TL;DR at the bottom Many players have been observing that Hunter is an underpowered class compared to Titan and Warlock, and having tested them all, I have to agree, at least for Gunslinger (my fav Destiny 1 subclass). The first two paragraphs cover the other parts of the Hunter in order to get them out of the way, and the last two (except TL;DR) address the main issue. The only paragraph about Arcstrider: I spent much of my time testing Arcstrider (as I was hoping it would not be as useless for PVE as Bladedancer, which thankfully I believe it is not) and I believe it is useful for both PVE and PVP. Its synergy is very melee focused, which means that the best spaces for its use are in the tighter spaces of PVP maps (such as the two little corridors toward the centre of B in Endless Vale). And using Combination Blow to hide and begin recovery faster in PVP then allows to get another melee hit in to help with the next duel. Deadly Reach and Combat Flow work well with this synergy, if used right. And in PVE, you can even apply a melee super that does damage over time directly to a boss, a vast improvement over Bladedancer, as that would have gotten the player killed in D1. It's not the strongest PVP subclass, but it's not the weakest either. Gunslinger's other two Way of the Outlaw perks: Gunslinger, however, has a few significant drawbacks, even aside from the Deadshot/Six-Shooter situation. I'm excited to try Way of the Sharpshooter, but Way of the Outlaw's synergy is very disjointed. Explosive Knife's distance ability can be used effectively, as can Chains of Woe's reload speed to the player and allies. But BOTH of these abilities are bad synergies for the Hunter's dodge ability, whichever version you choose. Chain of Woe and Marksman's Dodge might stack (I did not test this as it did not occur to me until recently) but for PVP at least, if you have one you tend not to need the other. Reloading tends to be at the end of a duel, and if you survived you likely want to hide and use that low Hunter recovery stat, a project that definitely takes enough time to reload. So both are unnecessary. But Gambler's Dodge requires you to be in close proximity to enemies in order to get an extra Throwing Knife. Making a Hunter get close (putting themselves in danger) in order to move further away (still taking bullets) and use a melee that might not even kill... it's more than a little counter-intuitive. So these synergies are something that need a little work. But on to the main subject of this post. Why combine Deadshot & Six-Shooter: Take a look at Voidwalker's Attunement of Chaos tree, for instance. All of the modifiers for the super (except one we'll get to in a second) exist in the same perk slot, Cataclysm. Then there's one for melee (standard to all perk trees in the game) and one for grenades. The last perk Bloom (see, I said we'd get to it) affects all of these abilities to improve them, and has to exist outside the Cataclysm perk as it also affects the other two perks. But having everything that affects just the super in one perk means that you can have a strong synergy in the subclass, especially because these aren't added mechanics (like with Dawnblade's second perk tree) but instead are small modifiers. Just like Deadshot. And that's why it should be a part of Six-shooter, to combine these small modifiers together and allow for another perk to make a stronger subclass perk tree. What to do with the open perk slot?: There's a ton of possibility, and I'd love to read a diverse range of suggestions. Bungie might wish to read suggestions as well, but we'll have to see about that one. Personally, I think something that's non-conditional would be best (nothing that requires kills or hits, but acts as its own guaranteed mechanic or bonus). Perhaps something that synergises well with the Throwing Knife, or an effect similar to the Striker's Magnitude. TL;DR While subclasses like Voidwalker have all their small super modification in one perk, Gunslinger has theirs in two, which prevents options for a good subclass synergy. Combining Deadshot and Six-Shooter would open up a slot to make the improvements necessary to a currently underpowered subclass tree.