Could not agree with you more Qisa. It seems like I'm one of those who PVPed right from the start that you mentioned, so I always had a supply of the gear to keep me going. It suddenly makes sense why I seemed to be doing fine but always saw so much moaning on the forums.
I also agree that sniper is one of the most complex classes to play, I came from a long history of PVP in WoW so had it in mind right from the beginning. I keybind to the Q, E, R, T, F, G, V, C, X and Z keys (with A and D changed to strafe) and had the those keys plus shift all bound by level 25, plus 1-5 for some CDs, and now even have some bound with ctrl, using my mouse side button as ctrl (works great btw, try it). With all those abilities being used at some point in PVP it's easy to see how someone coming in @50 with only some keybinds that they need for PVE and being used to static combat, can really struggle!
I will also agree that we are pretty reliant on gear, however I feel that skill and experience are the bigger factor.