Gunslinger PVP Tips and Tactics (Sharpshooter)

[Zedakah]

I'm seen a few threads asking how to pvp as a gunslinger, so I decided to make a thread where people can give some advice. If you have questions, feel free to post. If you have advice, feel free to post.

 

 

I am not a level 50 expert on pvp, but I have pvp'd enough so far to find out a few useful tricks for this class. Currently, I'm a sharpshooter gunslinger, which isn't very mobile for pvp, but it still can be deadly if played correctly. I usually end up top 1 or 2 damage every warzone with multiple medals, just by playing smart. In my opinion, gunslinger is one of the easiest classes to pvp successfully, possibly because other players don't know how deadly we can be. So here are a few tips as a sharpshooter.

 

Cover placement.

 

This is probably the most important aspect of a sharpshooter in pvp. You do not want to run into the middle of a melee fight, hit cover and start shooting. Know the warzones, and know a few places to put cover. For example in huttball, place your cover behind the fire or acid. When they come up to you, leg shot them and laugh.

 

Some people like to be in high cover to get a good overview. The downside of this is that ALL enemy players can see you just as easy (if not more easily) than being low to the ground. Being perched on high, will make you more of a target than being halfway hidden behind a pillar. However, one on one, high cover on a ledge is nice because you can blast people off and continue to dps them. So, there are pros and cons to a high perch.

 

Know when to break your cover and run. We have a lot of abilities to get away from people, but that doesn't mean everytime a melee class comes within range you should pick up and flee. If you are alone or on the front line and enemies are charging, then run back to your allies.

 

However, one on one (sometimes 2 on 1) melee does not always warrant an escape. This is partially because you are much more protected inside cover than outside. Once you lift up your cover, you are exposing yourself to multiple more CCs, slows, jumps all with less defenses. Often, it's best to hunker down and fight off a melee. With aimed shot knocking people back + leg shot, cheap shot, flash grenade, Pulse Detonate, hunker down, dodge..... You have a lot of abilities to keep people away and reduce your damage taken.

 

That said, just be smart. You are not invincible in cover, so it's much better if you pick up and run from an army of sith. If you are with one other person facing 4+ enemies, then you might want to consider running like a coward (maybe take out someone with low health), but running back to your living team members will help your team more than 2 people trying to be heroes. The exception is if you are protecting nodes and prolonging the enemy from capturing. This is where your grenades can be quite annoying to them.

 

Use Your Crowd Control

 

When you find a good placement, don't just start shooting like a madman. If you see one team member fighting 3 sith within your range, throw a flash grenade and help him out. You'd be surprised the damage you and one other dps class can pump out when you are at max range and use crowd control abilities.

 

Smoke grenade is not just for enemy snipers. It works well against melee too.

 

Use your interrupt. The worst part about this is the in-game lag that prevents me from using it with the move I want to interrupt. However, in pvp a sorcerer is always casting something, so it's rarely going to be wasted even if you don't interrupt the correct move.

 

Know Your Weakness and Strengths

 

Although the game has only been out for a few weeks (if you played early), we're still learning the paper, rock, scissors of the classes.

 

We have very good protection from stuns in cover, but whichever class rips you out of cover is the class that naturally shines against us. I can't remember if this is the sorcerer or sith warrior, but once I'm out of cover I'm fresh meat for other stuns, slows, jumps.

 

A stealth character has a natural jump on our class, because our class is about planning (cover placement, charging aimed shot, line of sight, etc...) as well as being away from allies. However, even if a stealther gets the jump on you, you can still win a 1v1 fight by using your knockbacks and stuns. If you are far away from your team, picking up and running might be worse than staying to fight the stealther. If it's 2 stealthers against you there's not much you can do. I generally can take down one stealther of the two by using CC, knockbacks and leg shot.

 

Bounty Hunters seem to be very balanced with our class. I usually can take them down, but on the chance one gets the jump on me 1v1 and beats me, I usually have him down to under 10% health. I like where we are at vs bounty hunters balance wise.

 

Other snipers can be taken down quickly if you get the jump. Just throw a smoke grenade and dps as quickly as possible. I think you can run up to a sniper in cover, throw down your cover, aim shot or pulse detonator and knock him away and out of cover; but I'll double check that tonight. If that's the case, you can do that and throw your smoke grenade when he tries to go back in cover, preventing him from being in cover for about 10-15 seconds....which is enough time to gain the edge.

 

Sith Marauders typically are my targets if all enemies are at full health. When in doubt, shoot the one with 2 lightsabers. They have medium armor, can be taken down fairly quick, have trouble getting within melee range of you (especially if you knockback) and do lots of damage if left alone. Healers are also a top priority, but they are actually hard to pick-out until you see them healing, which I do like about this game.

 

If you are having trouble with energy at low levels, it gets much better. Once you get foxhole and +10 energy, I feel like my energy never comes close to halfway. If it does, then just use cool head and you won't have another problem for a while.

 

Random Tips

 

Be aware of your allies just as much as your enemies.

Just because sith warriors can't jump to you doesn't mean you are at a safe distance from them. All they will do is tab an ally next to you, jump, then attack you.

 

Don't place your cover on the very edge of a ledge.

Give people room to get between you and a ledge so you can knock them off. I believe there's also another jump that enables sentinels/sith warriors to jump at you in cover. They will be unable to use this against you on a ledge if you are far enough away from the edge of the ledge. I'm still trying to learn all the moves of the other classes as well as my own, so I apologize for not knowing 100% of these facts.

 

Use Aim Shot Wisely.

If you see a melee running toward you, charge up your aimed shot and blast him away (knockback within 10 yards), immediately followed by a leg shot. This will put both abilities on cooldown, which is what you want in that situation. This way, the melee will come at you again, so you can use Pulse detonator to send him flying back. Aim shot should be up soon, so this way if you time your moves right, you will have gotten off 2 aimed shots and a few charged blasts (and trickshots) without ever being touched. You still have dirty kick, dodge and other tricks to use, so by the time the melee actually gets to you; he should be close to dead. Of course, if nobody is remotely near you, then use it.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Zedakah

[Thiweo]

Good post. I think it is very informative. Thanks.

[KretanMelithorn]

Very good post. I am still having a little trouble in PVP (but that's more due to the Empire v. Republic discrepancy). Still, there was a lot in there that I can use. Appreciate the sharing.

[shadowAI]

*Go to preferences -> keybindings (bottom tab). Change "cover in place" to "f" and cover to "shift-f".

*Have weapons out at all times in pvp by pressing z.

*Press f for cover from now on.

**If you want to charge ahead to a cover position (green showing) press shift-f (like a teleport)

 

Now pressing f for cover will reduce the cover time by over a second compared to someone who didnt do the above.

 

Reading sniper guides will give you many hints such as the above.

Edited December 29, 2011 by shadowAI

[Zedakah]

*Go to preferences -> keybindings (bottom tab). Change "cover in place" to "f" and cover to "shift-f".

*Have weapons out at all times in pvp by pressing z.

*Press f for cover from now on.

**If you want to charge ahead to a cover position (green showing) press shift-f (like a teleport)

 

Now pressing f for cover will reduce the cover time by over a second compared to someone who didnt do the above.

 

Reading sniper guides will give you many hints such as the above.

 

 

This is a good tip that I have been doing as well. Also, it's a good trick in pve too. I read somewhere that if you drop your personal cover behind a natural cover object, you still get the benefit of the natural cover, so that's what I've been doing. I don't have a way to confirm that though. Placing your own cover saves you the hassle of "aim shot......cancelled" bug that happens constantly in natural cover.

[Gassygunslinger]

This is a good tip that I have been doing as well. Also, it's a good trick in pve too. I read somewhere that if you drop your personal cover behind a natural cover object, you still get the benefit of the natural cover, so that's what I've been doing. I don't have a way to confirm that though. Placing your own cover saves you the hassle of "aim shot......cancelled" bug that happens constantly in natural cover.

 

Yep, as the creator of the Cover Compendium, you can still get the full benefit of natural cover if you drop portable cover behind natural cover objects. In reality, the green gumby's are merely suggestions. You don't need to be glued to cover.

[DarthSunshine]

What do you guys use fr your movement keys?

[stealthrider]

I'm not sure if it's the same ability for Snipers, but Headshot does not work in PvP...

[junkfunk]

Very solid pointers. Thanks for the write-up.

 

I'd like to add that in Voidstar, if you're feeling particularly devious, Hunker Down in the middle of one of the two bridges, wait for everyone to swarm you while trying to knock you off the edge, and then return the favor by using Pulse Detonator. My personal best is 5.

 

Great fun to be had for all.

 

[cool_kid]

Very solid pointers. Thanks for the write-up.

 

I'd like to add that in Voidstar, if you're feeling particularly devious, Hunker Down in the middle of one of the two bridges, wait for everyone to swarm you while trying to knock you off the edge, and then return the favor by using Pulse Detonator. My personal best is 5.

 

Great fun to be had for all.

 

 

I tried doing that.. Voidstar war zone and i just sat in the middle of the bridge waiting for a pack of sith assassins and sith warriors and marauders, then, poof.. four of them fell off the edge and the other feel off after an aim shot (i think that is what it is called.. has the enemy fall back ten meters) anyway its really successful. Also another thing i like to do is in Huttball, nut kick a ball carrier when they try to cross a fire pit, very successful! and that same bounty hunter tried to pull that same trick on me by using the grappling hook and then stun darting me, but luckily a with assassin came along and nocked me off before the fire got me.

Edited January 1, 2012 by cool_kid

[Boozsha]

What do you guys use fr your movement keys?

 

I use both mouse clicks to move. W to strafe left and R to strafe right. V is my auto run.

[Bosseking]

I don't like sharpshooter in pvp. I played around as saboteur and DD and learned to love the kiting abilities with 30% slow. I specced back to SS today to remind me how it works.

 

Well, the damage is ridicilous. I did 285k at Huttball (lvl 44) which was more than 100k above everyone else. The problem is the mobility and kiting. Basically you don't want to get away from cover with SS because while running your damage done is in bare minimum and you don't have any kiting abilities. In cover however you just take way too much damage. I nuked down some lvl 12 guardian to 75% before he even touched me and he still managed to take 50% off me before he died!

 

Also I really wonder if some of our abilities even effing work in pvp. Dodge (if it even activates no matter how many times you press it) is supposed to give 100% dodge to all ranged and melee attacks for 3 sec but everyone just keep pounding right through it. Is there something I'm missing with that? With no combat log I constantly get baffled what attacks take 20% health off me while I have that on. Or diversion. 45% less accuracy for 9 seconds for my enemy sounds really good in paper, but in reality it doesn't seem to be more than a wasted global cooldown.

 

Our defense in general sounds good when you read the tooltips of our spells but it isn't. In pure damage race I find myself losing even with a level advantage. Lvl 50's just **** me. With dirty fighting I could just apply dots and run around kiting with leg shot. If my opponent got near me I still had dirty kick and pulse shock. Like this I actually stood a chance in 1v1's even while being more vulnerable outside cover.

 

I think I'm gonna go back to DD. I can't dish the amount of damage I could with SS but at least I don't feel useless when someone actually attacks me.

[Zedakah]

Dirty fighter is definitely the more mobile tree for pvp. Sharpshooter seems to be the raid boss spec for gunslinger, but it is still viable in pvp. It's just a preference issue I think.

 

I like finding inconspicuous places for going into cover and dishing out the damage. I played a warzone the other day and the top 4 damage/kills in voidstar were all gunslingers. So this class definitely can dish out the damage in pvp - probably because people don't yet know how deadly we are.

 

The key aspect of cover-pvp seems to be keeping melee off of you. Aimed shot + leg shot, pulse + leg shot, dirty kick + leg shot are all invaluable ways of keeping distance between you and melee. The only melee I've seen survive an onslaught of my blasters and CC are tanks, but they don't seem to do enough damage to take me down before I can take them down.

[Kezrik]

I'm only level 20 but I strongly prefer cover and Sharpshooter, since the moment I start "kiting" someone using another Gunslinger spec or with any of my other characters, a Sith leaps onto me and it's not pretty. If you haven't played a Jedi/Sith tank, leaping gives them 3 force/rage so you're denying them a huge amount of gain by being in cover.

 

With cover, at least my defenses are high, I can avoid the leap, and choose my own targets. Melee that takes the time to run up to me can be pulsed away and I can be made immune to stuns/mez with Hunker Down thrown up as well.

 

My biggest tip would be to position your initial cover very precisely once you get to know the PvP maps. I place mine somewhat near a wall or column/fire/acid where I am expecting the enemy to be running by, so that the enemy can't really see me until they run past my field of vision. This limits my target options, but if I see them first from a decent range, 75% of the time they we be destroyed, and the rest of the time they make it out of my range or out of line-of-sight.

[Fearheart]

very good info. Thanks for the post!