From personal experience as a Gunslinger with Risha I've found that while she does wither very quickly under continuous damage, she has good sustained damage. She doesn't have any sort of energy limitation, so if you end up in a prolonged fight she can dish out very respectable damage. However, that usually isn't the case with two classes meant for DPS, you're going to be killing everything quick, which is good. My usual strategy with her is make sure you both charge up an Aimed Shot at the beginning, and if attacking a groupI usually have her target a weaker enemy while I attack the tougher ones, or I have her take the outlier while I burn down the enemies in a group. If its an single elite I will start out with aimed shot but use DOT's and weakening attacks initially so she out damages me at the beginning then quickly start doing the hard hitters to get aggro onto me, this usually allows me to go through the fights with both of us taking a small amount of damage. I hope this helps. Edit: I should point out that I really play the tank among us, she usually only has 1 person on her while I'm taking the damage of the rest. But I have her start the fights, just by starting her Aimed Shots first. It works pretty well.

Your smuggler is the spitting image of mine, jacket, hair, face and all.

I like to be reminded that my character is just the underdog who still manages to win his fights. I like the feeling that I'm not some all powerful destroyer, because that isn't what a smuggler is supposed to be.