While I can't say for Imperial companions and Assault Cannons, there are Republic companions who use sniper rifles hence we are still able to obtain them.

Actually all the best pvp gear comes from an even balance of open world and warzone pvp. You do not however have to take part in both as commendations can be converted from open world merc comms to warzone comms or vs. Both Comms are however needed for the best stuff and the daily/weekly quests for both warzones and open world ilum pvp give the same awards.

Probably my all time favorite experience from beta testing was when I got into a Voidstar with myself being a 50 Gunslinger and my team had a 27 Sage and everyone else on my team was 14 and under. We were up against a Nightwatch premade with 6+ 50's. What do you think happened in this match? Well we were on defense to start the match and we didn't let em plant a single bomb so they all ragequit and didn't even try to defend when it was our turn roflstomp. Moral of the story? Premades don't mean autowin, if you have a decent team behind you that knows what to do, focusing on objectives not pure kill/dmg number padding, and listens. I can easily see lots of Premades dominating the matches atm and for awhile. Lots of people played together in the Betas and continue to play together in live. These people have lots of pvp experience and are being put up a lot of people who are still learning their class mechanics let alone how to pvp to the fullest. Things will begin to balance out a bit as time goes on. Either way the team that is more organized, coordinated, and works together the best will and should always win but this won't always necessarily be the premade even in a premade vs pug situation. Losing is a part of pvping, you cant win em all, and if you can't handle that you shouldnt be pvping.

Yeah any class can solo just fine really. Personally I leveled a pure DPS Gunslinger to 50 multiple times throughout the beta and everytime I solely used a DPS companion while doing so. Never used a healing or tank companion, and I soloed Heroic 2's, some 4's, and even multiple boss quality mobs my entire way to 50.

The class played by someone who knows what they are doing and has a good team to support them is the only one that dominates in pvp. SWToR is far different from WoW PVP, its not a dmg/kill chart padding zergfest, its actually team and objective oriented like it should be.

Gunslingers do still bring a lot of great utility to any group, just not in the form of healing. Beyond top dps we also have our armor debuff, accuracy debuff if specced into it, and of course Scrambling Field which is a great ability giving 20% reduced damage taken to anyone close enough when its up. Theres a number of other things as well but altogether everything is pretty balanced in SWToR as in every class/AC can bring something useful to the group. I highly recommend simply picking the class with the playstyle and personality/story and roles they can fill that you are most interested in rather than dps/utility.

I just posted in your other thread about this but no we shouldn't have a hard time finding groups simply because we are Gunsligners. It's been mentioned before a Gunslinger/Sniper used properly is top dps ingame but we still also bring a lot of utility to a group with various abilities that i mentioned in the other thread.

Honestly due to some of the things you can do with cover once you get used to it and know how to use it to its fullest abilities makes a number of things easier than it is for anyone else hehe.

moddable gear is far to easy to obtain for this to really be an issue whatsoever, purely an aesthetic perk for them is all.

Gunslingers are plenty great at solo leveling and such as well. I didn't even use a Tank or healing companion ever, just went pure DPS zerg on everything and it was not only a breeze but great fun. Our AoE's actually really suck until we get XS Freighter Flyby but with our huge dmg output when fighting all these grps of 3 mobs I could most always completely kill 2 of them before the 3rd one even got its first shot off, and that first shot was typically its only shot hehe. As for the spec I would make some big changes. I would completely drop all 5 points from Burst Volley and Black Market Mods while leveling. Instead put these 5 points into Cover Screen and Streetwise. Cover Screen is kinda optional but useful and Streetwise however should be a must in any spec really as Cunning is our primary stat above all else no matter what our spec is. Me and some others discussed Burst Volley a lot in the last beta build and just don't really see it being all that great. It sounds amazing but the very short 6sec duration on each stack makes it very limiting to what you can do with it to the point it's really not worth it. As for the Black Market Mods its nice yeah but the thing to remember is both these talents increase your current alacrity by a %. The less alacrity you have the less valuable these talents are going to be. Leveling you won't see much alacrity on gear at all till 30ish really and even beyond then gearing for pure Crit/Surge is just a lot more beneficial. After leveling a Gunslinger to 50 4 times in the beta this is the spec I will be initially using. It has 1 point left over you can put wherever really. I won't be taking the Alacrity talents however unless it is worth speccing into them later at high level when there is more gear with Alacrity on it in addition to the the other more valuable stats. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#700rsrbdRoRgzZbcZh.1

While being a little more mobile for sure Saboteur is still pretty reliant on cover. The Contingency Charges from Sabotauge Charge lead to a ton of damage and the stacking burn effects from Speed Shot add up a ton of damage as well. Both of these being usable only in cover. It is still a little more mobile than Sharpshooter sure but still requires a lot of use of cover. Sadly Dirty FIghting is the one spec I never tried out the 4 times I played a Gunslinger to 50 as I enjoyed Sharpshooter far to much and barely managed to pull myself away from it to test Saboteur so I can't comment much on DF :\

What they actually said, and clarified quite well I thought, was not that preordering this late would limit you to 1 day of early access but preordering AFTER Early Access started would, obviously, reduce how early you got in. If you preorder on the 19th obviously your not going to get more than one day of early access because theres not more than one day left lol. You will however automatically be given access as soon as you preorder it on the 19th and the only reason you may not be able to play before the actual launch on the 20th is due to the time it takes you to download and install the game. They never said however if you preorder on even say the 17th that you won't be given early access until the 19th. Either way people need to seriously relax, they are already letting people in earlier than they said they would so we're already getting more than we expected.

One thing to note is you only receive a 20% defensive bonus against those in your "cone of cover" not just against everyone. Therefore anyone who attacks from behind you or close enough and to the side totally negates this bonus. There are other defensive bonuses to cover through various talents and such however it is again countered enough by the fact it makes us immobile and we can be more easily LoS'ed while using it that its not incredibly overpowered or anything. Also unless currently using the 1min cd for 20sec cc immunity you can be knocked out of cover by any of the multiple knockbacks every single class has as well as susceptible to any of the crazy amounts of cc's that are out there atm.

Played Gunslinger to 50 4 times throughout my beta testing time and my god did I love every minute of it every single time I did it. It just totally fit my preferred playstyle and the story was amazing. Now they just need to let me in so I can do it AGAIN!! But yeah any questions feel free to ask

In order to do any Flashpoint you have to pick up the quest to enter it first as you all know. Once you hit level 50 these flashpoint quest NPCs will have TWO quests instead of only one, both a Normal Mode and then a Hard Mode Quest for the FP. Whichever quest you pick up determines the difficulty of the FP when you enter it.

I have also seen Scoundrels heal hard mode FPs at 50 no problem at all so yes they are viable at endgame as well