Taking Cover

One of BW’s stated goals with 7.0 was to streamline the playstyle of the various combat styles. Abilities were combined, some were removed, and others can be modded to yield a similar result to a previous ability.

For the most part, I have found myself largely unaffected by this. Most of my characters have kept all but the most situationally useful of abilities, with the most aggravating losses from muscle-memory in terms of abilities being Cyclone Slash for Guardian and Dodge for Gunslinger. 

However, it hasn’t just been abilities which have been removed for Gunslingers and Snipers. We’ve also lost our Cover Bar. For those of you who have never played Gunslinger or Sniper, or are not experienced enough with it to identify from words alone what this was, this was an alternate quickbar which would replace our primary quickbar whenever we entered cover. You could have different abilities on both bars, or a similar setup on both. It was entirely optional, and it could be turned off if desired.

With 7.0’s goal of streamlining combat styles, the Cover Bar was selected as a system that needed to be removed. For me, this means that I have had to adapt and re-learn how to play Gunslinger after eight years of muscle-memory telling me that I could press the same button to alternately enter Cover and use Snipe or Lethal Shot. I had other buttons I could have pressed to enter cover (seriously, I had about six copies of “Take Cover” on my main bar for most fights, each one signifying where an ability that I tended to only use in cover was situated), but “2” became the main one for some reason.

I have found this quite difficult to adjust to, and that’s even after spending a couple of months trying to adjust ever since I knew it would be a thing from the PTS. To this day, I’m still finding that I’m hitting the wrong keybind to go into cover, resulting in a standing Lethal Shot. Hunker Down has also been moved, since on the Cover Bar it used to be where my rest-and-regen ability was, but with the removal of class buffs it’s now situated only two slots over from where it was before. I still hit the wrong button for that occasionally but nowhere near as frequently as I once did.

As you could probably infer from above, this is the sort of thing that would impact me regardless of whether or not I was a clicker or keybinder. Muscle-memory is an important aspect of any MMO, particularly those with a lot of buttons, and any difference would upset that a fair bit. For example, this evening I came up with the idea of maybe returning to having my primary cover-button as “2”, while moving Lethal Shot to “3”. I found that I kept on hitting “2” since, of course, that’s always been Lethal Shot when I’m in cover! Where I more used to clicking, I would almost certainly find myself clicking where Lethal Shot was in this scenario, so the same result would occur. 

So, for now, I’m using the default “V” keybind to enter cover, and leaving my main quickbar almost exactly as my Cover Bar would have been. It works well enough.

Since I’ve had to completely change how I play this class of over eight years’ experience, you’d think I’d be grumbling about this. Threatening to unsubscribe until it gets fixed, refusing point-blank to play Gunslinger at all because they’ve ruined my baby? Well…

I don’t mind this change in the slightest. Sure, it’s slightly aggravating from my perspective, and I think even more annoying from the perspective of the rest of my raid team as it’s given me the biggest excuse yet to play Balance Sage, but I am 100% behind this change. Sincerely. This is not a sarcastic “reverse-psychology” statement indicating that I’m really, really sour about this. I genuinely believe that this was a good change for BW to make.

While I have been used to playing with this active for eight years, I am very aware that this has been the most confusing element for many a potential Gunslinger or Sniper over the years. Yes, it was optional, but a confusing UI element is going to throw off a lot of people, especially when used alongside the already awkward cover functionality.

If this change means that many more players are going to understand Gunslinger or Sniper easier, then, yeah, I do fully endorse it. It’s more important that newer or unfamiliar players can have an easier time adjusting to this unique system than it is for this veteran to keep their playstyle exactly as it’s always been. BW do not make this game for me. I'm a paying subscriber and have been since December 2011, but I do not believe BW owes me a single thing.

Besides, there are ways around this. It’s just the button to enter cover which is catching me out; with enough time, I’ll crack it. I’m reluctant to focus on anything difficult until I do, given how useful being in cover can be for a Gunslinger, but I will crack it at some point.

Especially now that I’ve done something I was never expecting to do prior to 7.0, and that’s create another Trooper, Athana (Sniper / Operative). With my other one, Jenn, being Vanguard / Operative, that’s two melee specs on one character. Not very versatile, especially if it comes to raids where I might very well need to send an extra character to help with another guild-group! If I eventually do get back into playing Gunslinger in raids as I hope I will, I’d far rather have another ranged Tech character that I can do things with if needed, and this enables me to accomplish that.

I’m going to be using her story to give me the time I hope I need to get over my small problem with Cover in a stress-free environment. It shouldn’t take that long, I hope.

Until I feel ready to return to Gunslinging, I’m quite content doing operations with my Sage. It helps that, right now, we’re mainly doing Veteran Operations, so there hasn’t been an awful lot which we’ve encountered which is not well suited for Balance. We’ll get to that point eventually, I’m sure, which is why I want to sort things out with my back-up class ASAP, just so I can switch to a more ‘appropriate’ spec if needed.

Still got a bit of a way to go until that point, however!