Snipers Sniping Snipes

[Eirshy]

'Cause right now that's all they're good against, nyuck nyuck nyuck.


Seriously now, I've decided it's time for me to make a new Buff Snipers thread, since the last thread on the subject had me take it in a different direction from what everyone's been doing.


First up, why they need buffs:
Damage Consistency

One of the primary draws to marksman weapons is their skill-oriented nature- you aren't dependant on minimizing the effect of RNG on your shots in order to get damage onto a target, merely your own aim. Sniper weapons take this to the extreme, leaning towards oneshotting all but the heaviest of foes upon striking a weak point.

Unfortunately, Warframe sniper rifles are slot machines. In a no-penalty maximized crit build (Split Chamber, Point Strike, Vital Sense, Hammer Shot) on a 25/2 (chance/damage) weapon (Lanka, Snipetron Vandal, Vectis), you have a 62.5% chance of a 5.6x damage shot, with a second roll 90% of the time. Couple this with a headshot's innate 2x, and a headshot's additional 2x on crit, we get 44.8x as our maximum possible damage dealt on any one target.

From this, we get the following damage chart (percentage have been rounded to two decimal places):
- 3.75% chance of dealing 4.46% of max (x2 of base)
- 12.66% chance of dealing 8.93% of max (x4 of base)
- 6.25% chance of dealing 50% of max (x22.4 of base)
- 42.19% chance of dealing 54.46% of max (x23.4 of base)
- 35.16% chance of dealing 100% of max (x44.8 of base)

As you can see, there's a little under a 16.41% chance that a given 25/2 weapon will do under 10% of its maximum damage on headshot. This results in an issue very prevalent in later waves of Survival and Defense: You will all but never kill without critting. This is because, assuming you were dealing 10% of your maximum, it takes 5 shots to deal 50%, and falling on the <10% range for 5 shots in a row is a 0.01189% chance (or one set of 5 in roughly 42,066 shots).

For weapons with a high rate of fire, 25/2 is an amazingly good crit stat. However, when you're measuring the rounds you fire in nearly full seconds (1.5 for Lanka, 0.9 for Vectis with cancel reloads), that 16.41% chance of having may as well missed pretty much kills them.

 

 

Second, two different solution sets:
Stop the Bleeding style (low effort):

40% base crit chance, done.

Allows r5 Point Strike to put their crit chance at 100%, making their damage a minimum of 22.4x, or half of their maximum damage, fixing the problem that non-crit hits may as well have missed.

This solution literally involves changing a number on the guns and nothing more. It's also the most commonly suggested solution entirely because it would solve this problem pretty much completely without adding anything new to the game. Of course, this would not actually fix the over-all balance of sniper weapons and bows. However, it will make basically everyone stop complaining until you're ready to unveil a better set of balancing changes.

Balancing Alternatives style (high effort):

The Bows are good as they are extremely high raw damage- minimum 1120 raw assuming only Point Strike, Vital Sense, and Hammer Shot. Couple that with the fact that Headshots grant a bonus x2 on crit, you get 4480 raw on headshot as your minimum.

We can thus assume the bows' strength is their ability to deal $&*^wavingly f**khueg amounts of raw damage.

However, this has a weakness: armor. In the current damage system, armor reduces the damage dealt by a rather large amount, causing extremely high level grineer and orokin void content to require either finishers or 4x Corrosive Projection auras in order to be even possible. In fact, without having a reasonable amount of Corrosive or Puncture and Radiation damage(s), most weapons begin to struggle with armored factions between lv30 and lv40.

While the bows have a very large value that has to be reduced down, because armor reduces based on a percentage, even the high puncture of the Paris Prime modded for Radiation eventually gets slowed down by Heavy Gunners and Bombards in T4 Survival/Defense without those Corrosive Projections.

Enter the possible role sniper rifles could fill:
Low rate of fire, high single target anti-armor damage.

This allows them to be very powerful against highly dangerous targets (just like the bows), but for a different reason than the bows, allowing the two to co-exist.

As such, the changes are as follows:
- Headshots with a Sniper Rifle ignore armor entirely
- Sniper rifles are given a crit nerf
- Sniper rifles are granted a large buff to their base damage

For the first, we still want snipers to require accuracy to do well, so tying their armor bypassing ability to weak point targetting maintains this.

The nerf to the crit stat is so they cannot compete with the bows in a crit-based competition. This also prevents them from becoming too powerful by letting them both crit very often AND bypass armor. In addition, this unshackles them from crit mods, allowing them to build to take maximal advantage of their armor bypass, without completely invalidating crit mods on them.

The damage buff, however, has two reasons. One, because we nerfed crit and already know that their current raw damages are too low to perform overly well- even against non-Grineer. Two, to let them keep up with the bows when one has been specialized for defeating a specific armor type.

Sample numbers and calculations can be found on this spreadsheet

 

Builds on that spreadsheet do not account for Split Chamber in the listed normalized damage, but do assume it is sloted. Also assumes headshot's x2 with the x2 crit bonus, maxed Serration, Charged Chamber on the Vectis, and either 90%, 180%, or 240% for an elemental bonus (as noted).

 

 

Thirdly, some quality of life changes:
Scopes

There have been a lot of complaints about scopes for a long while, mostly because they were originally added in a poor incarnation, and they provide nearly no benefit at the cost of situational awareness.

Thus, two things that need to be fixed:
- Restrictiveness

Solution: Variable Scopes. Commonly requested, the ability to adjust the intensity of the zoom means more usability on more tiles.

- Usefulness

Solution: Scanner x-ray vision. Also commonly requested (specifically for the Lanka), right now the scope overlay is distracting but doesn't give anything in return. Allowing us to have the minor see-through-walls ability that the Scanner has would mean the scope actually grants us something in return.

Multishot

Again going with the consistancy dream...

 

Ban Split Chamber (and all other eventual rifle multishot mods) from Sniper Rifles and Bows

 

Add a new sniper/bow mod, Echoed Report

+25% multishot per rank, 3 ranks max (+100% multishot)

 

This allows that second bullet to be reliable, rather than a random-number crapshoot.

Nullifier Shields - Updated 4/12

Nulifier shields are extremely punishing to sniper rifles and bows, while high rof weapons that aren't crit based (such as the Boltor Prime) hardly notice them. This is because of how their damage restrictions work.

 

The simplest solution I can see is allow Sniper Rifles and Bows to have punch through on those shields. You still have to hit the generator mook to take them down fast, but at least you're not stuck spending 9 of your Lanka's 10 round mag (and 72 round max ammo pool) just to take it down.

 

Also fits with the sniper weapon's combat role- eliminating high value targets rapidly.

 

 

 

Another solution would be to give sniper weapons a more favorable damage cap (or simply an unskippable damage reduction instead of a cap), and allow sniper weapons to drop them into negative health amounts. This would mean a sniper taking down the shield takes it down for a much longer time, as the shield has to heal back its negative health before it can actually regenerate.

 

Added benefit, not only do they not ignore the shield, but it also allows a sniper to prioritize other targets that aren't the generator if they are bigger threats.

Anti-Horde Capabilities - New 4/26

As mentioned earlier, enemy force composition leans more towards zerglings than ultralisks, putting the sniper rifle at a major disadvantage. Of course, while I personally believe this is intended, and part of how you balance them, there are a couple of ideas floating around that still encourage you to use them apropriately while granting some aoe ability.

 

On-kill explosion:

When killed by a weakpoint hit, the victim of a sniping explodes violently, dealing damage to surrounding units.

 

Usually this is suggested as being based on overkill damage- the more unspent damage potential, the more damage this explosion deals- which is a great idea on paper and when the sniper rifle is being used to pop those heavies rather than lights.

 

Unfortunately, this aproaches a rather impressive power level when used on lights, to the point where blapping a light could very easily kill a heavy next to it. This is not what we want to happen.

 

 

Three ideas to fix this.

1) Have the explosion damage be based on damage dealt instead of Overkill

- Killing a heavy maims everything nearby, killing a light maims only lights nearby

- Doesn't reward the sniper for building for huge amounts of damage per shot

- Potentially makes a sniper a little too powerful

 

2) Have the explosion damage be based on both the overkill relative to the damage dealt

- Killing a heavy or light only tickles things nearby, while killing medium threats gives the strongest burst.

- Confusing build, you want to deal as close to a specific fract of the target's health as possible

 

3) Have the explosion damage hard or soft capped based on the damage dealt

- Killing a heavy maims, killing a light doesn't

- Overkill can eventually cap on the explosion amount

 

Smart Bullets:

Original idea suggested by Watlok on page 3, when a sniper round impacts an enemy's weakpoint, it adjusts its trajectory to strike another target.

 

As an alternate form of punch through when an organic or robotic target is impacted (rather than completely inert matter), this would allow the sniper to hit multiple targets per shot.

 

Of course, having this behave the exact same way as punch through would be a little too strong- letting a sniper basically kill an entire force (up to a bounce count) in a single shot.

 

What I would suggest is two special features of a shot like this:

1) The shot loses damage potential every bounce (based on overkill amount)

2) Punch Through is disabled upon the ricochet effect occuring.

Edited April 27, 2015 by TheBlueJelly

[Gelkor]

Nullifier Shields

Nulifier shields are extremely punishing to sniper rifles and bows, while high rof weapons that aren't crit based (such as the Boltor Prime) hardly notice them. This is because of how their damage restrictions work.

 

The best solution I can see is allow Sniper Rifles and Bows to have punch through on those shields. You still have to hit the generator mook to take them down fast, but at least you're not stuck spending 9 of your Lanka's 10 round mag (and 72 round max ammo pool) just to take it down.

 

Also fits with the sniper weapon's combat role- eliminating high value targets rapidly.

 

 

In the end, Snipers have ONE JOB, and Nullifier bubble mechanics completely negate it.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Gelkor

[(PSN)iBoiz]

I agree, if nullifers can shoot through their shields with their snipers why can't we shoot through their shield with our snipers.

Edited April 7, 2015 by (PS4)iBoiz

[Nemorac]

I like the ideas put forth in this thread.  Especially those about the armor-negation and shooting through Nullifier shields.  I want Snipers to be viable dang-it!

[DSpite]

"This results in an issue very prevalent in later waves of Survival and Defense".

 

Maps are not meant to be a personal, long reward streak farming grounds. Constant whinging from players created the current Dungeon Defenders scenarios.

 

We went from being Operatives that run covert and overt operations for the Lotus, to playing Tower Defense minigames. I almost feel for the people that want more stealth or cover mechanics or Parkour 2.0, because even those beat the hell of turning Warframe into a glorified arcade game. Might as well demand a top down view and be done with it.

 

The sniper rifles will obliterate "standard level" targets already. If you think the problem is the 80th level Heavy Gunners, or units behind energy shields, then asking for a "magic gun" in order to go another 5 minutes or 5 waves is not the answer.

 

We already have the tools. You can set Banshee to give that sniper rifle damage values in the millions against enemies in "later waves". You are just taking a problem that only exists when trying to go high range farming and complain that your farming is impeded because you don't have enough damage output.

 

This incessant "I must be able to farm longer/to higher waves" is insane. Constant demands for more damage or more killing ability, and for what? Make it easier to get that last piece of that missing Prime? Which will just get maxed and put in the bin, because, I mean, after all, you must surely ALREADY have enough killing power to get that far in the first place.

Edited April 8, 2015 by DSpite

[Sixty5]

Sounds pretty similar to my own conclusions about snipers

My fix was just adding a mod in that allowed sniper shots to ignore up to 80% of an enemies defenses.

So you'd be able to shoot nullifiers or Arctic Eximi though their bubbles, at the cost of 20% of your damage.

Basically what it would mean is that snipers would be consistently deal most of their damage, regardless of the enemy.

[Nira]

The sniper rifles will obliterate "standard level" targets already. If you think the problem is the 80th level Heavy Gunners, or units behind energy shields, then asking for a "magic gun" in order to go another 5 minutes or 5 waves is not the answer.

 

They will, yes, at the chances the OP listed. I've had Grineer opponents on Ceres (non-endless) survive a non-critting shot from a [edit: five-forma] Lanka.

 

 

We already have the tools. You can set Banshee to give that sniper rifle damage values in the millions against enemies in "later waves". You are just taking a problem that only exists when trying to go high range farming and complain that your farming is impeded because you don't have enough damage output.

 

 

That's just like the Ember/Ignis issue. What if the party doesn't want a Banshee? You shouldn't have to restrict your loadout just to get a mis-functioning set of weapons to work properly.

 

Anyway, OP, you have my vote. A well-presented and comprehensive thread. I agree snipers are currently far too chance-based.

Edited April 8, 2015 by Dualice

[Racercowboy]

Any change to make snipers more consistent I think would be a good one. They may still be overshadowed by other weapons, but at least we won't be rolling dice every time we shoot.

 

Then again, I wonder do we shoot dice since everything is based on RNG?

[DSpite]

That's just like the Ember/Ignis issue. What if the party doesn't want a Banshee? You shouldn't have to restrict your loadout just to get a mis-functioning set of weapons to work properly.

 

Anyway, OP, you have my vote. A well-presented and comprehensive thread. I agree snipers are currently far too chance-based.

 

Ceres. The planet that has enemies at a HIGHER level then our Frames.

 

So you choose not to use the best tools for the job, then complain you don't get the results you're after, and instead demand that the entire tool set get a buff so everyone can use them, way past a reasonable point in the game.

 

It is not unreasonable that heavily armored opponents should be capable of taking multiple high power rounds and surviving. If everyone had a Corrosive Projection, maybe it would not have needed two shots. This "one shot to end them all, because, Sniper" under ANY situation, is misplaced.

 

All tools should fail at some stage without use of some form of specialization.

[WarGrylls]

A buddy of mine and I have posted about hte scopes being a bother in the past... gave up trying. Our Vectis sniper days collects dust and I went on to the Grinlok and Paris Prime.

[Eirshy]

DSpite, I went into T3 and T4 Exterms when testing armor values to make sure I was making that spreadsheet correctly (I had to verify the scaling formula was correct). The enemies you face are lv30-35.

 

The last step of my testing involved confirming the amount of damage I needed to drop Corrupted Heavy Gunners using a pure corrosive Lanka. In order to better facilitate getting accurate readings, I removed Split Chamber and my crit mods.

 

Heavy Gunners have Ferrite armor, for +75% damage from Corrosive and 75% armor ignore. Cloned Flesh takes full damage from Corrosive.

 

It took 2-3 headshots every time, unless I critted. And I have a max rank Serration.

 

Note that I said specifically that the problems arise in lv30+ content, not lv40+ content. The armor system's issues only become more apparent in endless content, however, lv30+ content (which is actually pretty @(*()&#036; common) has lots of issues. If you actually used weapons like the Lanka, you'd know this.

 

I mean, S#&amp;&#036;, remember when Rescue 2.0 came out and we had that event going on? I had to specially mod my Lanka to get my chance to ohko a prison guard on headshot over 90%. The gun was practically useless outside of that one specific task, too.

 

 

 

Oh, and weapons should fall off you say?

Why the hell should the Lanka be one of those I ask you. It takes 4 researches to get access to the blueprint (Fieldron, Prova, Dera, Lanka), and requires Mastery Rank 7 to even use, while also costing 20 gallium and a forma to build.

 

By the time you can even consider shouldering a Lanka, it's useless. If this was the Vulkar, you'd have a point. Hell, even the Vectis, you have a point (only currently the vectis is better than the Lanka in almost every way). But if anything the Lanka should be the one doing what the Paris Prime and Dread are currently doing. Only even harder, because the other two are simple RNG to get, and one of them doesn't even have a mastery requirement.

 

 

 

If the sniper weapon is not reliably (re: when the user aims propperly and connects the shot accurately after modding it correctly, not because RNGezus said so) oneshotting everything it's designed to oneshot, what purpose does it serve?

 

Burst vs DPS debates always result in the same conclusion: if the target can survive the burst, DPS is significantly better. And given how accurate weapons like the Karak and Soma are, there's really no need for a sniper weapon if it cannot provide enough burst to at least kill every non-boss enemy in the standard game when both modded correctly and fired accurately. Especially with how many engagements in this game are at under 30m (you know, where high zoom, low rof, perfect accuracy weapons start to become unweildy).

 

In spite of that, Bows were brought up to the level they are at around u12 or u13- and up until Nullifiers came out and made them basically worthless, were quite common and fun because they'd actually kill the target.

 

Hence the reason I want the buff that I requested- one that does not replace the bows in all situations, only replaces them in certain situations. You know, be that "appropriate tool" without having to be in a party of 4 with corrosive projection on everyone. Both the sniper rifles and the bows would get to do what they're supposed to do to lv30 and lower mobs. But the sniper rifles would continue to do well against armored foes, while the bows would defeat the unarmored ones.

 

As for needing a weakness, you measure the number of shots you can get off in seconds, not miliseconds. You're not killing swaths of enemy troops with them, hence why they're so worthless right now because they can only take down the lowest mooks. Meanwhile the high level mooks laugh at them. With a buff, they end up in a similar place as the bows- worthless for hordes but at least they kill what they hit. Only the bows can function without even headshotting most of the time, while the current sniper rifles don't even oneshot on headshot over 16% of the time.

 

 

 

Now, if the issue I had with them was that I was struggling to use them in CQC, I would agree with you that I'm just using them wrong.

 

But when I cannot reliably win engagements at over 60m when my sniper rifle's build is specific to the enemy I'm shooting at and I'm landing every shot as a headshot, there's actually a problem with the weapon class.

 

 

 

"You should just play banshee and use sonar."
That chorus helm avatar I use is not just for show, y'know?

[Nira]

Ceres. The planet that has enemies at a HIGHER level then our Frames.

 

So you choose not to use the best tools for the job, then complain you don't get the results you're after, and instead demand that the entire tool set get a buff so everyone can use them, way past a reasonable point in the game.

 

It is not unreasonable that heavily armored opponents should be capable of taking multiple high power rounds and surviving. If everyone had a Corrosive Projection, maybe it would not have needed two shots. This "one shot to end them all, because, Sniper" under ANY situation, is misplaced.

 

All tools should fail at some stage without use of some form of specialization.

 

You said standard level targets. I'd say that includes anything on the star-map in a non-endless mission type.

 

None of us here are trying to argue that they should be buffed so that "everyone can use [sniper rifles], way past a reasonable point in the game". The argument is that sniper rifles are currently unfit for their purpose, which is reliably providing high single-target damage.

 

"All tools should fail at some stage without use of some form of specialization". I would agree with this. But the tool needs to be functioning properly within its niche to begin with.

[Spikey844]

All tools should fail at some stage without use of some form of specialization.

Provided those tools succeed until that stage without specialisation.

[Nira]

Provided those tools succeed until that stage without specialisation.

 

Yes! Precisely my point.

[taiiat]

we may not all agree on the exact same methods (and not to sound like a jerk but i'd like to think i'm trying to make the Weapons have more to them, making them an Archetype of Weapon that fills a few different Playstyles and gives some real Player choice, whereas most are content with making them effective and 'viable') but overall i think we do agree that there is something to work on.

to keep flexible, i would probably go with ignoring some Armor, but not all of it. so that Crits can still be a part of them.

everyone's going to talk about Nullifiers, i'm sure of it. it's going to be a hot thing.

being able to pierce the Nullifier Shield? too easy. the Enemy by design is somewhat limiting Ability and Weapon Damage mowing Enemies down. but it should affect everyone somewhat equally, so that it matters no matter what Archetype of Weapon you have. however having to pump out tons of Ammunition to break it? ridiculous.

so a compromise somewhere in the middle. allow Sniping Archetype Weapons to reduce the Shield by a much larger percentage per hit. 2(maybe 3) shots to break it(about time equal with automatic Weapons that need ~12-15 shots to break). however, each shot on the Shield, could 'overload' the device for a short time, temporarily stunning the Nullifier Crewman for a couple seconds. cannot shoot, cannot move.

this includes Bows and Sniper Rifles alike. however, it could also include any Weapons that have a base RoF (doesn't account for Mods) of sub 2.0.

- - - - -

some things that i've written recently in some Threads. lots more long ago... but searching for things on this Forum is very tedious and tiresome, even if i have Google search it for me.

35% Crit Chance should be a baseline.

adding Critical Delay pushes it over 100%. this makes a great Playstyle Preference.

rewarding Accuracy is ofcourse also important. rewarding shots on Weakpoints and such.

let's also please have optics that don't look like arse. to have 'Optics' all we really needed was some Vignetting. what we got instead was overly bright and complicated and actually block vision most of the time, rather than helping the process of aiming. no real world Optic is ever designed to block the sight picture.

i also think that having the Optics be 100% of the screen is overkill - and would like the Optics to have a little bit of peripheral vision (since in reality you use Optics with your face a few inches back from it rather than pressed against it (except for the rubber 'socks' that are used on some Russian Optics) due to user hazard, firing any gun while the Optic is pressed against your eye is asking for a serious injury).

Status is something of an important point to not forget. if you shoot about one shot per second, as opposed to upwards of 10 or 12, Status should be significantly higher to compensate for it. most of the Sniping Weapons in this category aren't high enough IMO.

bonuses for being further away from your targets can't hurt. not just Damage either, can include Status and perhaps some special stuff. same goes for Stealth Kills with Sniper Rifles.

having Sniper Rifles and Bows not both be capable of Crits however - makes for a balance problem. unfortunately, Crits on Weakpoints deal bonus Damage. this is how Bows currently deal extremely high Damage. if other Weapons in that Spike Damage role did not have Crits, they would never be able to compete.

35% Crit Chance - with a Crit Chance bonus on Weakpoints. add 25 Crit Chance for example(note the flat bonus). 112.5% Crit Chance on Weakpoints, 87.5% anywhere else unless you're using Critical Delay, then 100% everywhere, and 129.3% on Weakpoints.

Status being guaranteed is a lot more powerful than it sounds. something in the 30% ish range for most is good. Lanka 40-45% ofcourse.

(100% Viral Status without any compromises to get it is asking for trouble! - sacrificing some Damage to have very high Status is a fair compromise, using Status Elementals instead of Elementals in order to have a very high Status rate.)

a Status bonus on Weakpoints wouldn't be terrible though. +50% Status chance on Weakpoint perhaps.

bonuses for Range is an extra. a nod toward the Weapon Archetype for the Player being in an 'ideal' position for the Weapons.

don't think of every single feature as separate, think of them together. every single feature does not need to be mindblowing, and infact shouldn't be in order to keep balance while making Weapons more unique.

i notice i didn't hit all of the points in that one segment. minimum 0.5m Punch-Through for all of them.

a couple tempting unique Mods that could be had - all Overkill Damage done in a N Meter Radius around the Kill point; 50% Chance for shots to create a Blast Status Explosion around the hit Enemy.

Edited April 9, 2015 by taiiat

[Magnaliscious]

Thread bump for support.

[Eirshy]

@Taiiat

While you are, I'm looking at it mostly from a reliability perspective and keeping the role it's intended for. Newer ones can have different roles, but the old ones should have the originally intended one. In addition, 15/2 isn't actually that bad of a crit stat, and I wouldn't be all "no never" if it were to be 20/2 or 20/1.5. I was mostly suggesting crit numbers conservativley- hence why it's only on the spreadsheet while the main doccument suggests a crit nerf with no numbers suggested.

 

And as I stated in the OP, bows already do crits, and if we're focusing on reliability, snipers would be doing crits equally or better in order to keep that reliability. I was wanting something different that would cause them to be good, thus the full armor bypass. Added benefit, it lets them be the only weapon that doesn't need 4x Corrosive Projection in Law of Retribution.

 

 

 

On to Nulli-chan...

I can agree straight bypassing them is a little cheap, but the <15 shots a Boltor Prime needs to break one takes <1.5 seconds, while two shots of a sniper weapon take closer to 2 seconds (bows more, propperly modded/used Lanka or Vectis just slightly less). In addition, you start having to worry about the shield coming back while you are readying your next shot.

 

During my testing run with the low-RNG Lanka build, I had a lovely frost eximus nullifier. Probably the worst possible kind as he gets an ice bubble and the nullifying bubble. In addition there were like 7 bombards that I had FUN dealing with. Long story short, killing him required me to bait every other enemy away so I could kill them, and then spend about 5 minutes and a medium ammo restore to deal with him (I'd get 1-2 lanka shots before his nullifying shield would come back, and the frost shield would come back shortly after).

 

 

Allowing the sniper rounds to oneshot the shield is pretty much required in order for snipers to be able to handle nullifiers in a timely manner, but piercing it keeps accuracy in the equasion as you have to shoot to kill the genny.

 

 

That overloading idea in a different direction....

What if we made it so snipers get to ignore the damage cap (or just a better damage cap (or even just percent-reduced full damage)), and are able to take the shield into the negatives for HP? Like, say the shield has 100 health and heals 10 per second. You hit it with a sniper weapon for 200 health. The shield breaks instantly, and is at -100 health. After the regen delay, it starts to heal. But it takes 10 additional seconds before it actually comes back because it has to first heal itself to 0 HP.

 

This way, while a full auto is more likely to drop the shield and kill the genny, a sniper taking down the shield *really* takes down the shield, and has the ability to priorritize units that were hiding in it rather than the genny if there were larger threats present.

Edited April 9, 2015 by TheBlueJelly

[Eirshy]

 

Every day until you buff them.

[(PSN)DrHildibrand]

So why can't both bows and snipers be crit weapons? The bows can be unique by having the ragdoll effect, and snipers can get the punch through mechanic.

[Tar_Spit_Fire]

I agree, if nullifers can shoot through their shields with their snipers why can't we shoot through their shield with our snipers.

[Eirshy]

So why can't both bows and snipers be crit weapons? The bows can be unique by having the ragdoll effect, and snipers can get the punch through mechanic.

'Cause the ragdoll mechanic is basically just a different version of the punch through mechanic, and making them crit based would get them into a &#036;&amp;*^waving contest with eachother directly rather than indirectly.

 

Also, with the addition of bombards to the void, it's impossible to build the lanka to be useful there. Giving armor bypass instead allows the sniper rifles to play in the void without CPx4. Basically, the same reason why a radiation build Paris Prime laughs at the Dread in T4 void.

[(PSN)DrHildibrand]

'Cause the ragdoll mechanic is basically just a different version of the punch through mechanic, and making them crit based would get them into a $&*^waving contest with eachother directly rather than indirectly.

 

Also, with the addition of bombards to the void, it's impossible to build the lanka to be useful there. Giving armor bypass instead allows the sniper rifles to play in the void without CPx4. Basically, the same reason why a radiation build Paris Prime laughs at the Dread in T4 void.

 

I can see that. All I really want is for Snipers to be the one hit weapons they are meant to be. Whether it is by increased damaged, more crit, or even armor bypass, I just want them balanced out with their low mags and RoF.

[Sputter]

Changing nullifiers shield to having a hp amount instead of a certain amount of hits would be a great change to low rof high damage weapons. Like it should be!!. Rip Opticor

[Eirshy]

Changing nullifiers shield to having a hp amount instead of a certain amount of hits would be a great change to low rof high damage weapons. Like it should be!!. Rip Opticor

The issue with giving it straight health is that it makes them no different from any other thing. The goal was to have something that slows down certain weapons *coughBP/SPcough*. Doing something like either allowing sniper-type weapons to punch through it, or allow them to both one-shot the shield and grant them a bonus to how long the shield is down would be better.

Edited April 13, 2015 by TheBlueJelly

[Eirshy]

 

Every day until you buff them.