The secret to good gaming with huge resource intensive games is an SSD. It's like the difference between dial-up and cable. There's no going back once you've seen the difference. My loading screens, except for Alderaan, are all less than 10 seconds, and most are around 4-5.

Exactly my thoughts as well concerning SS spec. People see me in cover, and come for me. So what, their mistake. If you are sawbones, or a trooper, or a sage, you just get grappled/leaped upon and have no time to react. Then quickly thereafter you are stunned/snared and often dead. In cover, they have to trudge over to me, or if I am up above them they have to just run.

Level 42, Sharpshooter spec, 262k damage huttball, 241k damage voidstar, wearing lvl 40 PvP gear, 99% single target damage. I'm always top 3 in damage regardless of the map or teammates. I focus on staying above my enemies or hidden near columns. Hanging out where people can easily see and target you means your DPS is going to be cut in half due to being dead all the time.

Hunker Down at level 20 or 22, and this makes cover immensely better, just remember to use it all the time if you suspect an enemy is thinking about coming for you. And like the other poster said, you have got to stay out of sight. Stay very close to walls and columns so that you cannot be seen or fired upon easily, and if you must run, you can quickly run to the other side of the column. This limits how much you can see and what you can target, but so what, anything that runs by, you will get the first, second, third shot, can stun them, root them, whatever and keep blasting away, huge advantage. In Civil War, the mid is the best spot since the sides have many line-of-sight issues and it is hard to utilize our range there. In mid, go up top and stay near a column so it is hard to spot you. If stealth comes and you can't take them out, jump down and run towards your spawn side. In Voidstar, same thing, park right next to one of the two columns so you can see one of the doors. It's amazing how many people will run past the column and I can unload on them while they are engaging someone else. In Huttball, again, stay as high as possible and when someone is charging you they are probably trying to knock you off so get Hunker Down up ASAP. At the beginning, go up and stay up. You should be overlooking the chaos at the center and staying in cover 95% of the time because the Sith are trying to leap up there and they will the nanosecond they have the chance. Then look for healers and take them out with interrupt, damage, pulse, damage, interrupt, damage, leg shot. If you see a group of 3-4 all together at the middle then throw your pulse grenade, makes a huge difference at the start to take out a healer and 2 ranged DPS chilling in the back, and make them blow their escape skill.

As a Sharpshooter spec, I would disagree with this. Trickshot is far superior damage, and my skill points allow it to be extremely inexpensive, not require cover, crit more often, and crit for higher damage. I would rather throw Trickshot or CB+Trickshot than hassle with sabo charge. In the flurry of PvP I would love to throw out a sabo charge after I have put my target to sleep with the grenade, but I am already managing at least 20 skills and for me, sabo charge does not make the cut.

The problem with a damage meter is that damage doesn't show everything. If I am constantly slicing droids so they stay out of the fight for 60 seconds while my DPS counterpart just keeps blasting away, guess who is on top of the damage meter? In this case, the "lazy" guy is the one who doesn't bother to CC, interrupt, or perform other utility when he has that chance, yet he is "seen" as the more competent player on a damage meter. For another example, as a Gunslinger, if I shoot my armor reduction shot and my DPS counterpart just blazes away with DPS skills 1, 2, and 3, he will do more damage because of my choice (which is the correct choice), but by your metric I will be seen as having "no interest in excelling".

Everything you listed sucks, except the last 3, which are "useful" but those are not the skills we want to use. Diversion is great against other snipers but you're talking about melees. The problem is we are slamming on our "get into cover" key and nothing happens. Then we hit it again. By then we realize something is either bugged (quite often, terrain, lag, something prevents us from covering) or we are immobilized. We have wasted 1 second at the very least just trying to get back into cover. Remember, we aren't normally running around, we are stationary to begin with, so it is not a simple task to see that we are immobilized. A nanosecond after a melee is immobilzed he can easily tell, I get hit with all sorts of ranged attacks from them, and as soon as they are free, I'm leaped upon or yanked and dead because I can't get into cover and activate Hunker Down before my bullcrap immobilize that never lasts even 2 seconds wears off. If we survive long enough to finally get cover to activate there is a 1/2 second delay at least before we can activate something. Melee characters don't have any of that nonsense to deal with. Then, if Hunker Down is on cooldown, there is about a 75% chance that before I can get one aim shot and another nice skill or two fired off, something will yank me right out of cover and a few seconds later I'm dead. I would be fine with this if I had a ranged disarm skill - disarm any melee of their weapon for 5 seconds. Yeah, let's see the whining on the boards if we were given a similar skill, to render 85% of their skills useless while they are forced to run around and do nothing for those 5 seconds. At least they could then run out of LOS. We can't, we just die.

If I am in a hurry to get into cover and start firing Aim Shot, I really can't due to the delay, so I either pace myself or use another skill. So for example, I hit cover, then immediatly hit shield, dodge, lucky shots, trickshot, quickdraw, etc., something like that that doesn't require cover, then for sure cover is ready after that time spent and I hit Aim Shot/CB/SS pulse, etc. That is the best work-around I have found to make use of the time that is being lost.

To keep it short: Hunker Down is your friend. Long version: As a level 34 Sharpshooter spec GS, I have no major issues except with Operatives killing me quickly with little to no chance to do anything. Now that I am not fighting level 50's, it should be much easier too. Assassins wish they had not come for me. They will be kicked if they are close and blasted away with Aim shot. They return, they get pulsed away and leg shot, Vital shot. If they get the jump on me I can still survive, and I'm talking about good level 40 Assassins who just can't compete with all the knockbacks we have + legshot. Sorcerors/Tracer Missile Guy/Healers are my favorite target since I interrupt their first cast/heal and save flash grenade as interrupt #2 then use the interrupt again (only 8 second cooldown) for interrupt #3, so many of their heals/attacks do nothing but waste their time. When they are half health I make sure to leg shot because then they are thinking about running but can't move. Snipers I hit immediately with Distraction, which means they stand and get blasted to half health or they run, I leg shot them, they get blasted. Good ones will do the same to me, in which case I leg shot them and run. Melee, since I am in cover all the time, they cannot leap to me or yank me anywhere. Again, if they are close to me, that is not good for them. Kick, Pulse, Flash, Aim Shot, all back them off/stop them cold. Once they are backed off, leg shot to keep them there and open up with your rotation which does a lot of damage in a short amount of time. Flourish shot, to reduce armor, is your friend here, but I have a hard time finding a spare hotkey for it. Above all: Stay in cover all the time when possible (talking Sharpshooter spec here). Don't panic and leave cover if you're attacked, unless it's 3 or more enemies, but even then you're probably dead no matter what - your best option here is flash grenade and hope it hits 2 of them, then leg shot the other and keep running. Hunker down - by far the best tool we have. So many melee come up to me with all their stuns and kicks and chokes or whatever and it does nothing. Sorcerors try to blast me away, nothing happens except I continue to unload on them. This keeps us in cover and keeps us safe. Without this I don't think I would play a Gunslinger class as I hate being constantly stunned, yanked around, leaped on, choked, whirlwinded, etc., then die. Ask yourself when you die in PvP 1v1, is it because they stunned you, knocked you around, leaped onto you from far away, cast whirldwind, etc.? All those go away if Hunker Down is up and running. When I play my Tropper Healer he is immediately pounded on or yanked around and all he has is a few things to escape, then he is stunned/knocked down, again, and again, etc. Use all your cooldowns and do not save them. When I go to battle, I'm going to be hunkering down and killing my target. Some level 48 is on me, I will blow all cooldowns possible to get the job done (Shield, Dodge, adrenals, medkits, relics, everything). Once you survive the initial part then you can push them back and unload on them, and do it multiple times as our cooldowns aren't bad at all. Huttball: Stay up as high as you can get. If your team is horrible, stay back and play defense. I get tons of kills 1v1 as the other team tries to get setup ahead for a pass. That guy is usually not thinking about fighting at all. We are not good at carrying the ball since we need cover so I see no problem playing more defensively. Leg shot+fire has killed many a ball-carrier. At the beginning, get on the ledge that is nearest to the ball and cover/hunker down and unload on people. It will take them a while to come for you due to your position. Then use the fire/leg shot if you have to run to help keep them away. Voidstar: Park near a pillar such that the enemy spawn can't see you. Anything comes into range across your view, aim shot, hunker down, leg shot, continue with all your damage shots. Some spawns you don't want to jump all the way to the ground, jump down one level, cover, and observe. Civil War: At the beginning, run ASAP to the middle and get up onto the second level however fast you can, don't stop and fight just run up there. By the time you are spotted, your allies will be so numerous right at the center they won't be able to come up the stairs and get you without getting tagged. If you have already hit your auto-run key, as soon as the speeder lands you will take off running. Leg shot the closest guy and hope it isn't a leaping Sith if you need to. Any delay obviously makes this hard but usually I can get up there with no issues, then it takes them a long time to get me down if any allies came with and I can do a ton of damage and cast flash grenade/distraction on the pack of healers/sorcerors/snipers in the back.

Abilities still have delays, but I'm seeing a lot more warping around lately. My Gunslinger has an immobilize shot, and in PvP it's used often, so I will shoot someone, forcing them to stop, and then more than 1 second later they will warp to their real location since the server has an exact fix on them now instead of an estimate, or where they used to be, etc. It's very annoying as a ranged class because often they will be out in the open but really they are out of range or behind a piller, etc., so I'm wasting huge amounts of DPS trying to shoot someone who I can see on my screen but isn't really a valid target. I'm sure a lot of this will be improved but they really just need more PvP servers, or better hardware, or something to manage everything that is going on. The big aimed shot and other shots are still a bit buggy from cover but not as bad as before the previous patch.

The other factor is that relic and adrenal usage don't break stealth, so right before they attack and leave stealth they can buff up for 15 seconds then attack, then go back to stealth. Everyone else has to take the time to use them, hotkey them, etc., usually in the middle of combat already, so it is much easier for them to prepare their buffs and attack without losing any combat time or being spotted.

They are the stealthing OPs who appear behind you, stab, knockdown, stab stab dead in melee range. Ranged OPs can use cover but they only have 2 or 3 30m ranged attacks and they don't hit anywhere near as hard as backstab or lacerate and whatever else they are using. As a Sniper, it takes me 6-7 attacks minimum to kill someone from 30m range, but usually a lot more. Snipers use range, and the hard hitting burst OPs use stealth/melee.

I'm level 32, Sharpshooter spec, and like others have said GS has tons of tools, you just need to use them, all the time, don't save them. If I think anyone is targeting me I throw up Hunker down and the shield. If they come for me so what, I'm not going anywhere. I don't care if 3 of them come you have a better chance trying to kill one than running and killing nothing. The only time I run is if I can pulse grenade and take off quickly, but it usually leads to death. In 1v1 I will move and fire leg shot if needed but 90% of the time I will just stay put, especially if hunker down is up. They come for you: Aim knocks them back, pulse sends them back, leg shot immobilizes them, kick them in the nuts, pulse grenade, and dodge. Level 50's give me trouble because of their expertise damage reduction, but I mow through 40's pretty easily, even if they are up in my face and got the jump on me. Just get back into cover, hunker down, unleash all of your tools. Sorc's are fun to kill because we can also interrupt their lightning and healing which gives us an advantage on top of all of our other tools. One level 40 assassin was so tired of me killing him last night that he just ignored the huttball action and came for me every time. In 8 battles he got the jump on me from stealth every time, and I still killed him in 5 of those 8 battles. I don't think he killed me a single time while I had hunker down up. When the enemy pulls you out of cover and you can't get back in it quickly (choke, whirlwind, Op knockdown, etc.), that's when it's bad news. I don't know of any other skill that ignores all forms of CC besides Unremitting which is a talent for Jedi Guardians that they must spend points to get.

One stat analysis I have seen done (here on the forums, not sure where I saw it) placed surge at the top of the list, because at a high level your crit is going to be 20% at least already from base (5%), buff (5%), 3 points in dirty fighting tree (6%), and cunning/aim stats. This is even if you completely ignore crit stats on items. You can get 3% more accuracy from 3 points in the sharpshooter tree, which is my spec, so my accuracy is 93%. But yeah the big question is the raid mobs and if you will be forced to increase accuracy to be effective. My ranking as I understand things so far: Surge > Power > Crit > Accuracy > Alacrity

My GS is level 32 and full Sharpshooter spec and has no issues. I have not found a boss or elite that I could not kill. Some kill Bowdaar but most of the time he survives. About half way through the fight I have done enough damage to pull aggro from Bowdaar so the mob comes for me then gets kicked or pulsed away. Against groups I pick off a guy quickly then pulse grenade 2 others if there is more than one strong and kill something else. I am usually a level ahead of the mobs I fight since I constantly PvP, so if you are having issues just do some PvP, flashpoints, or space missions to gain levels for a while then gear up with better stuff and try again. Hit the galactic trade network and see what good guns are available soon. Buy 2 of those guns to have them ready to go, then use other areas to level up so you can equip those new guns. Now at level 32 with Trickshot and the 2 skill points to reduce it's cooldown and energy cost, leveling is getting easier and I have more energy to blow through.