My 500 damage snipes on juggernauts/bountyhunters would disagree with you.

It differs between specks, but as marksman/engineer hybrid (22/16/3), i can keep doing reasonable dps indefinetly using mainly snipe, quickened ambush (when available), followthrough rotation, occasionally using rifleshot or two to regain energy, and using shattershot instead of snipe occasionally to keep armor debuff active and explosive probe (specked for max cluster bombs and energy return) when enough free energy. trying to keep interrogation probe and/or corrosive dart up can run me dry of energy though, but i can drop them occasionally without too much problem, just need a rifle shot or two before (or after) to get enough energy. The main part is, you must keep energy above 60, any dip below that level will immediatly slow done energy return, even getting to 58 will, if you don't stop using energy eating abilities cause you soon to keep going lower and soon you are energy starved.

seen it happen couple times, i think it might be, atleast partly/sometimes, due to lag.

Sniper/Gunslinger, lack of mobility, lack of utility, lack of mitigation, and having to go throught every form of defense in the game. Everyone who praises Snipers almost always either plays lethality, or mentions they are great when left alone or has a tank/healer with them. On former, lethality is not what i chose a sniper to play, i want to be a sniper, not a second rate operative without heals or stealth, on the later, that's not sniper shining, that's tank/healer being awesome. Snipers are good with backup, but most of the time, especially on pugs, we won't have it, and other classes don't need backup, or being ignored, to shine. That being said, i still love my sniper, i just wish Bioware got around to fixing us to the level of other dps specks, not sure how they might do it though. And if they don't, well, i'll keep playing on my sniper and warning other people not to pick it unless they are interested in awesome story, but relatively bad endgame experience.

Unless you're a sniper/gunslinger. Signed - Sniper

45 meter range on rifle skills, but only when in cover, and 20% less damage taken while in cover (snipe talentable to 60?, might be too much though, but don't think so considering the crap damage snipe tends to produce on any hard targets, and soft targets can either self heal, stealth or have a speed buff). Also make the shield droid scale better or give static damage reduction for it's duration (30%? talentable to 60% in engineering?). no doubt people will have loads of reasons why this would be OP, but i'm open for better ideas to buff Snipers to stand with other dps specks.

Now, i could see the 50 meter range, or the stealth, but together they seem somewhat overpowered.

Sniper PVE set is not really that awesome looking imo, operative one is better, but the helmet forces the hood into hiding. And only Rakata has decent color scheme, red and orance are so not what i want to wear while trying to stay unnoticed. But, other classes can and do have it worse, especially inquisitors (and especially the females), the poor bastards. Can't wait for the 1.2 when we can fully change our set bonusses and mods, grey imperial uniform here i come.

If they do, then one, or more, of the following is true. A. Sniper awesome gear while yours suck. B. you suck (almost all defensive cooldowns hit snipers/gunslingers, and you can easily just run out of range in most cases, and if you can't, why are you standing right beside ranged enemy and ignoring him/her). C. Sniper get extremely lucky with crits. Also, what class is not effective when being ignored by enemies?

Is it pointless?

Any actual advice on what those strengths are, and how to use them to maximum effect?

Very much this. I can see plenty of skill, stat, and/or mechanic explanations for why snipers "suck", but most "snipers are fine" comments come from people that either don't offer any justifications, play lethality (seems like nobody uses purge), offer the advice "do not get attacked", none of which is very helpfull.

Why do you ask?

For me, it's 2 things. Class Imbalances: Some classes (not naming anyone, you know who you are) are overpowered when compared to others, and there is one, possibly two AC's (again, not naming names) that are head and shoulders below the rest. No need for huge tweaks though, some restructuring in talent trees, maybe some minor mechanic changes, should fix most issues. Targetting: As it is, it is somewhere between difficult and imposible to target specific people on the fly, tab may or may not work, target closest will toarget someone who most likely is not furthest, mouse targetting is like playing whack the mole without actual moles to whack.

my least favorite planets are Quesh and Belsavis. in Quesh i was basicly travelling back and forth in one stright line to do quests, and belsavis was just boring most of the time, with long travel, constant trash packs and i loathed the mobs toward the end. Hoth was fine for most part as it's meant to be empty, and atleasti could avoid most trash mobs, and i kinda liked Corellia and its war torn landscape.

Kaliyo or Lokin. Lokin for any long or "difficult" fights, he's wearing mix of purple and blue gear. Kaliyo for easy and short fights, she's wearing almost full Tionese (couple T1 pvp purples in the mix). I also sometimes use Temple when soloing low level flashpoints, she's wearing a mix of greens, blues and purples. Kaliyo sucks for most part, she still sucks when using T1 purples, only slightly less so, but on easy fights it can help to not have the mobs in your face but further away and grouped for orbital, and not using any CC on you (stealth trooper daily on Belsavis and the droids that do a pull and exploding the drilling equipment on Ilum dailies being main places where she is actually usefull).

Class and gender. Gender defines when it's possible to flirt, Class seems to define the outcome of it.

At level 50, i use eithe Kaliyo or Lokin. Kaliyo is currently sporting full Tionese, random prototype blaster i found in False emperor hardmode and couple centurion pieces i bought with tokens (shield atleast, maybe bracers). Lokin is partway between crafted purple mods and blue mods, using orange gear for easy modding. Lokin, while lacking in dps, let's me keep going with minimal downtime, while Kaliyo, while still demanding me to stop between every 2 or 3 fights (or even every fight if enemies are elites, or groups are large) does let me stop worrying about enemy CC and knockbacks, and do more steady dps (she also adds more dps into the mix than Lokin would). I still use temple when doing low level flashpoints, either soloing for some piece of orange gear, DS/LS points or boosting guildies, she's mainly using blue mods in orange gear, with couple purples, and even couple greens, decent dps (more than Kaliyo or Lokin), but without heals and lesser mitigation causes lots of downtime at level 50 (might get better if i can be bothered to gear her up at somepoint).

I think the point was that it's easy to shine with good back up. It's also easy to shine against bad, or badly geared, opponents. And it makes this less sniper pvp video, and more a general pvp video captured by someone playing sniper.

Character Name: Scar Race: Cyborg (one eye covered) Body Type: 3 Scars Option: scarred all over Hair: bald

Targetting sucks: clicking people does not work most of the time, tab keeps targetting people out of range, using the "target closest" does not target the person closest to me. Got other issues, but i suspect most people would just claim i'm whinging (mostly class specific, i play marksman sniper), but the targetting is an issue that shafts everyone.

it's one way to make up for the lack of mobility of marksmanship snipers, not an issue in pve (and increased range in pve would not be overpowered), but in pvp the combat is often too mobile that it's almost impossible to pick a target and keep at them due to people running in and out of our range without even intentionally trying to avoid us.

Actually the sniper rifle fits right in as far as i'm concerned, sure, not good for stealthy kills, but i prefer my character be the type of agent that gets in, does his stuff, and gets out without nobody noticing anything has gone wrong, and corpses are kinda of a big tip of that something is not right. Also, i prefer more infiltration and less stealth route, false identities, fake papers, forged authorizations (or genuine authorizations aqcuired under false pretenses), instead of sneaking into places, you march in through the front door, loudly complain about the decor, accuse people of insufficient safety measures, and so on and so forth. If i want someone dead, i either engineer an accident, or shoot them from a mile away with my sniper rifle, no sneaking about for me thank you.

Kaliyo sucks, with good gear she sucks somewhat less, but still sucks. Get her quest gear during levelling and dump her for Lokin asap, no need to buy stuff of GTN in my opinion. I'm at level 50, and have Kaliyo almost fully at Tionese gear (blue level 50 gloves, some T1 pvp purples, but 4/5 of the tank pve set), and now she is finally of some use in solo fights against small groups or single elites with no adds, but even then mostly just stopping the enemy from forcing me out of cover or using knockbacks, i could just as easily use Temple who is mostly in blues, kill the enemy in shorter time, and loose as much health on myself as Kaliyo would have lost when tanking (but would have to deal with the debuffs, knockbacks and other crap).

I've played nice with Vector, i justify it in character with my character being habitually manipulative (and i'm stuck with him, so better act nice as long as it doesn't harm our effectiveness or jeapordice the mission), but after having seen the Killiks in Alderaan (no real contect with them in EU books i've read), i get this feeling we might be wisest to just nuke them from orbit. Seriously, they're like an uglier and less efficient (not to mention dumber) version of the borg with their constant assimilations.