Ok I'll try the spam key bit but maybe I am just too slow. Seems like detonator takes forever to go off. Huttball I tend to try to stay up in the rails but as the match goes on it seems like we are constantly losing the rails so I can't get up there before I get nailed by a charging Warrior or a ninja. Its also quite possible I am just on a bad server for Repub (Shadowhand). We tend to lose I'd say 3 out of 5 matches. These are also random draws with no premades. It usually takes a few minutes for us to gell inside the match. Usually by then we are down by 2 or 3. Oddly I find that I am really good at is holding a door or turret. Which is contrary to what other folks say. Flash bang is awesome for this. Area Stun FTW. When I am taking cover at the door it is the sole purpose to push folks away as I play Johnny on the spot. So flash then push and you can buy a lot of time while waiting for a teamate or 5 to come out of spawn point or to run to the turret. I find myself doing that a lot in the Voidstar matches I am in. Otherwise I am behind the pillars or in cover on one of the containers. These are the types of things I really do have fun with and what keeps me coming back. That's great in team play but you are relying heavily on your team to finish the job as you are usually just about dead when they arrive. It also spreads out your damage and you are less likely to get kill credit. I still have not figured out Voidstar's logic for granting the equivalent of defender points. So at the end of the match all I really have is my damage score. If I die a lot trying to save a door or turret (can be frequent) the score is lower as damage is lower. We may still win the match but rewards are low compared to effort. While I do appreciate what you and some other posters are saying I still feel that cover does nerf the experience. At some point you have to drop down. That's two clicks of the mouse. Drop + Attack. To the best of my knowledge no other class needs two clicks to attack with strength. I never said I did not not have fun, I just said it was hard and frustrating more than any other class. Not something you want to try starting out. Furthermore, unless I have some back up (healing) I tend to win less medals despite the higher DPS. I blame that on the extra click that does not result in doing damage leaving my opponent with a sliver of health left. Add in stuns pushing you out of cover and that can mean a lot of extra wasted clicks. This means less commendations/valor and slower gear progression. I still have a lot of fun in Flash Points/PvE. I just feel nerfed in PvP.

Ok thanks for those links. A lot what was said was not totally unlike what I said though I do disagree with a few points. Positioning is key but the first link he is putting out WAY more damage then I am. I should assume this is because I am in Champion gear verus Battlemaster? Huttball In Huttball it is well known about the rails. I get cleaned up before I can get up there except for the beginning of the match. Occasionally I can hide by a generator but they can trace my shots back to me. For a brief moment I can go all out but never enough to actually kill anyone before they leave LoS unless the ball goes immobile because folks pass the ball back and forth to each other without really moving. Usually this happens when they concentrate so much on the ball they ignore me. Most times I am in the rails I get ninja'd and knocked off to the bottom. Stun to take me out of cover then force push off the edge. I tend to get caught up in a scrum underneath or on the way back to the rails. Die and then start back at spawn point. Rinse and repeat. My shots give me away and the shield is a glowing blue/white target symbol. So I can do burst damage succesfully but this not really helping move the huttball which is ther reall goal of the warzone. I can also help slow a ball carrier. But this assumes I can actually stay on the rails. Warriors love to charge me as I am runing to the outer rail or as I am going up the ramp from the spawn point. Turrets (forgot WZ name) If I try do do as suggested in the mid for the turrets I tend to end up very lonely and no DPS do to lack of targets after the main initial scrum. Also it is hard to see the right side with that camera angle. Imps usual hold the snow side turret and come from that direction. The side turrets seem to be the favored spots to hold (particularly as of late). During the main scrum of the mid turret as soon as I light up my guns I am target number one it seems. However I at least get to do some damage before I go. Voidstar. Yeah I hold the door not worrying about my life. Hence may comment way back in the thread about moving up to the door and dropping cover so I can use push back. This after I drop Flash bang if I am by myself. This is then followed by a series of stuns from the enemy and I die but usually hold the door. Respawn and repeat with some time (depending on how bad we are doing) to try and put out damage before my push back at the door again. Voidstar I have the most fun in even though I won't be getting very many badges. Nothing like disappointing a potential sabatuer at the last moment. Also becuase the action tends to happen at the door I can actually lay down some impressive firepower (relatively speaking). I can also use the cover infront of the door to attack. Its one of the few times I really feel like a "Gun Slinger." However if no one is going for the door (seems like half the matches I am in no one does) its a whole nother ballgame. I barely get past the drop form the spawn point before I have someone on me. I have tried using cover to move around the battlefield. Its kuldge at best. In the heat of the moment you may not be in a location where there is cover that rolls to your benefit. I do not have cover taking up hotbar space. Its the default on middle mouse button (have a Naga mouse if it matters to you so I have the others mapped to the side of the mouse). I have never argued that a Gun Slinger does not have awesome DPS. I tend to be in the top 3 in DPS when I can actively participate the whole match versus sitting on a no action turret or door for a bit. However I can never finish the job. I always find myself just behind my opponent. I have been blaming the cover mechanic because it takes an extra action. Crouch will also take an extra action. My Killls to Damage are way out of whack. I average about 150k or so damage a session when I participate (versus sitting lonely at a turret or door for over half the match). I get the opponent down so close, use everything I got and die (unless a healer is there to heal me, in which case I can finish the job but they usually heal the tanks). Frustrating. I ahve them down to sliver of health but can't drop them. Depending on whether or not there is an opponents healer around I may not get the kill after I die. I tend to die about 10-15 times a match , sometimes more where I do a lot self sacrifice to protect a door/turret. Typical kill count for me is around 12-16. So Usually I get the 10 kill badge, the 75k badge and usually the 2.5k damage badge. 2-3 Badges. That drops me towards the bottom of the list at almost every WZ session (so no votes). I get the same amount of badges if I defend a turret and basically do nothing all game except maybe defend the turret once or twice. So after a few matches it can start to get depressing. On the score board you look like a non-participant. You deal wild amounts of damage (relatively speaking) with little to show at the end of the match. I compare that with the top damage folks and usually see them with 200k-250k and 30-40 or so kills per match (these I believe are usually Commando's or Imp equivalent). Occasionally I see someone top the 300k mark. Now switch over to my Scoundrel. He's 39. I have a blast in the warzones. I can heal on the run unless I need my big heal and my heal that uses UpperHand is always ready except for the beginning of the battle. I am imposible to kill while upperhand is up unless I get seriously ganged up on to overcome my instaheal. I can also go invise in an instant if necessary. If I start casting my big heal I tend to end up dead fairly quick but becuase I am moving around folks tend not to notice as much. I am guessing not all teams mark the healer or the leader is not present to mark me. However I can tell when I have been marked. I am dead as soon as I show up. Still I score mid to upper tier depending on how often I am slaughtered. I can still put out a lot of damage with back blast running around and helping people finish kills and not having to worry about LoS issues. At the same time I am healing people. I get Badges for healing, Badges for Killing and Badges for Damage. I also get votes. And I tend to win one on one matches at about about 70% of the time. World of difference there. Gunslinger hands down is harder to play PvP and not the optimum choice for PvPing. I have not been convince cover does not play into a good part of that. You can have success and I am sure there are exceptional people out there that are even more dexterous then I and certainly more reflex oriented. However the damages I see reported on these informative how to play your character websites reflect nothing I see in the warzones I have played in. Perhaps once I am finally able to wear battlemaster I will change my mind but the overall tactic is about the same so I would have to have more damage resistance/health. I am a little over 16k health and a little over 23% damage resistance atm without expertise factored. I would also have to kick out a lot more damage (2k-3k is my norm with some rare crits putting it over 4k).

Ok, As I said in my post, I don't see a winning strategy. For those of you who choose to comment about flash bang then kill or something like that you are either somehow able to kick out a lot more damage then I am (I can go for gear being better but that seems like there must be an awesome difference between the Champ tiers and Battlemaster then) because flash bang only lasts 6 seconds and breaks as soon as damage occurs. Kick is even shorter but does not break on damage. But now what? That trick only works once. You won't see the cool downs comeback before you die (again I am willing to say that Battlemastyer is way uber than champ gear and you just get OP but I don't know and can't say). Do you drop back in to cover? Be honest and productive here. Some accuse me of not understanding how to play my character but I disagree. I understand how to play my character from a defensive stand point. I am theoretically a semi mobile turret. If I move I loose my big damage abilities unless I settle back down. If I stay still I need support. I don't melt face unless I have time to setup shop AND the enemy stands in my LoS (Line of Sight). That extra tickl of dropping into cover makes the difference. instead of an attack action I perform a non-movement type of movement action. That one tick allows the enemy to attack me one extra time. If I somehow manage to get far enough away and I choose to drop in cover smart enemies won't stay in LoS, at least not for long. Nothing like starting out a "channeled" shot when the enmey can hide behind a pixel to stop it (Huttball is famous for this where small girders which don't really block LoS seem to do so). Also I am not in a premade team. Using my flash bang can be pretty useless because some nutter comes along and AoE's or DoT's thinking they are going to help me but then procedes on to another target. Happens a lot more then you think. Also what good is it to flashbang then kick as then you have to have just one movement fix to get out the jam. That's like double stunning a target. They need to be spread out some. For warzones I reserve flash bang for when a door or turret is being mobbed/zerged and I have to buy time for help to arrive. That is typically the best use. If I start laying AoE's to stop the door/turret from being taken then I Invite the enemy to fight back and kill me versus having the full time of the flash grenade plus the time it takes to kill me. I have even taken a turret using flash bang. Flash bang right before you click. However if my flash is on cool down because I used it in a one on one fight I am out of luck. Champ gear is available as soon as you hit 50. You get bags with a chance of champ gear drop as rewards for PvP quests. Additionally you can buy those bags once you have 200 merc and 200 commendations. It always contains tokens for Champion and Centurion gear. You end up going a mix of the two as you progress from 0 valor to (I assume since I am not there yet but I think patch 1.2 changes this) valor 60 or 65 to get battlemaster. My point with the post is that basing a class on Cover is anti-PvP. Initiative and mobility are your biggest assets in PvP. PvE is a whole 'nother story. From what I can tell I cannot alter the trend of weak damage if I go mobile just by using stuns. I have to setup shop to pull out the big guns or I can try to draw things out using the available LoS breaks but melee based class will just follow me around as I wait for Kick to come off cool down. Not like I can out run them as they will either use speed burst or charge to close (assuming they did not in the initial part of the encounter). Another strategy is to go Ninja one me. It is wazy easy to close on a gunslinger in cover and not very easy for the gunslinger to consistently get away from the enemy. Someone else suggested going up the Dirty fighting tree. While this would likely help in PvP (I have to try it though it is not the same tree as the Scoundrel Dirrty fighting I believe) I fear that it will nerf me when the same day I need to switch back to go with my guikd on Flashpoints and Ops. I can pay the extra cost to switch back and forth regualrly but that seems like a design flaw in concept. Why force a class to pay more to enjoy PvP? Keep in mind I said Gunslinger is like ultra hard mode when in PvP. Its taht you cannot have success, its that it is more difficult and considerably less likely to be enjoyed if you don't game experience already. I hear you about Han Solo. I see him as "a gun slinger" even though he does not dual wield. Maybe Scoundrel DIrty FIghting tree would describe him better? Keep in mind this my first toon and I was hooked on the concept and genre. Part of what I was trying to point out was for folks who did not know and thought as I did just by the name that Gunslinger and Han Solo should be synonymous. Remember this was a post meant to both inform and critique. I shared my experience and I am sure others will vary which is why I asked if there was a winning strategy to point it out. After going into so many warzones as a level 50 (not something one should do admittedly which is why I give room for gear) I relayed what I experienced and my opinion on the matter backing up what I thought with what I experienced. Properly supported a Gunslinger can kick tail but that is only if supported. One on won I have yet to win a battle of equals (gear aside since I don't know the looks to judge) with any other class other than my own. This would indicate if there is a winning strategy its not very intuitive hence making the class hard to play in PvP. PvE on the other hand was very intuitive and straight forward. Additionally, my other point was cover must go. Nothing I have seen so far counters my cover must go concept. Everything I have seen so far says don't use cover (duh that was point). Its high overhead to maintain (from a dev point of view) and it is mostly a non-starter in PvP (unless you are supported). It is anti-PvP in concept. Stand still and give the first action to the enemy (this assumes you are moving along like heading towards a turret and you just enocountered the enemy as they just encountered you). You can try a stun then run technique which will work most likelly to get you to the turret but unless you have someone helping you all you have done is delay the inevitable. Or you can stun and drop and then kick out the big guns or you can stun and dance around hoping you avoid the enemy (who if is melee based you won't have success). In a perfect opportunity where you can slow the advance of the enemy via support (obstacles break LoS) and you have clear LoS you can kick out serious damage. Getting those circumstance against a human thinking opponent is a random Warzone match is very hard to come by. I think that is what most players coming to the game will encounter. Sure you can join a PvP guild and go in premade with strategy but how often does that really happen when compared with the entire population of the game? Not very. A premade group will beat any random group every time. Coordination with people you know (at least virtually anyway) and likely backed up by Vent or some other voice service is a huge advantage that really cannot be over come when all things are equal (at level 50 they are level wise).

My gear is not the top tier but is is nice. Valor rank 40 gives me Champ gear. Only Battlemaster is better. That still won't help one on one. Either you sacrifice your bigs and move around or lose intiative and drop into cover. I think you are thinking of the other IA class (not sure what is off the top of my head) which is the Scoundrel equivalent of a close in fighter. They are nasty becuase they can keep coming at you with instant attacks as their equivalent of upper hand basically procs all teh time. Scoundrel can do the same thing with Pistol whip. As you pointed out, mobility is key. Dropping down in the middle of a fight is typically reserved for holding a door or turret. It allows us to use the equivalent of force push which you use when you are trying to buy time and spread out the zerg on teh turret/door. In that one instance it is a huge benefit to do so (think door and Void Star in particular). 1.2 is supposed to fix kick (IA's don't suffer form the bug where kick does not work if you move) so it can be used on the move but I have to be right next to you to use it. I can use stun grenade which has saved many a zerged turret but only if folks recognize what I did and pick targets versus AoE them. Also if they were dotted by someone else before I attacked they break right out of it. Its not to say that Gunslinger can't kick tail but it needs to be the perfect circumstance where the opponent can't easily get behind an obstacle to break LoS or goes immediately ninja. Once an opponent closes they have the advantage becuase they can continue to move and they are designed for close combat. If I try the same tactic I can jump around and use the same obstacles but I cannot use my key abilities. The ones that separate me from the other classes. My high damage abilties require cover. This adds that extra step that costs intiative. Imagine a Sage who could not use force lightening unless they kneeled first. Its bad enough you have to channel it, but if you had to wait a tick to start it you might find yourself too late. In the end we all are roughly powered the same its the mechanic that is the problem. Supported properly a Gunslinger can be VERY effective. But when you are not doing a premade group this is not likely to happen. Eveyone can find something effective to do but I find playing a Gunslinger in PvP downright difficult unless I have a power advantage on the enemy. In a balanced fight I lose (unless against another Gunslinger/Sniper).

This is an attempt at constructive criticism as well as to be informative for inexperienced players. Background: I started playing ToR during Beta I think around September-October. One of the classes I chose to try out was Smuggler. I had looked forward to playing the class and making the typical Han Solo type character. For me that was the Gunslinger. Before I got to the advanced class I noticed a problem with cover. It was very hard to actually get into cover and it was a detriment to playing (thought I did not find out how bad until later). I wrote in feedback that they should consider dropping cover as a mechanic for a variety reasons. The main reasons I listed were cost of development, the lack of game realism/environment, and the pervasiveness of bugs inherent to trying to track collisions and make it viable throughout the life of the game. The cost of development for something like cover should be pretty high. You have to be able to program all collisions and remove invalid collisions or deal with going around objects (think of moving a character to cover and they roll on the ground over some rocks to get there). Without going into the technical minutiae of programming, collisions are basically one of the hardest things to program for. Now develop a class that specializes in needing constant collision detection for cover. This means a lot more hours should be dedicated to this class than the others. I realize I am simplifying things as all characters and objects have to deal with collisions but this is an additional collisions test not present on the other three base classes. They all follow the same basic cookie cutter collisions that any 3D game would need. Collisions are hard and I am not belittling the other classes but rather demonstrating how much more work this adds to the game development. So you basically have one set of classes that will require extra man hours for every update and patch. While this is a unique idea and I think Bioware did a good effort trying to think outside of the box it is ultimately a burden. One can choose to accept this burden as a part of business decision which is fine. Just keep in mind it is an additional cost or a reduction in quality if you don’t pay the cost of the labor. Another aspect of the cover mechanism is the silly notion that in a firefight only one base class will “go for cover” and the rest will just suck it up. The only time I see that is with the genre classic Storm Troopers. They always charge in a line and die. It’s their job. They are the perfect NPC’s. Everyone else at some point in the firefight will go to cover. This removes what I call game realism. It affects the environment and it just seems odd. When I play any other class I instinctively hit my mouse wheel to duck. I want to move into a position to reduce or remove line of sight. Now most people will try to find a wall, vehicle, big rock and etc to hide behind, the smuggler class is supposed to automatically go to cover using a mechanic. But what if I want to hide behind a wall? Well I can only go to cover if I can continue to have line of sight (programming overhead?). So even though there is a wall in front of me I can’t use it for cover because I can’t shoot back. So now it is decision time. Do I move to the wall where things can’t shoot me or do I drop where I am (or not if you have a little green guy somewhere on the screen which could conveniently be placed where the enemy just dropped its AoE) and try to shoot back? Either way I have to give up initiative and wait a tick before I shoot back if I can shoot back. Let me tell you what to do in this position. Run to the wall. You are already done you might as well as not give them more time to target you continually. Someone may come and help. If both you and your opponent put out the same amount of damage the other guy already won. However if you go to the wall you can buy time. Either way you are dead without help because the only way to pull out the big guns is to go to cover and make yourself the perfect target. I’ll touch more on this later. The last problem with these collisions is that they inevitably lead to bugs. Take cover somewhere you don’t want for example. Find yourself stuck in cover. Cover also sometimes moves you into fire (like the AOE I mentioned earlier) or it moves you out of range of your target. My understanding is that the latter two may be addressed or somewhat addressed in the 1.2 update. Point is that it will always affect the quality of the game play because there will be some unpredictable results. With each additional area or zone added this will multiply. To try and address it requires the overhead I mentioned earlier but invariably the more complex something is the more likely there will be a failure. The more opportunities to fail and the more likely you will fail. Today (Pre 1.2): Fixes Bioware implemented did help regarding PvE. Cover became considerably more useable. It’s not perfect. I have been known to go to cover and be pulled out of range of my target. Still it is a lot better than it was regarding PvE. It is more simplified. When it comes to PvP, cover need to go. This is the heart of why I am posting this on the forum since I made the earlier comments to the beta team. I did not discover this restriction in beta as I did not PvP. I rarely got a character beyond the starting planet before they were wiped. Farthest I got was Taris in Beta. I played probably 8 or so hours a week. Furthermore, after the release of the game I was so interested in completing the story line I did not PvP my Gunslinger until level 50. However, now with a valor ranking in the 40’s I think I can safely say I am saying this with some level of authority. Requiring the cover mechanic automatically degrades the PvP capabilities of the class. If you want to PvP (they can be very fun battle zones, I recommend it) don’t play the Gunslinger. Although the entire Smuggler class uses cover, the Gunslinger MUST use cover. Its sole basis as a class is to be DPS (Damage Per Second) from its cover screen or in game cover. The only points you can get other than for kills or objectives is Damage. Kinda nerfs ya in the badge department (increases valor awarded at teh end of the match). This basically means you will absolutely hate huttball (which can be very fun in a Scoundrel which can stealth) because you have all sort of obstacles to break line of sight and if you move you will have to drop cover again automatically handing the initiative to the attacker. That in a nutshell is the “game/fun factor” reason cover needs to be removed from the game. It should be replaced with something else that INCLUDES an attack abiltiy as a part of the activation. I am still pondering this as I figure I should have something creative otherwsie commando and Gunslinger can be too similar. When you encounter an enemy who is of equivalent level (which should mean power as well) if they are not a gunslinger you will lose if you play a gunslinger. The enemy will jump around and peck at you while you try to track them as they move between obstacles. Maybe they go poof ninja on you. Not like you can spot them because even though you are an immobilized defensive player, you don’t have any help to detect stealth. Point is eventually they will close on you with very little damage if any to them. You have one ability that is like a force push and its your only PvP like ability outside of stun/kick. You have to be in cover to use it. You can’t use it on the run so it’s really useless in many cases (not all). So when they close on you it will buy you about 3 seconds. Then they will come back and kill you. It will not come off cool down until long after you are dead. If you move you will lose the benefit of cover within a few seconds (assuming you put points in this in your tree, otherwise it is instantaneous) and of course all of your big attacks go away. In PvE you will likely be able to kill the opponent and it is no big deal. In PvP the opponent is smart (usually) and waits till they can close and kills you since you are not likely to move and you have no real ability to help yourself (no heals unless you had a medpack and you already used your force push). Keep in mind all characters have medpacks. Lord help you if you encounter a healer, they bubble then force push or choke you out of cover guaranteeing either a) you continue to give up initiative by going back to cover or b) they win because they can use their big damaging abilities without cover. The enemy will basically always strike you first. Either because you ducked to cover as your first action or because they used obstacles to get close or because their abilities don’t require cover and you try to move to a better position. Cover automatically removes initiative because your first action is defensive and your opponent’s first action is to attack. In the end cover sacrifices mobility and initiative. You gain only the ability to not be charged or harpooned. Same thing as if you had moved behind that wall (remember I said move to the wall earlier, this is why). It appears that cover’s DR (20% if I recall correctly) is nerfed in PvP. I get nuked regularly when in cover. They go right through it. This is in mostly champion gear. So I have found that unless I am sitting on a door or turret I am always out of cover (occasionally I can sit in the atrium on mid but that reduces my line of site so I can’t see the enemy coming until they are in middle). I end up using my dot, my grenade, my regular shot and my kick. I use flash grenade if trying to hold a door or turret (you see it go off DON’T touch the targets until help arrives). Then I die. Maybe someone has found a winning strategy but I can’t see one. Cover = no fun in PvP. Cover is everything PvP was not meant to be. It IS killer in PvE if there are no glitches (mostly fixed). However that is only because the computer opponent is not very smart. I don’t see any way to get cover to work in PvP. It is strictly a PvE mechanic. You might try adding stun resistance and increased stealth detection but at the end of the day you are always giving up initiative and mobility. These are not qualities that will endear you to PvP. Oh and Huttball? Forget it. Unless you have an uber power advantage like all level 40’s facing a group of level 20’s, you will find experienced characters will not let you sit there and snipe them. They will coordinate and wipe you out. Also, only in the center do you have a clear line of sight. So if you play huttball just expect to die a lot because you have no movement capabilities and you don’t have the armor. In fact in many battles I have found that I am intentionally targeted so I can never move into defensive position. Just be there to receive the pass and pass it off quickly because having the ball makes you the target more so than usual and you can’t take cover and move with the ball. The list goes on but I am hoping that this gets the point across. Think of the Gunslinger class as an ultra hard mode where everyone works against you. It’s not that you can never have success; you just will find it a lot harder (in PvP, easier actually in PvE). And depending on your inclination (some people enjoy butting heads with a wall) you are not likely to enjoy the class unless you are strictly PvE.