from the fact that the ability goes on cooldown seven seconds later, so it's off cooldown seven seconds later too).

Let X be a constant. is the following equation true?

X/3.5 = X/10.5

The value this spec brings is burst. Evaluating the sustained damage SC brings is pointless. The point of the cooldown change is not the effect to sustained damage but how frequenty it can be used in a single round of ranked arena.

Unfortunately the person you quoted is correct whereas you are not. Over the new duration of SC you will have finished a proper "rotation" - the only difference is that the burst wont be horribly, terribly, stupidly frontloaded. This is a fix.

As for the CD increase I shall not comment because I'm not sure what that will do to the class. But defending the ICD of shoulder canon is a right reserved for those who thought they were good when they had 9K+ DPS the first few GCDs on target. Newsflash, it wasnt impressive skill that got you several thousand DPS ahead of all other classes in game.

AP keeps great single target burst. They'll be okay.

dunno why u guys are wasting time
All the the fixes and changes in combat since 2.8 have been mostly oriented to PVE
anyway just nerf snipers and this could be good or ask for cartel items and they will react

It's still silly to call this is PVE nerf without Scorch for the most part Pyros suck in PVE. I played it on and off with AP and for PVE AP was so much better for most of the story content. BW must have some disgruntled workers that hate Bounty Hunters for no reason.

I'm pretty sure by PvE he means operations since in endgame operations Pyro parses better on the majority of the current bosses.

Generally speaking classes are not balanced around ease of clearing solo content since in those cases its just easier to adjust said content then the classes. Although there are some solo considerations as evidenced by the first tier utility that every class has that increases the damage of some AoE skill by 25%.

The part the OP didn't mention is the fact that they nerfed plasmatech on top of that. Because you know one of the most underpowered specs in the game clearly needs more nerfs.

AP keeps great single target burst. They'll be okay.

Let me ask you a question, because I don't think that AP is okay even atm (talking about yolo ranked).
Let's say that there is an 'average class' which has average dps and average survival skills considering every class in the game. Now.. pt/vg has much worse survivability, so don't you think it would be fair for it to have higher burst to compensate? They will die first in a match (even you said that before), so they NEED higher dps for their team to even have a chance at winning.
The 'average class' can live longer -> higher damage output altogether,
the vanguard can't live that long -> need that higher burst.

Aside from this note, right now with the 3.5 sec / 7 sc, a vanguard could heal 35%hp which is the key for survival when focused. Adrenaline rush is a joke, even a single dps can outdamage its healing, not to mention a team, many cases it doesn't even trigger (in a fully modded gear a ~15k hit can kill a vg without proccing the skill).
What happens with the change?
We lose burst. Ok.
We lose a way of quickly regenerating hp... which means we might not survive long enough to use all 7 sc.
We lose the damage from the unused shoulder cannons + the damage we might have caused if we lived longer.

And don't even try to convince me the burst will be high enough still..
I've played more than 400 arenas, it is a miracle if the opposing team doesn't have a stealther and another miracle if they don't target the vg/pt first (Unless there's a mando/merc of course).
They will have the upper hand, they will attack first and unless you are a veteran and know how to survive just a bit longer, you won't have time to cast the big hitter skills or can even be gcdd. The burst won't matter then now, would it?

Conclusion: if you want to take away the burst, take it. But give us something in return to make us live longer.. give us something to compensate! Don't nerf the burst AND survivability both!