Feedback: Sniper Rifles Need More Than Just Damage Buff

[yles9056]

So we all agree sniper rifles need some love and buff, but how?

I opinion is that sniper rifles need more than just damage buff.

 

 

Part 1: Core Issue

First, think about sniper rifles in other games. What are the advantages of snipers?

1. Long Range: Snipers can take out enemies distance away, avoiding close range combat.

2. Concealment: Enemies don't know exactly where the sniper is when attacked, which gives the sniper some time to take them out safely.

3. Damage: In many games, sniper rifles can take out most enemies in 1~2 shots.(1 shot if head shot)

 

Now, let's get back to Warframe. These advantages pretty much don't exist in WF.

1. Long Range:

Many maps/tilesets are either small, filled with obstacles or lacking sniper spots. Ex: Grineer and Corpus ships.

->Sniping is unsuitable in most situations.

 

2. Concealment:

Once the alarm is triggered, all AI enemies know exactly where you are even if you are not seen. Not only do enemies know where you are, they can also shoot you with 100% accuracy from long range.

->Sniping is kind of meaningless when enemies can counterattack easily.

 

3. Damage:

There are two situations most likely to happen: 

-Enemies are so weak that any weapon can kill them faster than sniper rifles do without head shot.

-Enemies are so tough that sniper rifles cannot kill them in one head shot.

->Sniper rifles have embarrassing roles in terms of damage.

 

Tl;dr: Range, Concealment and Damage. These are the three core issues of current sniper rifles that should to be looked into IMO.

 

 

Part 2: Sniper Scope

Usually, we will be dealing with lots of enemies, which means mid-range combat is inevitable. But scope is inconvenient for mid-range combat.

Here's my idea for scope:

Sniper rifles have several zoom level including iron sight. While aiming, player can use mouse scroll to change zoom level.

(Scroll up to zoom in and scroll down to zoom out.)

 

Using Eagle Eye or Hawk Eye gives you more zoom level options.

 

Eagle Eye or Hawk Eye works the same way on other weapons

 

By the way, Seer should be able to change zoom level.

 

Tl;dr: Sniper rifles can use mouse scroll to change zoom level.

 

 

Part 3: Feedback for Current Sniper Rifles

Vectis:

I haven't used it for a while, but I heard a lot of people said that Vectis scope has misalignment problem, which should be looked into ASAP.

 

Vulkar:

I built this weapon twice but all end up selling it before rank 30. The reload time is painfully long.

 

Lanka:

Projectile speed in not good for a long range sniper rifle. It makes this weapon too difficult to master.

Someone post a suggestion for Lanka and I totally recommend it.

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/256306-the-lanka-shouldnt-be-a-reskinned-bow/

 

(No tl;dr for the last part)

 

 

 

Thanks for reading this post. Hope you have a nice day.

Edited July 16, 2014 by yles9056

[KenseiSeraph]

I haven't used a sniper in a while (not since I maxed out my Snipetron Vandal) but I really like the idea for the scope.

[AdrianLeonhardt99]

Have a nice day too bro o/

[xXRampantXx]

While I do like this idea, using the mouse scroll won't work, as it already has controls bound to it.  I personally have re-bound it and use it regularly.  I don't know how many people actually use it, but I'm sure there are some, and they won't want to get used to doing something different.

[Zeitzbach]

One of the reasons why it's impossible to kill anything is because of the armor scaling, making it that you do even less than 10% of your actual damage and later, below 1%.

 

One of the reason why we can kill after 60 minutes is because of 4x Corrosive Projection.

 

How to fix the damage to sniper without buffing the number? Innate Armor Penetration when headshotting. A 75% pen or something will guarantee that you will outdamage and still be relevant in term of damage as long as it doesn't steps into the 2 hours boundary in which they did state that they do not support balancing around that.

 

Vectis Alignment is a problem alright.

 

After that, Sniper needs their won specific mod beside the Chamber mods. We need something to help with Reloading and fighting at the same time to keep up in term of dps. That and also a Recoil reduction and crit rate/ damage or something at the same time too will greatly help.

[Quizel]

Nice graphics >.<. Scope adjustment thingy would be good if it isn't in game.

 

Anyway, you're right that the actual sniping aspect of the weapon doesn't have too much of a place in warframe. However, I do see a tactical advantage using them.

 

Say your team is surrounded by a bunch of pawns and a single elite enemy.  Lets say the auto rifles of your team can lay waste to all the pawns but the elite enemy still stands. 

 

The role of the sniper is to identify these high priority targets and weaken them so that the full auto spray weapons can finish them off.  The improved scope can assist greatly when trying to hit the weak points.

[Psychosist]

Sniper damage is mostly fine, I think. They could use slight tweaks (some need more base damage, others need more crit damage), but damage is good enough.

 

What they're really lacking is crit chance. Most snipers have 50-60% chance to deal "full" crit damage and 40-50% chance to do "weak" noncrit damage. For some snipers, not getting a crit means only getting an eighth of your potential damage. And that's pretty bad, considering a one-shot-one-kill weapon that doesn't kill in one shot is ridiculed. Their damage when they do crit is passable, but the crits aren't consistent enough to make snipers viable late game.

 

I never find any issues with the scopes on any of my snipers so I'm at a neutral with that. All I ask is that if manual scoping is added, I can rebind it to something other than mousewheel because I use my scroll wheel to shoot.

[Lorane_Airwing]

Sadly I see one major problem with your idea. Laptops, and scroll-less mice. Possibly rebinding them to something? The motion feels natural on a mouse, however on a laptop It wouldn't work too well. Lastly, I believe quick casting is bound to the mouse wheel, but I'm not sure how much of a problem that would be however.

[yles9056]

Sadly I see one major problem with your idea. Laptops, and scroll-less mice. Possibly rebinding them to something? The motion feels natural on a mouse, however on a laptop It wouldn't work too well. Lastly, I believe quick casting is bound to the mouse wheel, but I'm not sure how much of a problem that would be however.

 

Well, key binding might be a problem, but just leave it to DE if they decide to implant this scope idea.

Anyway, the main idea is to give player some ways to change zoom level. By keyboard, mouse or maybe in arsenal page.

Edited July 16, 2014 by yles9056

[Guest Tehnoobshow]

How about making sniper shots explode on headshots? Then they'll actually have some crowd control capability.

[(PSN)Crackle2012]

One of the reasons why it's impossible to kill anything is because of the armor scaling, making it that you do even less than 10% of your actual damage and later, below 1%.

 

One of the reason why we can kill after 60 minutes is because of 4x Corrosive Projection.

 

How to fix the damage to sniper without buffing the number? Innate Armor Penetration when headshotting. A 75% pen or something will guarantee that you will outdamage and still be relevant in term of damage as long as it doesn't steps into the 2 hours boundary in which they did state that they do not support balancing around that.

 

Vectis Alignment is a problem alright.

 

After that, Sniper needs their won specific mod beside the Chamber mods. We need something to help with Reloading and fighting at the same time to keep up in term of dps. That and also a Recoil reduction and crit rate/ damage or something at the same time too will greatly help.

 

I agree that the sniper buff should include Innate dmg bonus on headshots-- and the dmg needs to be very good.  Like gaurantee red crit good....  Or something else-- Perhaps the visual of the enemies head flying off would please me enough :-)

[Azawarau]

The lankas strength comes from the extra status damage and pure elemental damage that bows cant take advantage of

 

It truly is capable of incredible clearing when used and modded correctly

 

Being spotted all the time is a real issue though

[Zeitzbach]

I agree that the sniper buff should include Innate dmg bonus on headshots-- and the dmg needs to be very good.  Like gaurantee red crit good....  Or something else-- Perhaps the visual of the enemies head flying off would please me enough :-)

 

Red crit won't change much. Overkill is overkill. After awhile, overkill becomes underkill because of the armor scaling.

 

Quick example

 

Let's say a headshot deals 100 damage

Let's say the crit multiplier is 2x.

A normal crit is 200

A red crit is 400

 

The damage looks a lot higher but then let's say we have been in survival T4 for nearly 40 minutes and the armor scaling reached the point the enemy now has 6000 armor.

 

6000 armor = 1/21 = 0.047 = 4.7% damage left = 18.8 damage with a red crit

 

Now let's say it has 75% armor pen instead but with only normal crit.

 

25% of 6000 armor = 1500

 

1500 Armor = 1/6 = 16.6% damage = 33.2 damage

 

And it will continue to have more effect as armour continues to scale at exponential rate. This is why everyone wants Corrosive Projection so much. Both armour and health scale at the same time it's impossible to kill without those.

 

Also Armor Pen won't mess with early content much as it scales along with enemies. A red crit might make new players feel like using nothing but Vectis until they can grab a Boltor prime since it's an instakill for anything below lv 50 even without super mods. An armor pen might only lead to around 10-15% damage increase at most if the enemy armor is low.

 

----

 

Having used Vectis more recently and while grinding it again to have it Forma'd, I'm really getting annoyed by its accuracy and how the ammo often flies into the shoulder instead of the head or having to shoot 3 times before it finally stop hitting a nearby cover instead of the head. For a single-shot that requires precision to be great, the system itself really isn't helping. Wish the base accuracy was at least 40 for sniper rifle like Vulkar or Vectis. Kind of sad to see assault rifles have better accuracy despite being able to spray n pray.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Zeitzbach