Sniper Rifle Rework [U18 Megathread]

[HardcoreSalmon]

These changes are nice but honestly snipers still suck.

Here are my reasons:

-No INNATE PUNCH THROUGH.

-Nullifiers are still unbalanced and make them useless.

-No guaranteed crits (except the lanka when zoomed).

-Bows still beat them in almost every single way.

 

How can an arrow go through a wall and 2 enemies when a high powered sniper rifle can't even go through 1?

[Cupressi]

Where is my innate punch through and the ability to shoot the Nullifier in the bubble?  Damage change might as well not be there and the combo system is stupid with how fast the bonus will drop.

[Issun135]

The combo system for snipers is good. The timer is pretty long. Lasts roughly 8-10 seconds. The only sniper that benefits the most from being zoomed 12x is the lanka and its +0.5 crit chance (+50% to base chance?) allowing it to red crit with insane damage. Its innate 5m punch though also helpful. As well as its 10 round magazine. The rework has also buffed the damage on most sniper rifles as well. Lanka in particular went from 300 base damage to 525 damage.

So far the rework seems to be doing well but I have yet to do more testing on other rifles. I'm just really happy my 6 forma Lanka is viable for end game as it just melted enemies in the sortie survival.

[alfaomega04]

:( so many good ideas provided that were completely ignored.

 

Good changes:

-MUCH better scopes

 

Unnecessary change:

-Basically everything else (don't plan to list each of them, but all of them did nothing for the snipers)

 

Changes that SHOULD have been implemented:

-Remove the crit chance/crit damage from snipers (we do not want to kill one enemy while tickling the others, we just want to have reliable damage)

-Add Headshot multipliers (NOT based on chance, if you can land headshot you should be rewarded)

-Punchthrough (walls or objects not included)

-Allow full or reduced damage through nullifier bubble

-Faster reload

 

Those five change (which have all been listed on previous threads by different users) would have made snipers actually satisfying and a viable options to the other primaries. We did not need extra zoom nor any of the other extra stuff they got. We just needed pretty much those changes I listed which the community has voiced for some time now.

 

EDIT: I tried my different sniper rifle in different scenarios and missions and all of them have the same problems as before. As they stand, they are all going back into storage as I see absolutely no reason to use instead of all the rest of my primaries. I I was really looking forward to this sniper rework that even before starting The second dream quest, I tried out the snipers, then after the quest I tried them out even more, but gotta say it was nothing like I hoped.

Edited December 4, 2015 by alfaomega04

[Hammahness808]

These changes are nice but honestly snipers still suck.

Here are my reasons:

-No INNATE PUNCH THROUGH.

-Nullifiers are still unbalanced and make them useless.

-No guaranteed crits (except the lanka when zoomed).

-Bows still beat them in almost every single way.

 

How can an arrow go through a wall and 2 enemies when a high powered sniper rifle can't even go through 1?

[Trichouette]

"Hey look at that bunch of weapon that can one-shot every single enemy of the game, they're underpowered against the massive amount of enemy and their slow fire rate & reload speed. Hm... how can we fix that... Oh i know, more damage, and a kill counter combo that increase the damage and reset fast enough so they can't reload and keep the combo without puting all the reload speed mod available."

 

No really, we didn't need more damage, the snipers of the game still s*cks.

Just adding punch through (and a big one) on every sniper would've been amazing.

Instead of that you give us a damage bonus (or crit chance / crit damage) on zoom. And on top of that, it seems the snipers can't even hit anything without scope.

 

WHY would we ever use a x10 scope in a game that penalize a non-moving gameplay ?

 

Give us punch through already.

Among the gigantic amount of sniper rework thread, the MAIN idea that was common in all of them was the "innate punch through" idea. And that's the thing you totally refused to use.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Trichouette

[BluelitHalo]

Rework did nothing to fix Snipers.   Please consider that much of the gameplay is centered around killing hordes of enemies, especially in endless missions.  Then add what's necessary for Snipers to be a competitive option with the Rifles, Shotguns, Melee weapons that are able to handle this already.

Innate punchthrough, consistent critical hits, and fragmentation rounds would definitely make Snipers competitive.  It can be argued that we can just slap Metal Auger on our Sniper and call it a day, but with the low fire rate, it is still problematic to fight against hordes coming from many directions.

Edited December 4, 2015 by AzureEmulation

[Azamagon]

I'm just gonna quote myself from another thread:

 

How I'd do it:

 

* Scrap stat bonuses on different zoom levels (zoom is a utility in itself, let it stay that way)

* Scrap the combo mechanic (pointless mechanic for snipers, which should stay unique to melee imo)

* Give all Snipers various amounts of innate Punchthrough

* Give all Snipers X-ray on their scopes (similar to Scanners, but less obstructive), so you can use the punchthrough more easily

* Give all Snipers better magazine:reload ratios (And / or make swapping speeds way faster baseline so you can swap to your crowdclearing secondary more quickly)

* Give all Snipers buffs to critical hit chance so critical hits are guaranteed when modded. If necessary for balance, lower their damage a tiny bit.

* Make altfire alternate between TWO zoom modes: Low zoom and high zoom.

 

What all this would do is a bunch of practical buffs that still keeps them unique (the scopes having X-ray and various zooms), makes them better at their intended role (reliably killing tough units with guaranteed crits), while also making them a bit better in the area they suffer (crowd control with better magazine:reload ratios and the innate punchthrough)

 

Really, that's all that's needed imo.

 

The fact that hipfire accuracy also got lowered is ridiculous, that is exactly the OPPOSITE of what Snipers needed! If you want them more viable, make them more suitable for the hordemode that this game is (as in, what I suggested in the quote).

 

I was dissapointed about the announced changes, and even more disappointed after trying them out!

Edited December 4, 2015 by Azamagon

[Acidulant]

Why do sniper rifles still do not have 100% crit chance?

Insane crit multiplier alright cool, but then there comes these stray shots that don't crit and your dmg is garbage and fails to 1 shot heavy units.

Think

[DarcnyssWolfe]

My only thoughts on the rework are quite simple: Did anyone at DE ever bother to even use one of the snipers? Both pre- and post-buff?

Anyone who has used any sniper for more than a mission or two can tell you damn near every flaw about them and have a pretty decent idea on how they can be fixed.

PS. Not trying to sound mean, as I am truly confused and curious as to the mindset behind this rework.

Edited December 4, 2015 by DarcnyssWolfe

[SeEnCreaTive]

I'm not too unhappy about the inaccurate hip fire. It's a sniper, generally should be fired scoped. If you want to hip fire and do lots of damage per shot, use a shot gun. If the target is too far away, use an AR, farther then that, well, you can scope with a sniper.

I don't know any game with accurate hip firing snipers. Some don't even have a redicle.

Again, I'm not sure I can't play until Sunday night, if we're talking entire screen inaccurate hip fire, that's not cool

I'd like to disagree with some people here, snipers did need a flat out damage buff. My 3 forma snipetron vandal, can't even hold a match to my 1 forma dread. The snipetron is Hella inaccurate (heavy caliber) just to get it to reasonible damage levels, with some sort of sibilance of a crit build.

Dread is more accurate, does more base damage, base 50% critical chance, innate punch through (snipetron vandal is the only sniper to have that to my knowlage). A small critical chance mod, and critical damage mod, suddenly your 2500 slash damage, has a 100% critical chance, that has a multiplier of 4.4, the you times that by 2 with multishot.

22k damage.

On top of all that it's silent. GG

[Snipehunter67]

Lot's of feedback over lots of time with sniper rifles that I won't rehash.  Seems like DE either didn't listen much or they simply hate sniper rifles.  I'm kinda betting on both tbh.

 

The part that confuses me, is that when shotguns got reworked, they got buffed to the moon.  When snipers got reworked, they got a new scope that you'd be hard pressed to get me to use much.

 

Sorry DE, but this rework was a fail, plain and simple.

[----Dante----]

i have feeling that the rework ended up a nerf the accuracy drop is quite huge

[Rekkou]

Okay DE i will play your game.

 

Zoom should only increase critical chance for all snipers.

 

Combo bonus is where the difference should be

Vectis, Vulkar,Snipetron & Rubico should have increased reload speed bonus/ Chance not to consume ammo

Lanka should have increased fire rate/reduced charge time

[Cyandana]

You want snipers to be good? 

 

Add Innate Punchthrough (why hasn't this been added? It literally makes no sense)

 

Get rid of that oh my goodness why did you do this to us nerf to hipfire, it was completely unjustified and if you did as "incentive" to make us use the zoom features that's... kind of messed up

 

In addition, each successful shot while scoped should reduce the time of your next reload by x % depending on sniper (the Rubicon is in DESPERATE need of this), resulting in instant or almost instant reload time if every shot in the clip is landed - you should lose this bonus if you drop your combo by missing.

 

As of now the only sniper worth looking at is the Vectis Prime, and it's still laughable when compared to standard Rifles and Shotguns (though admittedly very fun) .

[LazerusKI]

I have actually found something very interesting with Vectis and Snipetron, i dont know if it is a bug or intended, since i have only seen it on those two rifles...i mean...its actually a good one this time.

 

In short...Snipetron Vandal and Vectis both seem to have an x2 combo multiplier. instead of hitting once, each projectile counts as two hits, so split chamber increases that to 4 hits per shot. at first i thought its because of the punch through, but lanka isnt affected by that.

this could be caused by punch through on hitscan weapons somehow, because Snipetron Vandal has innate PT while my Vectis had Shred

 

Also i have to say this after testing my rifles for a while:

Lanka:

The third zoom stage of lanka is too unstable, its almost impossible to hit something because it wobbles around so much. its not just hard to hit something, it literally makes me sick, like when you are on a ship and you are not used to it...and i never had such a thing in any other games (ok, there was one, Sniper Ghost Warrior pre patch, where exactly the same issue happened). Also the movement is way to...quick, it doesnt look "natural" like a sway or so, it literally jumps around.

the damage itself seems to be fine though, its very high, couldnt see a red crit, but even the yellow ones were fine. so the only issue here is the scope.

When i could actually hit something, the combo multiplier even worked.

 

Vectis:
Also here the damage seems to be fine, atleast it wasnt that hard to kill lv 100 Heavy Gunners.

Here i noticed something odd. i had split chamber installed (as usual), but each hit gave me 4 points for the combo counter (also i had shred)

Scope was fine, no extreme wobbling as with Lanka, i could perfectly hit my target.

Combo counter worked also fine, i could keep it up without a problem.

 

Snipetron Vandal:

Well, i never actually formad it, so i had to test a cheap build.

still, it was possible to kill those lvl 100 heavies, not oneshot, but they died.

scope is also fine here.

also as mentioned, it has the same weird behaviour as vectis, each hit counts as 2 on the combo counter. so when i hit 2 enemies in a row with splitchamber, i got 8 combo points, thats why i noticed it in the first place.

Sadly SVs reload speed is too slow to fully use the combo mechanic, it resets shortly after you finished the reload.

 

Video is uploading soon

Here it is

 

Rubic:

Sadly not from me, but from what i can see here its also a nice weapon.

Also compliment to the sound team, it sounds awesome

BUT it has the same issue that lanka has, its third scope is way too jumpy.

Edited December 5, 2015 by LazerusKI

[PhiZero]

In short...Snipetron Vandal and Vectis both seem to have an x2 combo multiplier. instead of hitting once, each projectile counts as two hits, so split chamber increases that to 4 hits per shot. at first i thought its because of the punch through, but lanka isnt affected by that.

this could be caused by punch through on hitscan weapons somehow, because Snipetron Vandal has innate PT while my Vectis had Shred

 

I also experienced the same thing with the Vectis Prime, didn't occur to me that punchthrough might be the cause. As for the Lanka, the only difference between it and the Snipetron and Vectis is its not a hitscan weapon, so that may be contributing to it. (Edit) I equiped shred on the Rubico, and it is doubling the counter like your Snipetron and Vectis.

 

As for some actual feedback, I've always felt that snipers were in a fine place, so the rework is just icing on the cake; but, I have noticed some shots randomly going way off mark with the Vectis Prime and Rubico. Not just slightly off like the crosshairs when Warframe came to steam, but about 2-5 ft off to either the left or right. Has anyone else had this issue? or am I just going insane.

 

(Edit 2) Is there any way to reduce the camera sway at higher zoom levels? As I am starting to get motion sick at the higher zoom levels as if it was Mirror's Edge again.

Edited December 5, 2015 by PhiZero

[hukurokuju5]

hipfire accuracy nerf kills quickscoping .... now you have to wait for the scope to fully zoom to fire accurately.  

 

HOWEVER

 

they definitely FEEL more sniperrifles

 

APPLAUSE for the rubico FEEL.  nice sounds, sleek design.   

the reticle on the rubico can get lost in the chaos

[DarcnyssWolfe]

You want snipers to be good?

As of now the only sniper worth looking at is the Vectis Prime, and it's still laughable when compared to standard Rifles and Shotguns (though admittedly very fun) .

ill agree with the rest of your post, however, Vulkar has become far more viable with the update, if only due to being able to scope in at just 2.5x, giving a 65% total damage increase with the syndicate mod with a much easier to use zoom. On top of it being buffed to just 0.1 damage short of Vectis, it is far better now, but it seems to be the only one to get any amount of buffing (that hip fire kills the damage buff Lanka got imho).

[indy864]

Take aim and breathe steady, Tenno.

 

While you get swarmed by 20 enemies and your team moves to the next room? No.

Hipfire accuracy was the last argument you could make for sniper rifles, at least with regards to fun gameplay.

 

If you want to do something with sniper rifles, buff their reliability:

- remove any inaccuracys

- increase Split Chamber to >100%, nerf Serration accordingly

- make them either auto-crit or have high base damage with very low crit-chance

- remove unreliable combo bonus

- remove unnecessary zoom bonus

Edited December 5, 2015 by indy864

[----Dante----]

i think ill never use sniper rifle again i wont bother staying still and carefully aiming at hoards of enemies while my teammates cleaned the room and moved to next one rofl.

[Syln]

My main problem with the sniper now : Point blank accuracy ... i mean wtf ? and about the counter i kind of agree with some people, it should not increase damage (maybe affinity ?) neither on melee nor with sniper 

[Krion112]

I'm not too fond to most of these changes. They have done absolutely nothing to assist the efficiency of the Snipers.

 

Variable Zoom

Even with this new option to zoom in, I have yet to even use it at all in a practical situation. The game very rarely presents open areas for long range combat, and even if it does, if you're running with a squad you don't want to be slowed down behind them. Plus, the zoom-in bonuses are pretty much null; my sniper rifles have never had an issue with dealing damage, critical or otherwise.

 

Combos

Similar to the zoom-in bonuses, the combos do nothing special because sniper rifles have no trouble dealing damage. Sniper rifles could've been given a flat +20,000 to all damage bonus, and the only thing it would do is make Assassination missions slightly easier. The issue presented is that Snipers are not good at fighting the large hordes of foes we are presented. When there's like thirty or so guys fighting you, all running around haphazardly and coming at you in close range, a sniper rifle is not going to make it easy to kill them all, even with punch-through. You will one-shot any unit you shoot, but it will always be either a one or two shot kill, unless you manage to funnel them through a narrow corridor, but those rarely show up.

Therefore, just building up damage with a combo is just building up the amount of overkill you'll do to one guy, while the rest of the squad still fights on. Precision weapons don't do well in the main scenario presented by Warframe's game-play.

 

Scope Visuals

I like the new zoom-in overlays. Something about them makes aiming flow better. Good work here.

 

Sniper 'Hip-Fire' Innaccuracy

Not sure if this is a bug or if it's intentional, but the aim being off for shooting without aiming is something I completely disapprove of. Quite simply, it doesn't make sense that the bullet will physically be inaccurate just because I did not use the scope. It is literally a nerf to snipers when they did not need it.

However, if it was changed to suit conclave, that's even more frustrating because I don't play conclave, and weapons in PvE shouldn't change because they were unbalanced in PvP. This already happened to the Simulor, and it is very distasteful.

[Ziegrif]

I tried Vectis Prime as that's what I have at 4 forma and that's kind of my bread and butter sniper rifle.

 

All I could see is either 10% or 20% dmg buff and a hip fire accuracy nerf.

 

I didn't really pay attention to the combo counter.

 

Did not notice any differences that would make me use Snipers more. It feels like an empty rework all in all. Course I only tested V Prime.

 

Welp. Back to gathering dust Golden Girl. Until sorties limit me to Snipers once again.

 

What would make me use it more? Snipers innately ignoring Nully shields, having innate 20 meter punch through, Snipers having an in built scan that shows enemy locations and having pin point accuracy no matter what. Then I'd tune in.

Edited December 5, 2015 by Ziegrif

[Epicagemo]

Head shots should provide extra combo counter

Increasing combo should not require kills. only hits should increase counter, else it doesn't scale well.

Combos should only reset when you miss. Remember melee? Resetting combos in 4 seconds is terrible.