For real, what are we supposed to do when we are surrounded by a horde and can’t dodge the sniper shot? Just stand there and die?
Snipers deal massive damage on heresy+ and many times more than one spawns. I’m not against the dmg they deal or how many spawn, but we need a more reliable way to deal with sniper shots otherwise they can easily wipe out an entire team if we are unable to dodge due to the amount of enemies surrounding us.
The best solution I can think is to let us dodge the shot by crouching when hearing the noise prior to the shot, that doesn’t require any dodge space.
If you can dodge any direction you can hit crouch mid dodge to slide out of the way of the shot. If you can’t dodge in any direction and you can’t shoot the special before it hits you, you wouldn’t have been able to stop any other kind of disabler either. So it seems balanced with the rest of the specialists in that regard.
Why are you talking about disablers? The sniper is not one of them, doesn’t even work similar.
Still, disablers don’t down you in a second while sniper does, you can still get rescued from the poxhound by a teammate, plus you can push them away even when surrounded by a horde. The mutant can actually get you out of trouble by throwing you away of the horde if you are surrounded, and when it damages you, it’s not as much as the sniper.
Note: None of the following is meant to be condescending.
I think being able to crouch a sniper shot kinda trivializes the threat and what I’ve noticed from my engagements when snipers were present is the following:
If I know a sniper is present early enough, I can position myself in a way, where I can deal with threats accordingly so that he cannot get to me.
The way snipers f me up is when they spawn behind me - obviously you do not see the laser then - hear the bang and now miss 75% of your hp - bummer.
What I would want for snipers is to have a spawn sound cue. In that case, when you hear a sniper spawn you can at the very least try to position yourself in a way to limit angles they usually try to aim from.
If you don’t have a sound cue they can appear at the most wildly unexpected times and if you do not happen to look in their direction you get f up.
I had that exact problem 3 times in a recent damantion run and the only times I took notable damage was from snipers shooting from a direction I wasn’t looking or straight up from behind me.
Tldr
Give spawn sound cue to sniper > make sniper crouchable
@LoveTruffle Disablers are specialists (I guess?), but not all specialists are disablers, yes?
Certainly a pox hound or a mutant are not the same amount of “threat” as a sniper, considering you can survive them being surrounded by poxwalkers, while you are mostly dead if you can’t dodge the sniper’s shot. I don’t know why would you consider all specialists to have been designed with the same threat level.
If everyone is busy surrounded by enemies and can’t dodge, and two snipers spawn, that’s two teammates downed (unless they have full health I think). The other two who are still up now need to deal with the horde, the snipers and any special/disabler that spawns.
Point being that two snipers (sometimes even one) can basically wipe out your team, even worse if they spawn in oppossite sides of the room. Not good.
@Sarumane Not against the sound cue, this might work too BUT you should get that cue with quite some anticipation before the sniper is ready to shoot, otherwise you won’t have the time to reposition yourself if surrounded, and with or without sound cue, you’ll have the same problem.
For me at least, snipers aren’t a big deal except in such situations, IF one is paying attention, it should be relatively easy to dodge the shot when having the space, and so I find it absurd that a sniper can go from basically 0 to 100% threat lvl just because you are surrounded.
Well, considering that you have a very small window to dodge (or crouch as I propose) I don’t think that it trivializes the danger since you are still required to pay attention and act/react very quickly, plus it gives you an enemy that requires a unique kind of action, that actually (for me at least) sounds more natural (getting your head down) to perform when encountering a sniper.
I think at the end of the day, snipers fight dirty and they should. It fits the theme and personally the most tense moments in the game have been when there are two snipers at two different locations firing on the team while we have to deal with a wall of other enemies. I’m as salty as the next person when I suddenly get snap shot by a sniper that just spawned with no warning time, but I wouldn’t trade what they add to the game right now.
I mean the idea with having a spawn sound cue, is that you know he is there and are anticipating him. There is a soundcue before he shoots, but that one gets mostly drowned while in combat, which leaves the visual cue. The visual on the other hand is only visual when you look into the snipers direction - who would have thought - and I believe being more aware that the sniper is there would fix that.
Having given it some more thought - the snipers’s threat at the moment comes from three things:
His damage
Surprise
Tight window for evasion
The crouch idea does not really infringe on any of these aspects, so it might not be a bad thing. Most specials can be dodged or pushed so there is precedent for multiple effective ways of evasion.
I would recommend against loosening the window for evasion though, as that would make him too easy.
I always get a sound cue before a sniper comes in a form that one character says it. maybe 1 or 2 times I accidentally ran into a sniper at close while he was trying to get himself in position.
the crouch thing would be a little weird bc:
what if the sniper aims at your chest by default? you crouch, still headshot.
considering the current technical state, I have lag a lot of times randomly, especially in the evening (probably the most players online) with stable internet. so right now it would be more frustrating than useful if you count on it and still get hit.
also I had a few perfectly coordinated f*ckups by specials, like a mutant throws me away into the flame and the second I landed a sniper shot me to death.
