The Hate, The Sniper, The Ding!

See? Two can play that game.
Stop being so protective of sniper having the only argument that even you're not perfect.
My point is when someone kills you it's in most cases your fault rather than attacker's skill, and when you kill someone then it's your skill rather than their's fault. If I'm an assault and I bombjump at you then charge and kill you then it's your fault you missed all those shots and didn't hit me in the head. I was just hoping that you will miss and you did.
If you don't miss though, well, I couldn't really dodge a bullet that instantly pierces thick layers of silicone and black foreheads at light speed.

Excellent point moose.

You spoke about gunners and tanks who we all know the Sniper is supposed to be the annoying counter to - but what do you think about assaults? Supposedly they should be able to shut a sniper down being the generally accepted counter and all. Do you find that to be the case?

And my own addition to this topic: I used to rage at Snipers when playing Gunner. Then I realized that with keen map awareness a Gunner can generally just avoid being a target by keeping cover between them and the Sniper. Now I find myself being sniped a lot less often by simply sticking to cover or always keeping tabs on where the sniper is (thanks to player names and icons showing up through walls). Ammo Mule seems to be especially well designed for this sort of map awareness to pay huge dividends. Grenade III not so much.

I played against a hacked sniper once. The deal was, if the sniper was looking at your section of the map and your head was in LOS of his current position, you died. I was tank, and it was Grenadeiii Arena. Not exactly the best of scenarios.

I still won.

I simply kept tabs on the sniper's current position, charged through open areas to break line of sight (which left me at a disadvantage to other enemy pros) and in long stretches without charge I would jetpack in an arc forward to use the bridges to protect my head. I even killed him a few times by hitting him with a rail-gun at the same time my product grenade landed. If your time is used guarding yourself from one particular class, you can do it just fine. That goes for any combination of two pros. This of course detracts from your ability to fight other classes/ pay attention to other matters on the field, but by no means blind-sides you to them. In my case, I was left without charge for a few seconds at critical moments, and it did cost me two or three deaths, but the overall result was that I pushed my bots through my lane effectively and got the moneyball despite Headshots Mcgee's attempts to completely shut down my team.

but when I do, DING!

EDIT: Goddamn it. Someone beat me to this.

Honestly, in my 100-odd hours playing this game, i have NEVER seen a sniper carry a team. I've seen assaults rip through entire teams, using high mobility and power to terrorize and push the entire map. I've seen gunners slaughter everything in their path and rip through 3.3 fields like they weren't even there. I've seen tanks smash bot waves and kill anyone who dared touch their bots. I've seen sins annihilate every opposition bot on the map, disappearing when confronted and killing anyone who was open. Hell, i've even seen supports keep an entire team overhealed and give his bots the push needed to break through a team, though its much more rare. And i've seen good snipers, even teams of good snipers (two good snipers and a somewhat talented gunner doing well, almost drew it into overtime). Sure, they can go 54-14-2-167, but they for some reason can't just push the game any further. I will be the first to admit i don't know about skill-play or high-skill games, but in the pubs i really don't feel the Sniper's punching power.

Edit: Before someone jumps down my throat, this is an observation from personal experience, not an observation from total experience.

The Sniper is definitely strong, but his strength comes from the ability to kill players in open fields from across the map. When the offense is pushed, he doesn't have the quick bot-killing or turret-killing, and absolutely awful juice power. When pushed back to his own turrets, he can't function with players in his face and falls quickly. Oh sure, traps are great help and he can kill gunners trying to take down turrets, and he can flak enemy turrets, but he doesn't carry the weight the other classes do. Honestly, the Sniper is just a good class in balanced contest: he can suppress enemy movement and push players back into their bases. But when the game comes down to the win-or-lose phase, the sniper has nothing on the other classes.

As for the insta-headshot potential, i disagree. To expand on the TF2 analogy, what's one of the best anti-sniper classes? The Scout. The Sniper's quickscope can actually instakill the Scout, but that doesn't matter. You don't balance a game to what can possibly happen, you balance a game to what DOES happen. Quickscoping is an issue, but that's because it is easy and carries little risk, and the fast RoF means extremely quick and can be done two or three times in confrontation, drastically increasing the chance of success.

I'm not against a nerf to Sniper mechanics, but i would favor and alteration. Decreased RoF with increased damage would be good, as it would allow Snipers to be more focused on precise shots (bolt-action would be nice). But with the juice nerf having just made it hard for the Sniper to do anything against a turret while juiced, i feel that the route is not to make the Sniper weaker, but to make him less overspecialized.

1150 I believe(no armor/OH/juice/bacon), but even if you survive that headshot, a sneeze will finish off the last 11 health the Tank is left with

Overpowered or not, the sniper is annoying as ****. The game is more fun when there is no sniper around.

Even if I'm dominating him, a good sniper makes the game kind of miserable. Being constantly under fire, the constant threat of instantly dying.. it's just stressful and anti-fun.

The previous discussion was about how annoying the Sniper is, until it drifted into the Sniper being over-powered.

I said then that I have no stance on the over-poweredness of the Sniper (because it is too easy to argue either way), but regardless it is purely annoying, far more than it needs to be.

Why cant the Sniper be just as powerful, but less annoying?
Decrease his power at killing Pros and increase his power at killing bots. Increase his defense and decrease his offense.
Or something. Anything. Just make him less of a fun killer.


L. Spiro

This.

Even if they're a horrible shot the freeze traps are too difficult* to destroy and the flak
*Not to mention screwy hitreg on it. I've had a bomb sitting next to a freezetrap do nothing, grenades have to almost be on top of it, even mortars and airstrikes don't always set them off

I heard an Asassins Smoke Bomb will set them off but I have yet to succeed at doing so.


L. Spiro

even if you do hit one, it still slows you and drains your skills