Gunslinger is to weak compared to other classes

Hi there.

I play 50 lvl sniper on PvP EU server the Ravager. This server is heavy populated with lots of 50 above 60 valor rank and more in full/near full champ PvP gear.

My gear is mix of battlemaster/champ also using some custom made crit/surge enchantments instead of some default accuracy/power PvP items enchantments. I use biochem also.

I played a lot of marksman spec, currently I play lethality spec.

Nowadays I'm not in the mood of calling nerfs especially after news about operatives coming changes.

What I'm really for to raise some highlights about current sniper (and rep counterpart) problems.

First, it has 3 damage talent trees being pure damage dealing class. Other rich possibilities avaible to hybrid aclasses are restricted to sniper. This influences over many things from variety of PvP tactic choices to possible quantity of warzone medals.

Even fully DPS specced hybrid classes enjoy having basic heals/protects/dispels etc from common architype.

Since sniper has no choice but deal damage it is very important that sniper damage (and his pure aclass brother marader) should be higher than fully DPS specced hybrid classes. Currently fully DPS specced hybrid classes in PvP have equal burst/sustained damage or even more than sniper.

In case of marksman specced sniper mentioned above situation is an outcome of:

- developers desicion to make nearly all marksman sniper attacks advanced version of basic rifle shot attack. You can check on torhead, they are just weapon attack like basic autoattack. That makes damage from such attacks not only to be mitigated by armor, but also shielded by personal shield generators, be dodged by players defence.
- developers desicion to make nealry all marksman sniper (actually it applies to all sniper specs) attacks (except series of shots) to show clear sign above target head making them highly avoidable by LoSing/popping immunities before they deal intended damage.
- developers decision to add a lot of hard damage mitigation abilities and/or dodge abilities or absorbing shields plus taunt/guard abilities on top of them on demand. Some of that abilities are very very consistend and painful for pure DPS class like 99 % damage reduction on marader, for example. Surprisingly enough sniper (I suspect marader too) does not get any exclusive for pure DPS aclass hard damage increase abilities and/or ignore armor (except shot - 20 % armor on target) or piercing shielding/dodging abilities on demand. By "on demand" I mean activable abilities that require skill and timing, not passive or RNG proc abilities.
- developers decision to make marksman sniper super weak against LoS play of opponents. Since sniper roots/incapacitate break on damage, stun is melee range it is impossible to have one in line of sight if he does not want to. Snipe also have no runner/catcher abilities (speed increase, untalented slow).

Complex of circumstances makes marksman sniper damage on geared lvl 50 insignificant for aclass that can only damage, becasue if pure DPS class does bad damage it is completely useless.

Lethality sniper, on the other hand potentially has more damage ouput because dots bypass shielding and defence and internal damage from cull ability bypass armor. Still 3 advanced classes have dispells, some advanced classes (operative) can remove dots with other abilities and some aclasses can not only remove them but stay immune for some time (assasin). On mentioned server seems lot of people know how dispel.

Hard damage mitigation on the other hand plays the same for lethality sniper as for marksman sniper.

Second, the survivability of sniper is under the ground. Actually it is somewhere on the other side of a black hole. Defensive CD are: evasion 3 (4 with operative pvp set) sec of total melee/ranged white attack dodge and total 1200 dmg absorb shield (1600 with engeneering tree high tier talent) for 12 sec or until depleted by damage.

One might say: "The cover". At the moment I find cover useful in one situation - I sit on the front of a zerg camping Ilum base entrance and the cover prevents me being pulled by jedi shadow from stealth to the opposite group. Cover mechanics has so much intended weakneses built-in (like susceptibility to all slight forms of CCs even roots, enforcing character immobilization thus taking away usability of LoS objects, making desirable target for stealthers) so it actually burdens sniper character in PvP (except Ilum "zerg" situation of course).

Operatives (same Imperail agent architype) have the same toolset of defensive CD's except no entrench, but stealth and enchanced evasion makes them much more survivable.

So no hard damage mitigation, no long lasting defensive abilities. Other classes have much more, still having damage and hybrid benefits.

Third, sniper itemization. Did I mention PvP sniper set (field tech) bonuses suck? Yes they do a lot compared to other aclasses set bonuses. Did I mention a tonns of accuracy on PvP gear and somewhat a soft cap for accuracy % from rating approx at + 11 %, so that u can remove a 150 accuracy rating without actually loosing %?

Sniper concept needs serious rework in ways what cover does and how ot works, sniper survivability or sniper hard damage armor/dodge/shield piercing increase on demand.

Lethality snipers can enjoy some % to resist dispel and removal for dots too.

Umm Bounty Hunter is more than fine right now. Say otherwise and you dont know what you're talking about.

And im simply stating facts here.

BH has a knockback, does not require cover, superior to Sniper
BH has a stun, has range on it, Sniper's is melee range, Superior to sniper
BH has cast time damage abilities, deal more or equal amounts of damage to similar cast time abilites of snipers, does not require cover, again Superior to Sniper
BH has high damage mitigation, Sniper has the low damage mitigation.
BH can have heals/dispels, Sniper can have.. cover?

I guess BH have it rough eh?

I do not know on what server u are playing, but mara/jugg is definetely not the class that sniper eats for breakfast.

Not even close.

Sorcs ... if you have a jump will just force speed away LoS and heal. So no too.

Sorry, but u are a big smacktalking person.

Yup you are right. You can only kill stupid mara's/sentinels. the ones who doesn't know they got obfuscate/pacify to begin with.

Snipers hit like a truck. They may not have the mobility other classes have but they are immune to knockbacks, etc while in cover.

Im Sorry you don't know what you're doing. I eat sorcs for breakfast. Mauraders and Ops too. BH is 50/50. Juggs are fools with light sabers.

You're right, I've never played a sniper
I've played a gunslinger
GOOD CATCH


One guy says "This class is terrible, BUFF ME"
Another guy says "This class is fine, I do well"
This first guy says "Well clearly YOU have never played the class before"
Logical fallacy, much