They changed everything else and left snipers alone.

The only recent change made to snipers is damage fall off, which now starts further away than it did. This doesn't affect most snipers anyway.

Damage reduction in fist of hacov was reduced also, 1000YS is a high impact sniper, you can easily 2 shot someone out of super.

- No text -

Without shotgun rushers to pressure them, snipers have set up on good lanes and honed the skill needed to pop people.

I've outdone snipers with my MIDA, but that's about it. With fusion rifles still in the basement, and the shotguns majorly constrained both by the blink nerfs and the range/handling nerfs, you can snipe more safely from mid range. That results in many more people using snipers, and there are going to be good ones as well as lucky ones like myself.

I've never sniped people out of supers, but I have demolished teams going for heavy and such. I also had a Erine with Luck in the chamber, but after killing a guy by shooting his foot I felt overly pathetic and stopped using it. Like others with practice I could be a good sniper, and there are many others practicing now.

I still rage when I blade dance and someone snipes me down. It is very hard to get more then one kill with my BD these days since you have to run right at them most of the time.

I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I think the bigger issue is that Primary weapons across the board have less range, accuracy, and stability than they did in year 1. Thorn, Hawkmoon, Messenger, Mida, 3 Little Words... There were plenty of primaries that were absolutely lethal at mid-long range. I never needed to snipe because my Messenger could handle any long-range engagement. But that's just not the case anymore. Combine that with a lack of shotgun rushers and snipers can easily take over.

12 men enter. 12 men stay more-or-less stationery for 12 minutes. Welcome to the least exciting show on Earth.

Maybe knock Snipers around more? Heck, maybe knock Snipers, and only Snipers, completely out of scope?

Seriously, before TTK using secondaries was a 1 in every 100 encounters proposition, and then it was only if you were using a Shotgun. There was never any reason to use a Sniper Rifle if you had Thorn or even TLW. As long as you rolled Hand Cannon and Shotgun you were basically always covered.

I've only played Crucible a handful of times since TTK dropped (and haven't touched it at all since the latest weapon balance), but it seems like they may have swung too far in the opposite direction.

Just not in a way that makes any sense. There was an in-depth reddit post about it ages ago (might have changed since then though?).The camera still flinches, but your aim doesn't. I have no idea how or why that's a thing, or how you'd get used to that enough to make use of it, but yeah.

1) For those who are upset about Unflinching. I agree, it shouldn't be a perk, but that's because it doesn't work. Seriously, I've tried that perk and time and time again, I find I am no less flinch-y than before. Unflinching is not your problem, because...

2) Yes, Snipers still get staggered. I get staggered left and right while sniping. High caliber rounds are even worse. I got hit with a MIDA last night and it felt like it spun me 90 degrees, I had no chance at hitting a second shot. That being said, while getting staggered, I've managed many times to snap the reticule back on to the head and win the fight. For the record, I've primarily used Eirene and Praedyth's Revenge before that, and both have very low aim assist.

I feel like I get sniped while I have a sniper under fire way to often. Maybe I'm just bad and they are good, but I feel like if a sniper is getting shot, they should have to have a REALLY impressive shot to kill me. Maybe that's just how I think snipers should be.

The truth you need to face is that sometimes a sniper just out shot you.

More often than not, I'm sure that is true.

3) Sniping is the most logical way to play the game. It isn't cheap to do something that enables you to engage at distance. Isn't that what you would do in real life combat? Engage at a distance where your enemies weapons are less lethal? This is literally why I play as a sniper, to better control engagement distances. I recognize it's a game, but engaging at distances longer than a primary (except for scout rifles and some pulse rifles) can handle is to my advantage not just in that my gun becomes more lethal than yours, but I can find cover and run away should I become disadvantaged in a fight. That's not bullshit, that's just smart.

The problem I find is that Snipers are engaging inside of SR and PR range. I feel like snipers should win if they are outside those gun ranges, get the jump on a player or they get an impressive shot off under fire. What I'm seeing is that I'm losing to snipers at mid range when I've already engaged them i.e. they are taking body shots.

4) Snipers have not changed since day 1, so you should have a game plan as to how to counter them by now. You should know the sight lines and how to avoid them and the best places to flank them, etc. That's just part of being aware of your surroundings and situation.

I've tried this. I know I'm not the best player and I'm definitely not a great sniper, but I found out in trials this week that the best way to counter them is to just not engage them down their sight lines. The problem is, there are a lot of maps where there are only so many sight lines, so a sniper can easily switch to another sight line when you loop around the entire map to change sight lines on them.

I think good snipers actually tend to be more creative with the map than other players, recognizing new possible lines, moving specifically from cover to cover. Everyone in this forum could probably improve their PvP game just by increasing their awareness (though I know from experience, some of you are down right incredible at this, don't know how you could improve a bit more there).

I have to say that I actually tried something brand new and in trials non the less. I mixed it up and ran Juggernaut during trials. It actually worked okay. However, snipers still at a perfect line of sight on me regardless of my jugger shield. It just took 1 more shot to kill me than normal and when you can't fire back that is all it takes. Luckily for me, most of the time my team mates were good snipers. But if I HAVE to learn to be good at snipers just to counter other snipers there is a problem.

5) The only thing about snipers that bothers me is when I face a GREAT one. I'm talking the snipers capable of no-scoping/quick-scoping. The ones that can dome you from 20 feet away on the run, etc. And when that happens and my frustration has subsided, I remind myself that in all things, there are a few people who are INCREDIBLY talented, whom we call virtuosos, and I would be willing to say that there are virtuoso video game snipers out there whose thumbs always find your face while shooting. That's just something you have to live with.

This bothers me to no end. I don't really like PvP that much to begin with. But if I have to train constantly with snipers to have a chance against about 50% of all PvP matches... I don't think that really fits with Bungie's "play how you want to"

On the flip side, playing a 6v6 game mode on that same map can be a nightmare if you go up against a team of strong snipers, because 5 or 6 players working together can absolutely "shut down" the entire map with a network of sniper fire. It can be infuriating to go up against.

I think people are really good now at knowing where head level is, and already having their cursor there ready to go.

Let's talk about blink and shotgun and the like:

I think blink and shotgun is definitely a counter to sniping, however it was really strong close up. It definitely needed a bit of a nerf, but maybe not so much. What needed to happen was that Fusion Rifles be strengthened so that they are the counter to blinking in from mid range. Rock paper scissors:

Blink Shotgun beats sniper.
Sniper beats fusion rifle
Fusion rifle beats blink shotgun

Something like that. Then design maps so that snipers are never completely safe, and you're golden. If a team is able to hold down a map such that their snipers ARE safe, then they deserve the huge advantage that brings.

So number of players and general map design makes a huge difference.

In addition to that, there is the way special weapons and special ammo are generally treated in Destiny. There are players in the competitive community who have suggested switching more game modes over to "inferno" rules, where players do not spawn with any special ammo. While this would certainly eliminate a lot of the initial sniper-camping, my fear is that it could easily lead to drastically lopsided matches.

How about enemies dropping their special ammo if you kill them and you don't have any?

I feel like Bungie has painted themselves into a bit of a corner with this system. The only way to make it remotely fair is to make sure everyone has it all the time, or make it extremely limited like Heavy ammo.

I almost suggested this, but then what about side arms & fusion rifles? I feel that my sniper ammo goes a long way. I can use a sniper almost all game exclusively. The same (almost) goes with shotgun ammo. I will run out if I'm exclusively running shottys & we're not controlling most/all of the secondary ammo crates. In fact, when running shottys I'm very aware of when secondary ammo drops and will try to deny the opposing team their secondary so I can shoot them in the face with it.

I would like Bungie to take a look at making secondary ammo more scarce & more difficult for 1 team to hog it all.

Battlefield/Titanfall/COD made snipers and shotguns primaries, but put big limits on them. I don't think any of those systems got the balance right either, but I felt that Battlefield came the closest.

Bungie's model requires the secondary weapons to be dominant in their areas of expertise. The problem has been that the range of shotguns combined with the player speed due to jump/run/slide combos made them dominant in most map encounters, especially in objective based modes.

Bungie has dramatically limited the range of shotguns, and reduced blink which is the worst jump offender, but there is nothing they can really do about snipers, so they will always seem cheap. The best they could do is limit the aim assist at medium to short range, but the zoom on most scopes already makes those ranges difficult to be effective in anyway.

In theory, if fusion rifles weren't so hard to use they would push snipers back to long range, but a mid range one hit kill weapon caused major issues, if anyone remembers the glory days of Plan C and Pocket Infinity.

Battlefield tries to differentiate shotguns by limiting the long range and the number of pellets, so slower firing guns tend to be easier to hit with and get a single kill, while fast firing or full auto ones tend to require two to three hits to kill, even at close range. Likewise the faster firing snipers do less damage, so you need two to three body shots for a kill.

COD is similar, but has faster firing snipers with no sniper glint, and of course the auto aim no scope glitch so you can headshot with ease. What saves COD is the maps tend to be cluttered and people move very fast, so it is difficult to lock down areas.

Titanfall fell more into the classic ranges, with the weapons clearly at an advantage in their range bands, and little options for players other then choosing a different weapon or scope. Easy to balance but utterly generic.

I think the best bungie could do is add more flinch to snipers when they are ADS, and perhaps have bullets slow someone rushing with a shotgun. The charge time on fusion rifles was their balance, but the non-hitscan nature has been added difficulty since the 2nd patch or so.