Are snipers good in Warzones / PvP?

[iMakesh]

the problem is not where u position urself when u go into cover if a jedi/sith targets u they will leap jump towards u stun u then hit you with the glow sticks. there is no defense to that or anysort of good melee defense except that burst push skill that pushes them away 2m and stuns them for 3sec... and it takes the sniper shot 3.5sec to charge.. by the time we get the shot off the target throws or does something then u get interrupted and break the shot charge... i dont know... kindda regret choosing sniper though.. should had went operative for stealth and healing.

 

Use Entrench when you get the attention of enemies, it makes you immune to all cc and knockbacks for 20sec as long as you stay in cover. And don't use Ambush if you have someone on you, only use Ambush as an opener or if you have the talent that makes it 1.5sec cast after Snipe crits. Obviously you use Cover Pulse to knock em back, and when the root from Cover Pulse is about to end you hit em with a leg shot to keep em in place for a bit longer. Once they get back you can use Debilitate and then either deal some damage or get some distance. Make use of your defensive cooldowns like Evasion, Shield Probe and Ballistic Shield aswell. You can also use Diversion both offensively and defensively.

 

I use this build; http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#400McrrdRokZrI0boRZh.1

 

So I have Interrogation Probe with 30% slow which makes it really easy to kite the melee classes.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Zilrota
edited quote

[Nggs]

the problem is not where u position urself when u go into cover if a jedi/sith targets u they will leap jump towards u stun u then hit you with the glow sticks. there is no defense to that or anysort of good melee defense except that burst push skill that pushes them away 2m and stuns them for 3sec... and it takes the sniper shot 3.5sec to charge.. by the time we get the shot off the target throws or does something then u get interrupted and break the shot charge... i dont know... kindda regret choosing sniper though.. should had went operative for stealth and healing.

 

On my BH I look at snipers and operatives as food. On my sorc I run like hell when I think either of them have a bead on me. Some classes just counter others exceptionally well, especially in the hands of a good player.

 

This op vs sniper talk is kind of just nonsense. Pretty sure everyone knows that class balance isn't finalized yet, so the class you reroll to right now could be a different animal by the time you finish leveling and gearing it. Both ACs have their place. both can contribute, and both cater to different playstyles.

 

If you choose your class based on what's most powerful right now, you're going to have a rough experience when the balance tweaks start rolling in and you go from godly to being on even footing with the rest of the classes.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Zilrota
edited quote

[Ebiso]

It's nothing to do with positioning... You have to be able to move a lot in hutbull. Against decent teams who throw the ball up/down side to side I can't just sit in one spot.

 

And once you start trying to move all of the bugs suddenly become 10x more apparent. So really, if you are finding Sniper pvp fine with all of the bugs included then you must be doing nothing but sitting in one place for most of the game.

 

If you are just ignoring the bugs 'cause they will get fixed' then how long are we supposed to wait before we can pvp properly for once? I mean they had the entire *********** beta to sort this **** out, right?

 

After playing my friends 50 merc and another's 50 sorc the bugs are effecting us so much worse atm. It's nothing to do with the skills or abilities we have, we just need these bug fixes to go through.

Edited January 8, 2012 by Ebiso

[Nymphrena]

And once you start trying to move all of the bugs suddenly become 10x more apparent. So really, if you are finding Sniper pvp fine with all of the bugs included then you must be doing nothing but sitting in one place for most of the game.

 

Why is it that everyone assumes Snipers only have one spec; Marksman? I find Sniper PvP fine because I, unlike most of the mindless drones connected to the hivemind, play Lethality, and don't use cover, so those cover bugs don't affect me.

[Styrmir]

Why is it that everyone assumes Snipers only have one spec; Marksman? I find Sniper PvP fine because I, unlike most of the mindless drones connected to the hivemind, play Lethality, and don't use cover, so those cover bugs don't affect me.

 

+100500

Try out the freaking lethality and stop crying about lack of mobility!

[Bow-Wow-Wow]

I've actually done really well with my sniper in PvP. I rolled a Vanguard first and PvP wise, I do much better with the Sniper even though everyone says Vanguard is OP in pvp.

[evexir]

nope sniper is terrible in pvp.hell its terrible also in pve i find. . cuz sniper have to be stationary (in cover) to launch any good skills to do decent damage.. we are always the 1st target of any players cuz they know once they get into the face.. the sniper is screwed. BH i the better choice does decent damage and is mobile.. i really do hope BW fixes the class .. sniper is an awesome class but so broken at the same time... ... snipe shot to the head it gets absorbed by the target.. uhh.. lol. the best one is sniper shot charging then gets interrupted cuz some jedi throws a rock at u LOL at 40m away... more than the snipers range.. (35m LOL)

for me iam gonna continue playing my sniper toon .. in 6months time they still haven't fix this class yet .. bw/ea aint gonna be getting anymore money from me.

 

You're inability to speak english correctly probably also explains why you are bad at snipers.

 

After a good amount of games, I'm thinking if played correctly we are one of the strongest classes. I kite melee all day (esp on huttball) and often score 1-2nd place, at level 17.

 

So many tools to escape from melee.. stuns.. cc.. 3k crits.. amazing class if you can kite and have good latency. Against the generic not so skilled player it is so easy to out maneuver them (ie snipe, stun, run away while continuing to dmg, repeat).

 

Amazing class.. all I can say.. can just tell from the mechanics. I don't recieve any lag on my cover btw, it could have to do with latency though.

[Ebiso]

It's not latency, you don't get any lag if you play slowly, everything works perfect if you wait 1 second after entering cover to attack. Against anyone with half a brain we are ok, we are only OP against idiots who run at us over and over until they die.

[Ebiso]

You're inability to speak english correctly probably also explains why you are bad at snipers.

.

 

Yeah...

[evexir]

Yeah...

 

o_o

 

didn't get much sleep last night, ok.. and my head aches from doing Dromund Kaas / Balmorra a second time.

[Valtyr]

I just played a round of huttball (worse WZ for us imo) and was left alone...wow.

 

Found another sniper and we stayed withing range of each other...double wow.

 

Had a blast.

 

PEWPEWPEWPEWPEW

 

Lvl 14 btw

Edited January 8, 2012 by Valtyr

[SandTrout]

Snipers are situationally useful in PvP.

 

Holding a point on Alderaan is where we shine the most. Trying to take a point... not so much.

 

Huttball can be a dream or a nightmare, depending of spec and if anyone on your team is dumb/desperate enough to throw you the ball (never turns out well). You can clean up the midfield, though.

 

Void Star is fundamentally flawed, IMO, and no organized team should ever lose while defending. Snipers can be useful for defense, but teammates typically spam too much AoE for us to really have much use in offense.

[Aowar]

snipers are fine, the class has its problems but if you can get past the problems and have skill and class knowledge you will do fine. we have great burst damage, and great cc.

 

 

This is pretty much it. Sniper is great if you take the time to learn the class and understand strength/weaknesses. It is the most strategic class I have played so far, which is why I love it.

[vimm]

o_o

 

didn't get much sleep last night, ok.. and my head aches from doing Dromund Kaas / Balmorra a second time.

 

I just did the same; feels bad.

[Noela]

sniper is amazing. im 60 valor. i can beat any class 1v1. i top damage. im first to immortal everytime with rakata med pack. pve my damage output is insane. if you are having trouble with sniper you need to realize its a cc heavy class that focuses on ccing someone at a distance and taking them out. if thats not your play style roll something else. cover is not broken at all. the mechanic works well and as intended. entrench is op. if you still feel cover is ****** roll lethality spec and spam corresive,dart, and cull. im not sure what the qq is about for snipers the only class i cant beat 1v1 in a duel is a really good operative and thats if they realize to cleanse the dart off before they vanish. granit im a 6 time rank 1 player from wow but sniper has so much potential.

[Fixiooo]

Engineering reporting in.

 

Come at me bro. Destroying Republic in Warzones all day errday.

[Alpinesun]

^ That's the sort of person who enjoys Sniper - the same guy who thinks it's fun to run up and 2v1 the guy sitting on 50% hp.

 

All's fair in love and battlegrounds!!!

[Alpinesun]

Ive posted this some where before but Ill give you a quick break down. Im 456 expertise or near that atm. I have near full pvp gear. Im pvp rank 51.

 

1. Snipers do no more damage than any other dps class that has some other advantage over us, ie heals, mobility, better armor, escapes. In fact as other classes gear up with superior set bonuses and damage types ,ie energy and internal, they do more damage then us.

 

2. All of our damage except for explosive probe and dart are kinetic. Most of our damage is mitigated by armor. Other classes dont have this problem, sorcs, troopers/bh. Hell even the marauder has other damage types and a dot as well.

 

3. Mobility is terrible, coupled with the delay, and dubious cover system sometimes its frustrating hitting snipe and nothing happening for a second. This isnt game breaking balance issues, its a buggy mechanic which I'm sure will be adressed. However, the lack of escapes and general mobility makes you less of a contributor in hutball than any other class. Some one tosses you the ball, you want to increase your survivability? You, have to root yourself in place making you useless for ball movement.

 

4. Far less survivablye than say a trooper who pops his shield or a sorc with a rediculous 3500 point absorb on a 20 seccond cd, 17 secs with set bonus or jugg/marauder popping saberward.

 

5. Our damage can be passively blocked by any ligh saber wielder. Sure would be nice to resist some of those ungodly pebble spams. But no this is not to be. Instead i sit there for 2.5 secconds channeling ambush only to have it blocked by a sorc running away from me...why? because he has a 10% inherant chance to block blaster attacks. Just like my 10% chance to resist force attacks...oh wait.

 

6.Our damage scales for crap. Im doing double the damage i was at level 20 in greens and blues and I'm not 50 in full epics with the champion rifle. The weapon coefficient needs to be examined. I feel like they couldnt decide if we are a wizard who relies on base spell damage or if we are melee with a weapon coefficient. Unsure of what to do they picked neither leaving us in a puddle of mediocrity.

 

7. Entrench is amazing. If you arent you nee to be entrenching when ever things look like they are getting close to you or your gona get CCed. 20 secconds of happyland ftw.

 

8. I have been interupted so many times while in cover now I want to puke. We arent supposeed to be, so make it that way. The buff doesnt allways apply. Ive watched it pop up after being in cover 10 secconds. Sometimes never. Fix it.

 

9. The ease of breaking LOS coupled with other classes getting a heal means you will be frustrated alot as they duck behind cover just before we kill them because takedown didnt crit. Voila few secconds later after pinch heals from themselves and back in action. Meanwhile any dots that have been cranking on us have done permanant damage.

 

10. I have to be in cover to knockback, I cant tell you how many times i have actually blown a person into our end zone because of the delay between getting into cover and then using cover pulse. No other class has a prerequisite to use their KB. Its so damn frustrating.

 

11. Being rooted prevents me from dropping into cover, denying me acces to those skills and the cover bonus for survivability. I can understand being stunned and not being able to drop into cover. But if im rooted to teh spot....like i am in cover...why can i not just...crouch down and deploy my shield.

 

I can list more things but this should suffice to say that snipers arent great at pvp. I wold place them in the mediocre category. Yes Im usually top 3 or 4 in damage, but you have to realize im drilling 20s in the face for 5k with no expertise. When I pop a sage in full expertise its 3k crit...maybe. Young snipers your damage is amazing pre 30. After that the scaling stops and by 50 you will start saying *** where did it go. Lets put it this way a trooper who has more hps more ac and a shield that is amazing can grav round...for as much damage as ambush lands for. 3 seccond ambush...3k...grav round 1.5 seccond cast ....3k. And again i have almost full champion gear with a few pieces of centurion mixxed in. Its not like my gear is atrocious.

 

Great Great Post!

 

This should be a sticky at the top of the Sniper forum labelled 'Read this before rolling a Sniper for PvP!'

 

[SandTrout]

Ive posted this some where before but Ill give you a quick break down. Im 456 expertise or near that atm. I have near full pvp gear. Im pvp rank 51.

 

1. Snipers do no more damage than any other dps class that has some other advantage over us, ie heals, mobility, better armor, escapes. In fact as other classes gear up with superior set bonuses and damage types ,ie energy and internal, they do more damage then us.

 

2. All of our damage except for explosive probe and dart are kinetic. Most of our damage is mitigated by armor. Other classes dont have this problem, sorcs, troopers/bh. Hell even the marauder has other damage types and a dot as well.

 

3. Mobility is terrible, coupled with the delay, and dubious cover system sometimes its frustrating hitting snipe and nothing happening for a second. This isnt game breaking balance issues, its a buggy mechanic which I'm sure will be adressed. However, the lack of escapes and general mobility makes you less of a contributor in hutball than any other class. Some one tosses you the ball, you want to increase your survivability? You, have to root yourself in place making you useless for ball movement.

 

4. Far less survivablye than say a trooper who pops his shield or a sorc with a rediculous 3500 point absorb on a 20 seccond cd, 17 secs with set bonus or jugg/marauder popping saberward.

 

5. Our damage can be passively blocked by any ligh saber wielder. Sure would be nice to resist some of those ungodly pebble spams. But no this is not to be. Instead i sit there for 2.5 secconds channeling ambush only to have it blocked by a sorc running away from me...why? because he has a 10% inherant chance to block blaster attacks. Just like my 10% chance to resist force attacks...oh wait.

 

6.Our damage scales for crap. Im doing double the damage i was at level 20 in greens and blues and I'm not 50 in full epics with the champion rifle. The weapon coefficient needs to be examined. I feel like they couldnt decide if we are a wizard who relies on base spell damage or if we are melee with a weapon coefficient. Unsure of what to do they picked neither leaving us in a puddle of mediocrity.

 

7. Entrench is amazing. If you arent you nee to be entrenching when ever things look like they are getting close to you or your gona get CCed. 20 secconds of happyland ftw.

 

8. I have been interupted so many times while in cover now I want to puke. We arent supposeed to be, so make it that way. The buff doesnt allways apply. Ive watched it pop up after being in cover 10 secconds. Sometimes never. Fix it.

 

9. The ease of breaking LOS coupled with other classes getting a heal means you will be frustrated alot as they duck behind cover just before we kill them because takedown didnt crit. Voila few secconds later after pinch heals from themselves and back in action. Meanwhile any dots that have been cranking on us have done permanant damage.

 

10. I have to be in cover to knockback, I cant tell you how many times i have actually blown a person into our end zone because of the delay between getting into cover and then using cover pulse. No other class has a prerequisite to use their KB. Its so damn frustrating.

 

11. Being rooted prevents me from dropping into cover, denying me acces to those skills and the cover bonus for survivability. I can understand being stunned and not being able to drop into cover. But if im rooted to teh spot....like i am in cover...why can i not just...crouch down and deploy my shield.

 

I can list more things but this should suffice to say that snipers arent great at pvp. I wold place them in the mediocre category. Yes Im usually top 3 or 4 in damage, but you have to realize im drilling 20s in the face for 5k with no expertise. When I pop a sage in full expertise its 3k crit...maybe. Young snipers your damage is amazing pre 30. After that the scaling stops and by 50 you will start saying *** where did it go. Lets put it this way a trooper who has more hps more ac and a shield that is amazing can grav round...for as much damage as ambush lands for. 3 seccond ambush...3k...grav round 1.5 seccond cast ....3k. And again i have almost full champion gear with a few pieces of centurion mixxed in. Its not like my gear is atrocious.

 

I can get behind this, especially the issues with no cover from Root and the cover prereq for Cover Burst.

[daniteh]

In warzones, your basically a turret. Dive the turret you die .

 

But really my only issue with snipers in PvP are:

 

1) Ability Delay, which makes it nearly impossible to really control any damage at all.

 

2) No real way to get out of a sticky situation (E.G. 5on1 after u scored a goal).

 

3) The damage we do as marksman can be mitigated by pretty much any classes cool-downs because it is straight damage, not elemental or tech, or anything. It's severely nerfed when u fight a BH who pops shield, or even a tank with natural mitigation.

 

4) Reactive shots should be on all snipes, not only crits.

 

5) Not enough spots to actually snipe from in the current maps.

Edited January 9, 2012 by daniteh

[bumpy_anderson]

This thread is full of posts from good snipers and snipers that don't have a clue. Since dps comes easy for this class, CC is the deciding factor on whether you rank high in pvp or not. At the present time, I'm level 28 and my valor rank is 27. I'm rocking in pvp every night without missing a step. At 28, I don't have many of the abilities that some have mentioned in this post, but I manage to get it done with what I have. All you have to do is open up your abilities window and read over them. You will find a solution to many of the situations listed.

[thejars]

I have had fun in PvP. I agree with those that say its about how you play it. Stay out of sight if possible and as soon as they find you, run (proper term is strategic withdrawal). Since we don't have the OP's ability to disappear we have to compensate with 'Sniper' like tactics. Funnily enough it reminds me of all the FPS's I play. I kill X (or several X's ) leave a trap at the location and change to a new location that gives me view of the previous location (giving us the ability to set some kind of trap would be sooo nice). Once they get close, flash, legshot, or an electrified dagger to chest gives me the time I need to disappear back into the main body. It's a great twist on the Rogue Classic.

 

Hutball has been awesome for this strat. I do this in circles around the main centers of combat.

[frdrake]

Valor rank 21 here. Like someone mentioned before I very rarely have issues getting into cover and definately I don't have enough issues to ruin my enjoyment or ability to play the class. I end up top 3 damage most of the time with at least 5 medals every WZ.

 

As others have mentioned as well this class takes a certain mindset to play. It's not a run in and blow your cooldowns for profit kind of class, you have to know how to pick your position and when to move. For everyone complaining about LoS yes I know it sucks, but if you see someone heading toward a los blocker why would you start one of our long windup moves, LoS brekaing our shots isn't a detriment of the class it's a problem with player skill and picking an incorrect position or not just switching positions to go with the flow of battle.

 

I have never had a 1v1 battle where I just felt we are outclassed, we have a typical cc rotation for melees, and can outdmg other ranged classes if they choose to just try and race us. I am engineering spec though and have probe snare on whoever I'm dueling the whole time.

 

Something that sucks that was mentioned before is the fact that any jedi/sith can block even our ambush on their RNG auto deflect blaster shot attacks. It really sucks to spend 2.5 seconds on that attack to see it bounce off them harmlessly.

 

Here's a breakdown for each of the maps:

 

Huttball (I'll start with our worst, but unfortunately most played due to faction imbalance):

Pros:

- Lots of focus on the guy with the huttball means we are often ignored and allowed free reign of positioning and damage output

- We have lots of movement impairing abilities to keep the huttball away from our endzone

- leg shot is boss for catching someone in a flamer

- people who use the air tube to try and escape often only spend about a 1/2 second out of our range and you can usually pound a person with 3-4 auto attacks if they try to use it (on me 3-4 auto attacks is around a snipe and a half of damage)

- if you go up on the catwalks there are lots of good vantage points if you are aware of los

 

Cons:

- Don't touch the huttball ever, unless you plan on passing it up to a higher level as soon as you get it then let someone else have it, you are not a huttball runner

- as stated above cover pulse is really hard to use on the enemy huttball carrier near the endzone, it can be good fun on the catwalks though in a large melee

- lots of los breakpoints(for someone ducking in and out of los breakpoints spam auto attacks against them, 2 auto attacks is usually a non crit snipe for me)

- I'm often at the moral dilemma if I'm hanging midfield when it comes to killing enemies, in essence if we have the ball and my ball carrier is closer to our goal than I am, every enemy I kill that wasn't chasing our huttball carrier is going to respawn in between the goal my carrier, 3 guys chasing me around on my half the map is 3 less guys blocking my carrier on the other side, so I often spend some time just leading enemies on a chase if I think it will help

- there are some odd natural cover points here and some really high sandbags , pretty much none of the natural cover points here are useful

 

Optimal plan:

- hang out around midfield and drop enemy after enemy, if the body bag count is high enough then even a subpar supporting team can overwhelm the defenders that remain

- if you luck out and have a sorc that is actually good you can grab the ball and throw it to them on the catwalks and let them do the running, otherwise keep the mid cleared so your team can return to get the neutral ball at will

- Escort your ball carrier at a medium distance and cover pulse on the catwalks

 

 

Civil War at Alderaan

Pros:

- Defending a turret control is probably the role that snipers are best at in any of the WZs, I like mid especially since there are 2 large upper floors that beg to have a sniper sit on them

- Frag grenade is an amazing anti cap ability, defend the whole control on a short cooldown (interrogation probe honorable mention here, 18 seconds and one guy can't cap, when I get plasma probe I'm sure I'll love it too)

- all your enemies filter in from the one spot, if even a few of your team camp their ledge that leads to mid/side you can keep the enemy spread out and your side point safer(just don't forget to check the flag periodically to make sure no one came from behind)

- defending a side turret you don't need to even be on the platform with the flag, there are several piles of rubble and some hills you can camp on

 

Cons:

- upstairs at mid there are two beams that will break your los, just plan your attacks around them, I've often found that the best spot to camp if lots are incoming to mid is at the top of the ramp that leads up to the ledge, that leaves just the cap point as a los breaker for you

- even though we can 1v1 anyone it often takes us so long to do it that I've found I can't cap a sidepoint reliably even if only one person is there ( I haven't tried flashbang and then cap, which I probably should), I end up wasting so many globals on cc that I kill them slowly and usually someone else shows up to help them

- the side points have little sets of stairs a competent enemy can use to break your los alot in fights at them

 

Voidstar (except for really awful teams this map is heavily slanted toward defenders)

Pros:

- Frag grenade again, this ability has such a short cooldown for a full enemy team bomb interrupt

- can hang out between points and have enough range to move back and forth rapidly

 

Cons:

- like huttball, we really shouldn't be planting bombs, the whole point of the sniper is to do his job while not attracting attention, there are times though your allies get so tunnel visioned that no one else is even trying to plant a bomb and we just aren't optimal for that, so on this map we're good at defending which is already easy and we're subpar at getting up on the door

[rekoil]

 

im 42 now and i am giving up focusing on levelling my sniper

 

i feel absolutely useless in warzones at the moment, unless im lucky enough to be in a good team of 50s that do all the hard work and let me sit there spamming shot rotations.

 

but thats 1/50 warzones

[Wollfe]

Please if your not 50 shut your mouth. You dont know a damn thing. Your skewing the representation of the class. As I said before the class is amazing sub 30 after that our scaling drops like a rock. SO YEAH **** I ROXORED A DUDE MY LEVEL AND IM 27! I CANT WAIT TO GET ALL THE NEW ABILITIES AND GEAR AT 50 AND HIT FOR OVER 9000!!!!!!!!!one11!!1!!1eleventyone! Well guess what bucko, it doesnt get better, it fact it gets worse, your hitting just as hard as you do at 50 in bgs because of bolster. I have 39% crit and 82% surge and 456 expertise. I crit a sage with ambush for 3kish. He channels rocks in my face for 1k a tick non crit. And his bub comes back every 20 secconds. Ive bene hit by scoundrels for 9.7k in period of a GCD. 1.5 secconds 2 abilites for 9.7k. And his gear isnt anywhere near mine. right now im pvp rank 53.

 

Im still slugging it out hoping things will change because to be honest i really dont want to reroll and go throught he ******** again. I score consistantly top 4 in any bg and im usually 1 or 2 for damage. But lets put some caveats on that before we go on. I target noobs. Because they go down quickly and any reduction in CC or DPS to my team by me removing sub 50s is helping the team in most cases. I hoard the red buff, this artificially inflates my numbers because of the 15% expertise buff. I have a pocket healer. This allows me to do stupid **** like run into a pack of 4 idiots pop my defensive and OB myself. They usually die trying to kill me because of this. I couldn't do this without a healer being 100% aware of the stupidity that I am about to do. I am fairly ahead in gear above most players on my server. When I run into equally geared players my hits are atrocious for the amount of cast time required. Awesome i just caster for 3 secconds and my ambush hit a trooper for 1400. Fantastic. Now before you cry about why am i targeting a trooper, sometimes ...you are alone at a point defending it and its you vs the trooper. So rather than let him take it without any contest I shoot him, crazy I know. So he gravs round me for 1800 non crit, sometimes 3300 crit. depends on the trooper and the gear....this is a 1.5 seccond cast time. If my ambush crits on a well geared trooper ..who has been shatter shot it may land for 2400. Meanwhile the guy is sporting heavy armor, has more mobility, far superior defensive abilities and a pinch heal that lands for 2k.

Edited January 9, 2012 by Wollfe