Sniper Rifles 2.0

[[DE]Momaw]

Lots of discussion about this lately.  I'll just vomit out all my ideas in one place for efficiency.

 

 

1.) Why sniper rifles need a rework

Basically your sniper rifle is a weapon to remove high value targets with precision, power, and range.  It's not an assault rifle, it's not a shotgun.  In Warframe, the role of sniper rifle is completely dominated by bows for one major reason: Reliability. The end game bows Dread and Paris Prime can achieve a 100% critical hit rate, which means that when you talk about your bow doing 20K damage to kill anything sensible in one shot, that means it does 20K on every shot.  The best sniper rifle for crits is the Vectis, which maxes out at only 62.5% critical chance (point strike = +150% chance).  Which means that almost half the time, a bullet is going to do less than a quarter of the damage that the rifle is capable of (vital sense = 440% crit damage).   Which is definitely enough to mean the difference between a one shot kill versus needing to follow up....and when you are dealing with weapons that have slow action times, recoil, and long reloads, one shot kills are necessary. Bows are reliable. Sniper rifles are not.  Therefore: Bows are superior.

 

 

2.) Making sniper rifles interesting

It would be easy enough to just give all sniper rifles the same 50% crit chance that the end game bows have, but that's kind of boring.  I propose instead that sniper rifles get two features that make them different from bows.

 

a.) Firstly:   Any head shot with a sniper rifle is an automatic crit.  It doesn't matter if you have crit mods or not, shot to the head (or closest analogue for the target's anatomy) crits every time period.  This rewards the precision that snipers should be trying for. It also frees up a mod slot for skilled shooters so they can use the second new feature.

 

b.) Mods specifically for sniper rifles:

- Relentless. Every time you get a hit with your rifle, you get a stacking damage multiplier.  Resets if you miss.

- Sudden Strike.  Increases damage on targets if shooting from their rear, or if they are unalerted.

- Nightmare Fuel. Gain energy if you kill an enemy with a head shot.

 

These give some specialist applications for sniper rifles that aren't just about stacking elements, and sets them apart mechanically from bows and assault rifles.

 

 

3.) Rebalance tweaks on the rifles themselves

 

First off, get rid of the forced high zoom value.  This is a handicap more often than it is an aid.  And unless the fancy reticules provide some kind of functionality, they also need to go.

 

Specific to the weapons:

 

* Vulkar. Is terrible. The long reload and small magazine completely destroys any usefulness of this weapon. It has been completely and utterly surpassed by the Grinlok, which does more damage with a better practical rate of fire and crazy status chance (not to mention using common rifle ammo).

 

Recommend:

Slight inaccuracy. About 25? It seems thematic for the Grineer that they would value power and dakka more than precision.

120 damage

7 shot magazine

3 second reload

Crit multiplier 200%

 

- Vectis is in a good place for the most part.  Just needs to have the issue with the reload delay fixed.

 

- Lanka.  Crit multiplier to 200%. Does a ton of damage which is fair compensation for the bolt's flight time, but change the charging logic already.  Lanka should be charging all the time as long as there is ammo in the magazine. When we pull it up to shoot, it should be ready to go at full power.

[Guest]

I must agree, sniper rifles need some love, and yours are very interesting ideas, especially the mod ones.

While we're at it, they could make Split Chamber max to 100%, because as it is right now it means your one-hit-kill weapon has a 10% chance of derping out and dealing 50% damage. More often than not, I don't use multishot on my snipers.

[VKhaun]

I agree with a lot, A LOT, of that but frankly I don't feel like these weapons have a niche right now. Vectis and Tigris are my favorites and I don't mind bows at all, but the game really doesn't call for them very much. I'm not content to make them compete with stats and novelty. I want the operation to justify itself and have it's own niche.

 

We need modes and/or missions where the devs use the strength slider instead of the quantity/density sliders to dictate difficulty A place where where few but powerful enemies actually lead players to WANT the advantage of range or a sudden burst of shotgun damage rather than just bigger mags with fast reloads.

 

I feel like it's premature to try and balance them without that context, and we should separate fixes from balances. Vulkar obviously needs a buff. Novelty could definitely use a buff with heat vision scopes and such. Damage dealt with headshots should definitely go way up somehow, my choice would be a mod though.

 

IMO, the most important point you made was about consistency. When using a sniper or semi-auto rifle CONSISTENCY is extremely important to the operator. If it takes two headshots, fine, but it needs to take two headshots every time. I can't be doing a double tap and then a double take when I'm not sure if it's dead or not. If I were in charge of the devs, frankly I'd remove crit chance from snipers entirely. Don't let them put the mods on, don't give them any crit chance or damage stats. Give them new mods to replace them like +% headshot damage or +% damage to stunned/CC'd targets or +% to unaware targets, etc etc. Consistent mods that apply every hit, IF, you meet the conditions.

Edited May 7, 2014 by VKhaun

[Doom_Bunny]

Anti-Tank Rifle and exlposive rounds! yay

 

Though I disagree with this point:

 

"First off, get rid of the forced high zoom value.  This is a handicap more often than it is an aid.  And unless the fancy reticules provide some kind of functionality, they also need to go."

 

A variable zoom could help this as it's still a sniper rifle so the zoom is still needed. I don't mind the fancy recticules but it does clutter the screen. Reticules with our ammo stats on them would be nice.

[Hired-Gun]

I REALLY like that Lanka idea

[HAYABU5A]

lanka idea would massively improve it , would like that alot

 

id like snipers to have more unique modules to boost the functionality 

also it would be nice if tainted mag worked on our snipers 

[Grave.Knight]

Unnecessary. All you really need to do to make the Sniper Rifle better is to add new tiles that give Sniper Rifles more of advantage. The bow is great, but the further way the target is, the hard it is to hit them accurately, more so if the target is moving. Sniper Rifles are all hit scan, so distance is unimportant. Something like the titles on Earth and Phobos would be great.

[Caleco]

I had an idea, since the game seems to be improving some of the stealth aspects of the game, what if sniper rifles got a stealth attack modifier like melee weapons?

[NullCurrent]

+1 for this idea.

 

Not sure I am too fond of the idea of multiple specific mods for it, the bows already have one specific mod for that, and I would think it logical to introduce more mods there first. But the mod ideas aren't bad at all, provided that the extra damage more than offsets the loss of an elemental mod out of two.

 

Really like the guaranteed headshot crit mechanic, as if you skip Point Strike it will become even more of a skillful gamble: headshot = really high damage, body shot = most likely pretty bad damage.

 

As already mentioned, I don't mind the huge zoom on the snipers, it is kinda required for some headshots, but a variable zoom would not hurt.

 

Also, a 200% crit modifier is pretty much a must for most weapons which are to rely on crit, if they don't have a high crit chance.

 

I had an idea, since the game seems to be improving some of the stealth aspects of the game, what if sniper rifles got a stealth attack modifier like melee weapons?

 

Lanka is already silent, not that it really matters as you can just slap on a silencer mod on any weapon to get it completely silent without too much of a loss in damage (and considering the overkill the current snipers do when they crit there is not much point with a fully modded sniper for stealth missions).

[[DE]Momaw]

Not sure I am too fond of the idea of multiple specific mods for it, the bows already have one specific mod

 

The thing is bows have multiple built in advantages.  Bows, by their nature, have:

 

- Ragdoll multi-kills

- Charge trigger (fast shots or power shots at user's discretion)

- High penetration

- No reloading / high practical rate of shots

 

I don't think it's outside the realm of sanity to give sniper rifles a few options (which they have to BUY with mod slots) to make them competitive with the built in advantages that bows get.

[Noabettiet]

Being the fast placed game warframe is.. Things like snipers and marksman mode, are unviable.

 

I get that bows, on contrast, have an travel and charge time.

 

But seriously, i really think that snipers should have an insane Punch Through also. Since killing from an long range doesn't really work well in the warframe world and well, because of its high calibur nature.

 

Long story short, i agree.