Why Does Warframe Even Bother With Sniper Weapons?

[Tarille]

ok lets try it this way, i'll give an example, but before I do let me clarify something, I'm not saying Sniper guns are useless, I'm saying they are not a viable weapon in the three missions I'm talking about which were once again, defense, mobile defense and survival, I am not talking about boss kills. Now to the example, lets use the map of Venera, i'm sure your all familiar with it. Now for the moment lets put your sniper guy on where the ramp is and lets send 20 Grineer of all types at him, no napalm, using a loki no powers, then we will use the same guy using a boltor prime same amount no powers, who gets killed or overwhelmed first? My point is for a sniper guy to be viable he has to be able to kill more than one enemy at a time to benefit the team in the above missions.

 

Uhh...

 

Well, with a Lanka (Currently) a single shot could take out many of them in a single shot due to high Punch Through and potential Gas and Electric procs hitting all units in an area around targets it procs on (Which when you can hit 5-6 enemies with high status chance can be a very likely outcome)

 

Boltor Prime user can also get overwhelmed by masses without using Punch Through, but to a lesser extent than other automatic rifles (Because the bolts cause ragdolling which moves corpses out of the way to allow firing into a crowd to be easier to do even without punch through)

 

But in this case, with no powers the Sniper would get overwhelmed first - Though it would depend on modding and health levels of said targets. The Lanka in this case would start performing better and better (Relatively) the higher the health of the targets got while the Boltor Prime would get worse and worse as it'd take more concentrated fire to kill each target (If it didn't mod for punch through either, then it'll be even more difficult when things get really high health)

 

But this is not a very fair example.

 

Sniper rifles shine vs tougher targets - This means for Survival and Defence, longer durations favour the snipers due to healthpool increases of all units and more frequent heavy targets.

 

Snipers can fill in a role of single target assassination and with punch through can be effective against multiple targets - Not as efficient at clearing a room as an automatic weapon, but punch through would make them acceptable for use against groups. This role makes them effective in various mission types:

 

- Extermination is often small groups and can be easily dealt with using punch through

 

- Capture is just 1-2 targets that need to be taken out (Often capture targets have weapons that deal a LOT of damage if you're up close making long distance insta-kill weapons favourable)

 

- Defence will have scaling health pools which make high damage output weapons very useful for taking out the guys who are actually dangerous in a single shot for a long time. Punch through will help take out multiples as they tend to stream in by walking in lines.

 

- Survival will also have scaling health pools and enemies that stream in by walking single file or in small clusters.

 

- Interception will have high priority targets like heavies and Eximus units as well as the need to take out enemies heading towards consoles effectively. Some maps can allow cover to be provided by shooting from one point to another, this is where scopes are useful.

 

- Mobile Defence can occasionally have places where enemies stream in single file. Though some are admittedly unfavourable for snipers outside the occasional heavy.

 

Currently, the issue with Snipers is that:

 

- Their damage is not consistent. They rely on crits (Specifically crit headshots) in order to do damage worth much, but yet cannot get 100% crit rate, in fact most of them can only get 50% crit chance. Meaning half the time they do good damage and half the time they do not so good damage. This makes them not very consistent for taking out the heavies which they should be able to (Bows on the other hand are consistent with over 100% crit chance)

 

- Outside the Lanka, snipers have no innate capability of hitting multiple targets. Lanka is good, it has innate 5m punch through (More than any other weapon can achieve via mods) and has high status chance allowing it to be modded with Gas and Electric for AoE damage procs. Other snipers have no innate ability to hit multiples and so has to rely on the same mods that automatic weapons use in order to hit multiples. (Bows have innate punch through and ragdolling effect which can hit multiple with no mods required)

 

Though, with a Sniper rebalancing in the near future, it's possible that these issues can be fixxed and then Sniper Rifles will be viable in all mission types (Perhaps not the best, but viable. Just like how Bows are viable but not frequently used because people prefer the versatility of automatic weapons instead)

Edited July 13, 2014 by Tarille

[SIDESTRE4M]

This is why Sybaris is one of my favorites at the moment. It is more flexible as Lanka, still packs a punch and is ammo efficient.