To any sniper who...

You realise that failing to follow already established lines of dialogue probably makes you an idiot, right?

I know this isn't your first foray onto this board, so I expect you to be at least marginally up on things which recur on this board almost daily.

And no, "the problem is you" is clearly not valid here. Sorry, but I already pointed that out. This is a persistent problem that has nothing to do with me individually, rendering the argument moot. Moving on:

The problem with saying they can't just rush in with the SMG is that they don't have to. Trying to push an unnecessary situation as a flaw is dishonest and outright foolish. Though I'll point out it's easy enough to actually make an SMG sniper build and you will see them online and successful. Again, you can argue "the problem is you," but I'm not the one getting killed. Funny, it's like that same argument still doesn't work.

Further, you notice that part where I talk about "controlling the camp site?" Important to the context of talking about the short game. In fact, this was me alluding to a problem and you ignoring it. GAWRSH, I SHUR LOOK STUPID BECAUSE YOU IGNORED WHAT WAS SAID AND THEN ATTACKED WITH A STRAWMAN FALLACY HERP DE DERP.

Maybe explaining that you can't run in with an SMG was unnecessary when I was talking about locking down a spawn point.

Nah, that would be madness.

Again, you just failed to actually read what I wrote. Where did you actually respond to anything I said? The sniper, through any objective look at the pros and cons of his short game, does not stack up to almost any class in any sort of way. Lets look at a qualitative analysis.

Health: Lowest
Mobility: Second lowest
SMG Damage: Moderate-High
Base Accuracy of SMG: Not good
Base ROF of SMG: Moderate-High
Clip Size of SMG: Very Low
Reload Speed of SMG: Very High
Grapple Damage: Very High when upgraded + Knockback
Grapple Range: Very Low
Ability to Control Battlefield: Moderate (Ice Traps and Flak Grenade)
Hitbox Size: Small

Now, I don't know about you, but I have no idea how you could think that a sniper going up against any sort of skill in the short range, would have any advantage over any class that is coming at them besides maybe a support. And that is only because they have to get dangerously close to grapple range to shotgun. And even that is at best a coin flip for the sniper.

So when I say it must be you...its because you simply are not looking at the facts. Period. The sniper may have a fighting chance, but they certainly do not control the short game.

Oh yeah, and you know running in with the SMG and the phrase closing distance with the SMG are totally the same thing. How about you actually READ what is written. I did not mention charging a base with the SMG, as you allude to in your reply (I assume that is what you are implying), simply closing the distance between you and your attacker.

Now, I know you got your e-peen stepped on in that other thread about Juice needing to go, but honestly, trying to make yourself look like a big man by trying to railroad me isn't going to win back some magical online cred. Do yourself a favor and don't use the strawman argument as a goddamn strawman. I explained myself in my very first post, and you just ignored it because I deigned to believe that how a player approaches a situation could lead to them being wrong.

Edit: Spelling error
Edit: Forgot Hitbox size

Sorry, but I have to disagree with most of what you said here. In your breakdown of the sniper's short game you've barely mentioned the most important part. Ice traps. Also, having the strongest grapple in the game is something you clearly didn't give enough weight to. And I don't just mean when it's upgraded to level 3, the level 2 grapple is not that far off, which is why I upgrade to level 2 right away, but level 3 would be the last thing that I would upgrade.

Also, why would you classify the sniper's mobility as second lowest? I believe he the second fastest class, right after assassin. He does have a shorter jump, but that rarely becomes an important factor.

I can't imagine you've played sniper very much, and I would have to assume that the snipers you have played haven't been all that good, especially since you say the the only class that the sniper might have a short range advantage against would be the support, when the support it was one of the best short range counters to the sniper. The support's shotgun can OHKO any snipe without gold armor, and since it has a longer range and faster RoF than the grapple, it's clearly an advantage. Then there is the matter of the heal/hurt gun. Bunny hopping circles around a sniper with the hurt gun is probably one of the more reliable tactics for taking out a sniper. It makes it very difficult to grapple, and the SMG just isn't accurate or damaging enough to take out a support while he's taking your health and adding it to his.

Overall, I have to say you severely underestimate the sniper. I don't necessarily blame you for this since there are a lot of people that play the class very poorly.

Gotta agree with pohtaytoez

Id say the assault has just a tiny bit more mobility then sniper though due to charge

The points I wanna hit with this post are

-The support is one of the most threatening short range opponents for the sniper easily.
Id honestly rather go up against hudson's tank short range with an smg then most bunnyhopping no aim supports

-The sniper rifle can be just at potent at close range as it is at long range
I play an offensive sniper with gold accuracy, noscopes and quick scopes are very effective and so is rushing people with the smg, While juiced the smg is the second most effective pro killing weapon right after the assault rifle imo

-As Pohtaytoez said, the snipers short range game isn't JUST the smg, well placed flak and traps mid combat make the sniper very lethal at short/medium range,

I could write a novel about flak3! :lol:

-I charge bases with the smg, jus sayin'

Ice traps=Avoidable. Its called jumping. Seriously, any good player I have played against avoids them about 90%-95% of the time.

And the sniper grapple is so overrated it is absurd. It is not the best grapple at all. Doing the most damage does not equal the best. It has no charge attached to it, nor does a sniper have good mobility or invisibility to facilitate getting into grapple range. Ability to even initiate the grapple takes precedence over the sheer damage of it in my mind. Not to mention how little health the sniper has when trying to get in range to grapple.

Maybe I should clarify what mobility means for you. Speed in running does not mean good mobility (overall, but is a part of it). The sniper has no jetpack or charge, meaning he is not very mobile overall.

About me playing sniper and how good I am at it, I couldn't really objectively judge my skill, you would have to ask people who have played me.

The ice traps don't really bother me in the OP's scenario.. By the time I get there, my air strikes have either already killed him or I can force him to run away with them if I do get frozen. What does bother me, though, are those snipers that just sit there in their own base on steel peel, sniping my turrets from across the map.

You can make all kinds of arguments that it's part of the game and you have to figure it into your strategy or whatever, but in my mind it seems unfair. If I have a good team together, we're putting far too much pressure on the other team to even have to worry about a sniper shooting our turrets out. It's a problem, though, when I *don't* have a good team... Then it just makes a bad situation worse... I, as support, wind up stuck in the base unable to do anything but keep the turrets alive as they constantly get shot by a sniper, finding little breaks where he gets distracted when I can hack them without getting destroyed by his splash damage, fighting off kill-whoring assassins and waves of bots (as my oblivious team runs around ignoring the bots completely). When I do get killed once in a while, I invariably respawn to find one or more of the turrets destroyed and of course my crap team doesn't rebuild anything, so I get stuck spending all my money rebuilding.

Agreed for the mostpart, supports can still be easily dealt with as long as you dont get close. Freezemines are still deadly.

Then you are obviously not so great at ice trap placement. Using two traps intelligently a sniper can easily deal with any non-charging assault/tank threats on his life easily, and even those two threats can be easily dispatched if the enemy makes even the slightest mistake. If you can lay three traps? Pfft...

Not to mention that they are absurdly hard to see when placed right. If you place it in the middle of a plain white bridge its obvious, if you place it on a black piece of ground near a wall just around a corner, not so obvious.

Some good points about how the grapple relates to other grapples, but the sniper grapple is still the best imo (<-- READ).

The only "grapple" with a built in initiation is the assaults charge at level 3 only. Comparing level 3 assault's "grapple" with the sniper grapple:

Sniper Grapple: Pros:Most damage in the game, (tied for) best knockback, Cons:must be upclose to initiate.
Assault "Grapple": Pros:Long distance initiation, (tied for) best knockback, Cons:extremely linear (can be avoided), full cooldown if missed.

Seems pretty even right? However assault has no skills that really synergize with with his "grapple", while sniper does.

Also yes, the sniper has no invisibility or good mobility to back up his grapple, he has ice mines which completely seal off enemy movement (and drain enemy skills+grapple if level 3). Sniper isn't supposed to be whizzing around the map grappling people, he is meant to find a good campin spot, and clear out those lanes while taking the hats off anyone ballsy enough to set foot in them.

Maybe i should clarify what the role of a "Sniper" is for you. He finds a a good spot where he can pin down an entire lane and stay alive with reliable safety, with freeze mines placed in good unobvious locations, and he snipes everything and anything that enters his scope.

Whats the problem here? This long range beast of a class has the two strongest closerange skills in the game. So he doesn't have good mobility... how does that detract from the fact that he dominates at both of the extremes (close and far) when it comes to combat?

They come close? Freezemined and you pop their head off/grapple them/flak+SMG them (depends on the class, your not gonna try to grapple that shotgun support).

They keep their distance? It is now a longrange fight between you and the otherguy, you sir... have a sniper rifle in your possession.

The biggest problem with snipers is that they are extremely good at area denial (as in, if the enemy team enters here, they die) second only to hacked firebases, and are priority targets. Too bad they dominate so hard at both short and long range fights that it is extremely hard for any class except for another sniper to root them out.

Well, assault can fight them toe to toe, but even if he gets the drop on the sniper he will be at a disadvantage, he has to dodge freezemines while dealing with an SMG and ball of flak, while sniper only has to deal with the AR (which is only slightly stronger then the SMG) and can move around freely, like slipping around a corner and planting a new freezemine on the wall, dont think i have to draw out the possible results of that.

Draw up a list of counters for every pro, and you will find sniper there for every pro (except assault and ofcourse sniper).

Assuming non-newbie (or noobie) skill level!
Tank: Sniper beats railgun, if you try to come in close, meet mr. freeze mine. Only way your gonna get the sniper is if he has slow reaction time and you can get upclose to him without triggering any freezemines and without alerting him to your prescence. Did i mention that tank is rather easy to notice?
Assassin: Freezemine, sniper wins. Theres not much more to say... the assassin needs to get in close to kill a sniper, but has absolutely no way of dealing with freezemines, none. Don't you dare say smokebomb jump, that is a gamble, not a strategy.
Gunner: If you catch him unawares, you might be able to kill him before he shoots your rather huge head off. If you dont catch him unawares you lose, period.
Support: Freezemines, hope to god that the sniper is foolish enough to try to grapple you instead of SMG+Flak/Sniper, if not? Your dead. Support has a rather huge head that is quite stationary when frozen.

Personally i think the biggest problem is not his grapple though i agree that the damage is over the top, the knockback makes sense. SMG+Flak will get the same result. I think that his freeze mines need a nerf... or other pros get methods to counter freeze mines, cause right now assault is the only one who can.

Also snipers + steel peel = :cry:

bullets should trigger icetraps

I too would like this change. It probably wont happen, but I would like to be rewarded for looking for it.

It does make me angry when I take the time to check for ice traps, attempt to jump over them, and catch the very edge of the detonation range and die. I think that every pro needs something to blow those up.

This is a reply to Lagoon, but no quote because of how long your post was.

Good players see ice mines and avoid them. You know they make noise right? You also know that if you are using your ice mines simply in places (like close to the wall) that are not really helping your team in controlling the map (such as where jump pads land), then you are not really putting ice mines in good places. Map control is key. And you know what, even if you are placing them around corners and such, people still do not run into them very often if they know what they are doing. I will agree that opponents having to account for where they are and moving because of this does give the sniper an advantage.

Your descriptions of the two grapples do not in any way make me think that the sniper grapple is even with the assault grapple. Snipers have to be right next to someone to grapple. And guess what, they can be dodged too. I don't know why anyone is even getting that close to a sniper anyways, when they can just kill them from slightly farther away, say like 10 feet. Snipers have the lowest health, tied with the Assassin. Your argument is completely dependent on your opponent being frozen and not shooting you. This goes along with how good players do not get frozen very often, ESPECIALLY if they are not well located strategically.

The thing about being a "sniper" has no relevance to what I was saying. Mobility absolutely has something to do with closing and grappling, which was the discussion. And the long range thing has no relevance either, because this whole discussion was about controlling the short game.

Most of the people who have replied must think that I don't think sniper is that good. I absolutely think sniper is good, which is why I main it. However, the problems that they are laying out as being OP are not really why the sniper is good. When someone is complaining about freeze traps and the grapple, it really does not make me think much of the argument. Most snipers should not be using their freeze mines directly around them, they should be placing them strategically to control the map and be headshotting people who land in them.

I did funky colored stuff for the hell of it.

From what i gathered by reading about how you play sniper, it seems you use freezemines to seal off jumppads and the such (ejectors/annihilator too?) and then use your sniper rifle to finish them off from a safe distance.

Sounds like a fun strategy to get a high kill score and it does indeed somewhat seal off some key things, but i still think a sniper is better off finding his perfect cubbyhole, building his defences, and keeping one lane in the enemy base for the entire game.

I agree with you that high K/D does not win a game, which is why map control while still covering a lane is essential. For example, on grenade 3, I believe you should be locking down the two jump pads farthest from your base up top(the one from by their spawn point and the landing area from the middle), while still controlling that lane.

I don't think the sniper is bad at mid-range, but as you state, I believe he is better at extreme close range (because of the grapple) and long range. I don't think he is better than other pro's at close range, but he has a better chance than at mid range. I posted earlier that flak grenade (which is awesome) and ice traps is how he should control the other pro into fighting on the sniper's terms.

Remember that gunner's and tanks can jetpack over those mines as well, although it is a tougher matchup for them than the assault. In my mind, assault is the biggest sniper killer. Additionally, they (mines) can be blown up, although it es very difficult for some classes, and still requires waiting. But 4 of the 6 classes can avoid with ease if they know where they are, and the 2 who cannot have the best blowing up tool (flak and airstrike).

The reason I brought up mobility is because before you came into the discussion, someone else had stated that sniper controlled the short game (essentially was OP), and the grapple was a large part of that. I disagreed in the context of the short game, because the grapple is not a tool you really want to just be running up to people who see you coming and using, as you stated. I'm not ignoring their long range capabilities, it was just the context of the argument.

Edit: I just re-read your post. Your analogy with the tank makes no sense. That would maybe be relevant if I hadn't discussed how health was involved as well, and is you just missing the picture. I don't think you read the rest of the thread, so maybe you should go back and do that before posting again.

Wow, that's a lot of text.

I have noticed something about Amaranth, he doesn't seem to really like the game the way it is now. He has something negative to say about every little thing about the game and then argues with people who don't see eye to eye with him.

Every post I read from Amaranth makes me want to gouge out my eyeballs and sit on a flag pole nude hoping the pole comes through my belly-button instead of my mouth.

Yeah, that was a failed analogy, il go take that out now.

Also yes i did read the rest of the thread. That was just a bad analogy.

But the point i was trying to get across with my horrible analogy(ies) is that you cannot just examine one part of a class and judge it without taking into consideration everything that class can do.

Origional quote:

Then again i might be trailing off, im good at that.

Im also good at confusing myself.

The problem is mostly with Steel Peel and Explosive shots. You can't effectively defend without getting mowed over or you have to take the long way around. It just feels lame that a Sniper can sit right outside his base and completely lock down a lane without much hassle.

It's not so much overpowered than it is annoying as hell. A good team will still clean house, but you always have to think about that stupid sniper. Other maps have barriers or level design that stops this from being so devastating.