It is? The only time it isn’t is when you aren’t hitting your targets.
In that context, if his weapons are underpowered, he may not deal enough damage to compensate for what he’s taking.
So is Salvador without a Moxxi weapon more squishy than other characters, or is this opinion formed by players who have been nursing him on Moxxi weapons, then stop but continue trying to run him like a tank? Is he, for example, squishier than Zer0? While I don’t particularly like the playstyles available in his skill trees, I’ve dragged him through the OP levels, and didn’t find him necessarily any squishier than the others, but I definitely wasn’t playing him in the traditionally aggressive way (taking cover, letting shields recharge, backing out of hairy situations, etc.)
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Such as when reloading, or just after killing the guy in front of him and turning to a couple bandits at medium range. Or buzzards in general.
A good gun that can hit when hip-fired at targets at medium range would be great, but the next one I have is a purple Hyperion pistol at 44 or 45. For now, things that are beyond shotgun range aren’t going to take much damage.
Thanks Chuck, I’ll give that a try.
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Most certainly no, he isn’t squishy per se, but the circumstances make him so
1: % based health regen doesn’t scale well in UVHM : while it takes the same amount of time to go from hurt to full health, it takes far less attacks to go the opposite direction. In TVHM, the healing is completely adequate for the playstyle, but later, enemies just hurt too much for the balance to still be there.
2: Playstyle. Salvador can’t ADS, so he HAS to get in the thick of it. You know when you play the other characters when you have “overcommited” yourself, you back away for a bit, try to hit crits, try to control the battlefield, isolate targets, draw aggro elsewhere… Sal can’t do any of that.
If you’re in the middle of the action, a source of health based on your own damage (like moxxi guns) is great, because you have a lot of targets, but one based on time (health regen) thrives more on patience, distance and crowd control.
I wish the Brawn tree was mostly damage reduction instead of health regen, that would scales much better at high level.
To return to your comparison, Yes, Zero is more squishy, but Zero also allows you to use a careful playstyle, while doing so for Sal is “against nature” if you will. It can be done, but it’s really not optimal.
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Sniper Sal begs to differ. Yes, it’s awkward if you accidentally hit your action skill, but who does that in NVHM/TVHM anyway? 
All joking aside, it is easy to over-commit as Sal when you have both guns blazing. As you say, the Brawn tree is pretty effective in TVHM, but the health scaling is an issue in UVHM.
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His Brawn tree would be ideal for someone such as say, Zer0, who does not have to be in the thick of it all the time. For Sal though his survival talents require him to be borderline dead in order to work which in regards to normal and TVHM is not that much of an issue.
In UVHM all of the enemies save for a select few simply do too much damage for Sal’s Brawn tree to be used effectively. I once tested an all out Brawn tree with a Rough Rider and health relic and against regular bullymongs I could survive a few hits but the health regeneration was going to lose out in the long run.
Maya, Axton, and Krieg have much better survival skills that are either absurdly fast in healing (Elated, Sweet Release) or burst heal for a massive amount (Grit, BxR healing, Life Tap) and that is not even counting their other skills that help keep them alive. Axton also gets more health per point in Healthy than Salvador does with Hard to Kill and while yes Hard to Kill gives health regeneration it is little more than a dripping faucet with all things considered.
Again though such issues only appear in UVHM where Sal’s Brawn abilities do not scale very well at all.
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