DevReply Why is the sniper cannon balanced?!?

*deep breath* Perhaps English isn’t your first language?

You’ve just quoted me saying that 5/10 is also wrong.

 

Oh, I think it is substantially worse than blast if slots are at a premium. I think sniper comes into it's own when you have enough slots (shooter) to be able to afford some reduced damage in exchange for the flexibility.

I know that when I built my shooter everything was about flexibility. I wanted to be able to do significant damage to all targets at all ranges. I had other gun tubes for burst damage so the flexibility of sniper was highly appealing. On my speeder I cannot afford such a large damage reduction and the mobility of the platform mitigates the range/accuracy problems. So there's no way I would put my sniper on my speeder even though it's sitting there in inventory and ready to go. On the speeder maximum 2 tube burst is pretty much all that matters.

In other words, I think sniper does a great job at filling a niche role. In that sense it is a very well balanced item which offers uniqueness and utility but only in the right setups.

 

Yes, 9/20 would be the correct way to express 45% as a fraction... But at this stage I’m genuinely worried that throwing out strange numbers like 9/20, is just going to anger and confuse ‘some people’ even more.

 

I’m not ignoring that. I do agree snipers have the advantage of range, but that doesn’t make sniper OP.

We can make use of the 10 shots analysis of both weapons here to help us. Sniper deals roughly 60-70% of what blast does in 10 shots (do you agree with the numbers here? Let’s just ignore the range issue for now). If it’s 1 million shots, sniper still deals the same percentage of 60-70%. But sniper can make up the 30-40% damage from when it hits from long range. So both weapons actually deal almost the same amount of damage.

What I estimated above is also based on the actual game play: the first minute is usually long range battle where snipers, mortars and torps are usually seen, and the remaining time of the battle (usually another 1 and a half to 2 minutes) are more of close range battles.

 

Yes I can agree, with most of that.

I think the actual numbers are higher than 70%, and I think it will frequently make up for and exceed Blast’s damage at range.

But yeah, I’m happy to agree that Sniper is ‘at least’ as good as Blast.

 

*laugh* You're really going to make me do it, aren't you? You're going to make me swap on over to my M4 shooter and do the tests.

If I end up quitting battle bay because I got nailed for seal clubbing I'm going to blame you! *glares angrily*

 

I agree that in some cases these comparisons have not been done well.

But if I equip the sniper on my shooter that platform was built for it. I already have the spreadsheet to tell me exactly what it's potential damage is. So it's easy enough to see how much of that it achieved on an optimum, custom built platform. The fact that I'm not trained for it is no problem because the spreadsheet already takes that into account in it's "potential damage". I can similarly do the same thing with the blast cannon on my speeder. There, the blast is in it's element and we can see what percentage of it's potential I was actually able to achieve.

Really, if I had "X successful hits per match" for each weapon after that the spreadsheet handles everything.

 

Sigh...vis, you can't just bring the range of a weapon into a comparison about weapon dmg, say a weapon has higher range and so deals more dmg than another weapon...

That's not how it works. I think the problem here is that the pro snipers are all shooters and the anti snipers are all speeders and enforcers.

As a guy who used to play both I'll try to help with making the comparisons easier here.

1 NOBODY buys, builds and uses ANY CANNONS ASIDE FROM SNIPER FOR CRIT.

We get blast and ex for higher base dmg and burn dmg, cannons for dps. Nobody relies on the crit chance on them so please stop comparing the crit hits of a blast with the crit hits on a sniper.

Technically you wouldn't be wrong but realistically you are comparing an aspect of a weapon that is not given significance. For example, this comparison is like you are taking a walrus onto land, and comparing it's running speed with that of a cheetah.

2. Vis's comparison of more range equaling more dmg will only work under ideal conditions. Say I have an mk5 with 5 t4 rare snipers with the same crit chance, I can keep shooting and kill an enemy before they get me into their weapon range.

However sadly, under realistic scenarios we all know this is not true. Nobody builds 5 snipers on their shooter, I have 2 snipers, 1 rare, 1 epic, the rest mortars.

Naturally my mortar dmg is more consistent and for any ship with more than 1 bloody weapons, to deal the maximum dmg, they HAVE TO position themselves within range of ALL THEIR WEAPONS.

If I have a carronade and a sniper then only by staying in 5 range of enemies will I be able to deal my max dmg potential.

Around a good 75% of the time in a fight, my snipers range is absolutely pointless, it wouldn't matter if it's range was 40 or 20, it'd still deal the same dmg, so this whole "more range, more dmg" makes no sense to me.

Even if my enemies are at sniper range, I'll have no chance but to move closer to them to actually deal enough dmg to kill them.

Unless you mean I stay at sniper range and keep shooting you with 1 gun while 4 other weapons just sit there.

1 more thing, around 51-59% of the shooters use mid-long range weapons like torps, grenades, mortars, fire bombs, napalms, railguns, etc.

The thing about these weapons is, many of them are hard to use or even useless in close range. The number of shooters who use close range weapons like blast, explosive, flare, etc is less in comparison.

If you run a flaregun blast cannon combo on your speeder, enforcer and you find it difficult to kill a shooter cause sniper then you are certainly doing something wrong.

You probably charge into the open early game in the name of scouting and get into range of enemy shooters who throw all their stuff at you and then when you finally get close enough to deal dmg with your combo.

You get reaped by a crit shot sniper which is the only weapon most shooters can use at close range.

A ship at 40 range won't even show up on your vision unless some of your closer allies have visual on enemy ships fyi. Fudge I've had enemy ships at 20 range disappear from my vision even if I know they are right in front of me.

Sometimes I actually think it's a hack, sucks no dev would bother mentioning the minimum vision range of ships.

 

And this my friend is the problem. Crit dmg needs to turn into crit chance. The sniper needs to crit but the crit dmg is too big and needs to go.

 

LMAO
I could swear that this tag used to be "I just WANT answers"

 

If we want to actually achieve a goal here, we should stop insulting each others maths

 

Yeah listen to me and @TheAntiSnipe coz we ace maths right @TheAntiSnipe? We r too good!

JK, trying not to brag here! But @TheAntiSnipe is really good!

 

I am just providing the information tbh I don't care either way

 

Crit dmg is needed but sniper does too much crit dmg imo, if we buff up the crit chance and nerf the crit dmg then over all dmg would be the same would it not?.

Besides, all I'm asking for is for sniper not to have more crit dmg than the other cannons. Snipers need range, speed and need to crit to be effective but the crit dmg doesn't need to be 2.5 times the base is all I'm saying.

 

I already shared somewhere of blast and sniper. 2 blasts with fire perks rare and epic t4 ani same for sniper.
I played 140+ games with twin snipers 1186250. My crit chances are 37.5% and 30%.
I played 1100+ battles flare and blast my damage on blast is 5758710.

 

I guess it should end the discussion

 

I am not saying any weapon is op or not. Its just that sniper is more reliable at mid and long range and damn accurate. At close ranges or point blank range you tend to hit to water often but such scenarios are not that often.
But 1 fact sure can't be ignored that sniper is effective at all ranges from 0 to 48 or 50 but while the counter part isn't. That's the only cannon or weapon that is effective at all ranges. Even torps have arming range, missiles have min range restriction.
Sniper maybe hard to use at close range but isn't useless other weapons are.

 

Actually, I run a speeder main. I do not equip a sniper. I haven't played my shooter in some time now and don't intend to unless I get forced into it by some situation like this.

As a speeder I'm pretty much target #1 for every sniper cannon on the enemy team. I'm not convinced it needs to be nerfed. It is not the weapon I fear the most nor does it stand out in my head as the weapon which killed me any more than others. As target #1, I simply don't have the experience of it being overpowered. For me, any hit is too much to just shrug off. The sniper cannon was and still is just a battle field feature I need to deal with if I'm approaching the enemy in open water. I do it successfully day in and day out. In most every match I'm out scouting and that means the moment I light up their radar the water around me is peppered with little pock marks from the sniper cannons... not to mention brightly colored rings in the water. If the sniper were as deadly effective as people here are making it out to be then I would absolutely be feeling it.

On my shooter I found the sniper cannon very flexible so it retains a slot. But by far my favorite weapon was the standard cannon. Here's the data

Std Cannon: 226,208
Sniper Cannon: 148498

The standard cannon out performed the sniper cannon by a whopping 52% margin. But let's dig deeper.

Perks:
Std Cannon: 2 common cannon damage. 1 common range. Total +6% damage
Sniper Cannon: 2 epic crit perks. rare crit perk. Total +20% to crit chance

But offsetting that the sniper cannon wasn't properly trained for most of the update so it was missing 20% in crit chance. This effectively neutralizes the perks in my sniper so we can consider my sniper cannon's numbers "bare". To compensate, let's knock the perks off my standard cannon:

Standard Cannon (with perks removed): 213,404
Sniper Cannon (no training): 148,498

In other words, just as my gut feel indicated, my standard cannon absolutely crushed the sniper in performance. And who would be surprised by that? The sniper's DPS is 27. The standard cannon is 48.

That's my problem with the nerf argument. My own data absolutely supports Rovio's position. My gut feel as a sniper target supports it. I have not a single shred of evidence from any pro-nerf person to refute my position.
(see update below. Shadow posted evidence and I missed it)

This speeder is anti-nerf.... solidly.