Let's talk sniper rifles...

So last week I was digging through my stack of Unpopular Sniper Rifles (coming soon to a Bad Weapon Showdown near you) and against the express guidance of Voluptuous Volus I used the expletive deleted Incisor with the SI in a few lolsilver matches, and it was actually pretty effective, especially against spawns of Cerby troopers and Centurions. The recoil is annoying but since it always goes straight up you can often get the last shot or two landed as a headshot. You can hip-fire it in emergencies and it's very light. Now did I feel like using it again? No. Would I want to use it on Gold? No. But I think it's worth a try on silver.

I posted elsewhere about the usefulness of the Viper for a character like SI who obtains serious benefit from a low cooldown. You can slap heavy barrel onto the Viper and still get around 175% cooldown allowing for lots of Energy Drain spam. Yes it is rather wimpy compared to SDF-1 Main Guns like the Widow and Jav but I did take it into London/Cerberus/Gold and do well, and I snipe about as well as the instructors at the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksman Academy.

After all this, you all obviously want to know what my favorite sniper rifle is.

Favorite snipers:

MM'd Raider

Javelin





Everything else.

L2Javstep, babby!

Black Widow - most well rounded. Easy to use, forgiving, powerful enough to OSK most things, good in close quarters.

Javelin - super fun to use. Not that easy though, but once you get a hang of it - no problem. Insane piercing, insane damage.

Valiant - Fast, extremely easy to use, very light, fast reload. 20 headshots by wave 2 is very much possible. Would be totally great if it had 300% headshot modifier.

Kssshk, this is just a distraction for party in the front. 

For business in the back, may I suggest you take a look at my latest shipment of AS Val and VSS Vintorez rifles? 




Heavy SP-5 and SP-6 armor piercing subsonic 9mm bullets. 400 meter range. Will pierce a class 4 vest at that range too.

There are plenty of very good and fun SRs, many of them suffer quite a lot of host though.

The Javelin on an on-host GI is probably the most powerful of all (DAI/BW isn't far behind either).

These day's I actively avoid sniping off-host (try the Javelin on a very laggy platinum game) as so many shots tend to miss that you wouldn't do on-host.

Sniping takes a bit more skill compared to mindless options like the Reegar or Harrier which I guess is why they are uncommon in pugs.

Apart from the above the M-98 Widow is excellent and a lot of fun, the Indra is probably one of the most underestimated guns in the game together with the CSR, both of them can demolish Platinum on the right kit with Incendiary IV.

The Kishok is another fun gun that I like to use on Gold, the common Mantis shouldn't be underestimated either.

The rest of the SRs are a bit underwhelming though, especially the Krysae.

My favorite 'SR' is a scoped Executioner.
Aside from that, the only SRs I find entertaining enough to use semi-regularly are the Indra (GI/GE) & Krysae (SI).

Don't stay scoped in. Place your crosshair on the enemy before zooming in - shoot, zoom out, survey surroundings, adjust as necessary, move on. 

With rifles like the Javelin - there's basically no reason (other than to stroke your e-peen) to even go for headshots as it will 1 shot kill with body hits.

Heh, I kinda like that.

I only run the normal extended barrel on the Widow or BW, never the HVB: the double bipod messes with my sense of aesthetics.

yep that was the reason i use Space Magic    the doble bipod, i wished that biower weapons-mods made interchangeable between weapons, different specs different weapons for the same mod

PHB might look like a muzzle brake on this.

I finally took the Valiant into Gold with the Salarian Infiltrator and dropped into a GIP White Cerberus with some fairly scrubby players (I can tell because I joined on wave 4 and had the top score within three waves, and I'm pretty scrubby myself).

Let me tell you that the Valiant's fast reload time is just fantastic for carrying... because I had to carry most of wave 9. That was the most difficult carry I have ever attempted and I failed despite wiping out tons of Guardians and Dragoons for ten minutes once a couple of Phantoms and a Centurion ganged up on me. As the original host had left halfway through wave 4, I had been promoted to host and the Phantoms promoted to OP.

But that was a fun match anyway, especially once I learned a single Inced ammo shot with the Valiant sets up a proxy mine fire explosion that sends cerby mooks flying - what a great GTFO tactic (/L2P)

The Valiant isn't ultralight but preserves enough cooldown to allow your powers to be used often. It's pretty sweet

Heresy!

I too enjoy firin mah lazor.