Let me know how this turns out. I just came back to start playing my lvl 36 sniper as well

That's a well written post by the OP. I would love these questions answered as well. I like the shadow but the animations are meh and I worry about being kited..

As has been pointed out, the object of Huttball is to win. A sniper's contribution to that goal is not as a ball-carrier. We are area deniers. Stop thinking about your dmg and start thinking about stopping the other team from scoring. Take the high ramp and stay there the entire match, moving from end to end, shooting at anyone foolish enough to come into your sights. If you find that you don't have many targets then you are winning since they must get past you to score. One of our best assets is that we are the only class that can participate in a 2-on-1 gank without the target being aware that he is being double-teamed (range and the total lack of fancy animation when we hit makes us invisible). Anyone who attacks my teamate in the neutral zone just got double-teamed. (Try assisting a teamate with a BH and watch the bad guy bug out the minute the first big explosion hits.) Laugh when a bad guy is dancing around your teamate and suddenly finds himself with a legshot and explosive probe on him with no idea where it came from because he's focused on the melee battle he's engaged in... Love the sniper.

The biggest complaint I see on the forum (regarding Sniper) is "You have to stay in cover." The animation is messing with everyone's head. "Cover" is an almost instant animation... maybe a half second delay between tapping "cover" and tapping snipe or ambush. Snipe is a 1.5 second cast (instant sometimes if talented). Ambush is 2.5 seconds (1.5 if talented). Dropping to cover and firing snipe takes less than 2 seconds and it is spammable. A 2 second, high damage spammable cast. Now, compare to say, the BH. Death from Above is 3 seconds channeled. Flame thrower is the same. In fact, if you look at most of the classes you'll find that many of their most powerful attacks are long cast or long channeled. The classes that have high mobility with instant casts (hello Operative) have cool-downs on their strongest abilities (or positionals, or range restrictions or all three) If their were no cover system and you simply stopped running and cast snipe or ambush no one would complain about the cast time. It's the animation of cover that freaks everyone out. It used to freak me out, too. Then, I was playing my BH in a warzone and realized that I was constantly having to stop and stand still to fire my best abilities AND I was interuptable. I played my Op and was very mobile with instant casts, but they had cooldowns, and backstab is positional, so there is a lot of dancing and running and stalking. I forget the name of that ability that the Sins have, the one that makes their lightning go to 30 meters and have more punch, but you have to tap that before you attack and then your lightning is a 3 sec. channel that can be interupted (and that ability is on a cooldown). No one complains. However, if tapping that button made the Sin drop to one knee, they would complain non-stop. As the previous posters have said, just because you are in cover doesn't mean you should stay there. Move around, use portable cover. You can be on the run and deliver a snipe (with a guaranteed crit) and an ambush by standing still for 2 seconds. That's some burst mi amigo. Toss an explosive probe in the mix and then hit them with a corrosive dart as you start moving again and you have done some good damage to a player who doesn't even know where it came from. I'm still pretty low level so I'm sure the higher level Snipers can correct any wrong facts in my post.

Personally, I couldn't play without a logitech G13. I quick macro chain abilities that do the same thing with different cooldowns. I hit one key and it fires Force Scream, if that's on CD it fires Ret, if that's not up it fires the next 3-4 rage point dmg ability. Then, I have a key that chains rage point building attacks by priority. My hats off to all of ya'll who play straight keyboard and kick my behind in PvP.