DevReply Why is the sniper cannon balanced?!?

Okay, let's clarify everything, with both items level 50 and full of epic perks:

Sniper

• 734 damage
• 2000 crit damage (based on what was said here, I don't have one to confirm)
• 45% of crit chance, which means a sniper user will average
• Average of 1304 damage points

Explosive cannon with only damage perks

• 1637 damage points
• 1227 area damage points

It's possible that I miscalculated some things, I'll review it ASAP, but take a look at that: https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/weapon-data-compilation-d.18178/

 

Just 1 extra information you have less than 45% to get that area damage and less than 10% to get full of area damage's damage

 

Yeah, when it doesn't happen it makes only 303 more points than sniper on average. But when there's at least one fixer on the the other team, maaaan, it's area damage time

 

Still waiting to see how you avoid snipers. @Jasper21 @Rainbow Warrior since you say that it is the best way to deal with them, could you show me? Post a match replay if you can.

 

Dance, man, the sniper user will lead his shots to places you're not going to you know how to do it, you're just being sarcastic, right?

 

Yeah, pretty much. All those things are also rational and true. If you want to disregard the sheer mountain of little advantages Sniper has over other weapons, then I will agree that Blast is ‘slightly’ more powerful. But it’s not reasonable or rational to disregard them, because they’re facts. When you add them all together, you get a weapon that has everything going for it, and the only penalty is a ‘slight’ drop in power, and only in certain (contrived) situations, versus weapons that pay huge and restrictive penalties for thier power.

 

Not always , when i try to shoot a dancing enforcer with my ex cannon i always aim to the opposite direction that he is moving toward now ,and it works perfectly

So dance with the music ,dont do the same moves always

 

Exactly! There's no point on dancing with the same steps on Battle Bay

 

OK, some quick math here. Assuming my formulas are all more or less correct a T5 maxed sniper ought to be doing somewhere in the vicinity of 704 damage on a non-crit, 1408 on a crit, and an average of 1020 (all numbers using my current training levels except the crit which assumes fully trained... if there's some other bonus % damage for snipers in the training tree that would need to be added on).

Now, let's compare that to my blast cannon. At E50 that gives me 1158 damage on a non-crit. Add in the burn perks at ?12%? each for 48% bonus damage and that's a butt load in a two shot combo. Each of my blast cannon hits (in combo) is equivalent to a sniper crit. On the average my blast cannon seriously out performs the sniper for damage.

But what about ease of use, right? I think that's highly over-rated. That's what Rovio's numbers show and that's what my own numbers show. I think Sniper is the lazy mans gun just like mortars. I think it's over-represented for that reason. I think lazy people miss a lot, sniper or no.

As an anecdote, I went up against a M6 enforcer in my M5 speeder. He was toting 3 snipers including a legendary. That is, arguably, the worst possible setup in the world for a speeder. Sure, he won and he should've. But he didn't cream me any more than any other M6 enfo would and it wasn't so mismatched that I could not have won had I played better.

 

There is, and they’re pretty big bonuses (I’m surprised you haven’t hit them already). When people talk about redistribution of the tree, those bonuses in particular are what they’re referring to.

 

Yeah, it's another 20%??? That was dumb of me to post all the math knowing that some of the inputs are wrong. Dinner soon. Then I'll comb through the training trees and max out each (in my spreadsheet at least) and get proper numbers up.

I'm willing to bet right here and right now that it doesn't change the bottom line. If I'm wrong in that I'm going to be very surprised. You have to believe I've thought about going dual sniper every...single... time I have to approach the enemies through open water. I have the gear (minus some perks for the second) and maybe one spare sniper.

 

OK, back with new and shinier math... I'm going to show my work here in case anyone spots an error.

Let's break down the sniper first.
The sniper's base crit% is 5%. You can add another 20% on with crew training. So the max sniper crit % is 25%. For Crit Damage, sniper offers +50% from crew training. In addition you can add another 4.5%*4 of crit% in perks. A point of interest here. The table below shows average damage (counting crits) based on number of cannon damage perks installed. The assumption is that if it's not a cannon damage perk it'll be a sniper crit perk. Here's how the average damage breaks down going from 0 to 4 damage perks:

0: 1316
1: 1331
2: 1341
3: 1345 <-- optimum mathematically
4: 1342

However, there is hardly any difference though between 2,3, & 4 damage perks and so I, like a lot of people, would opt for 1 damage perk and 3 crit perks for that surprise knockout punch.

So... assuming fully trained and with 1 epic damage perk and 3 epic crit% perks I get: 844 base, 2110 crit, 1331 average

Now let's discuss the blast cannon
The blast cannon benefits from a total of +80% damage bonuses (unlike the sniper's 45%). Both get +15 from crew training. What that all amounts to is without perks the blast cannon is packing out 1362 damage. Read that again. It's doing more damage than the sniper cannon without perks. Now let's add in 48% from burn damage which I'm pretty sure is a new term in the formula. Let's assume that 80% of my targets are burning (a reasonable assumption since my other gun is flare). That turns into, 1362 base, 2016 on burning targets, and a whopping average of 1885.... a full 40% more than the sniper cannon.

So here's the summary. My blast does a TON more damage than a sniper would assuming I can get into position and land the shot. So if my skill is up to it, then the flare/blast combo is offering me 40% more damage than the sniper cannon. Obviously, a significant part of that is offset because the "good position" for a sniper cannon is much more generous than for a blast cannon.

TL;DR
Blast cannon does a crapload more damage than the sniper cannon if you're good. On a burning target, the blast cannon hit nearly on par with a sniper crit.

 

If you’re using yellow boats, there are many ways to deal with various weapons (sniper included) with the use of nitro, Tesla Shield, Tesla bolt, and dancing as suggested above but surely you can’t dodge every shot (if you’re expecting 100% dodge rate, you’re simply delusional). If you’re using shooter, going against sniper at close range, best way is to move smartly and use wave as cover. At long range, dance. But honestly, at close range (10-20 range) good players rarely miss their flare/blast/ex cannon shots. There are many players who are accurate using all these “difficult” weapons with slower projectile. If you find yourself constantly having difficulty landing shots at close range (I’m not directing this to you @A55A51N but to everyone reading this), you should really improve your skills rather than complaining, or switch to using sniper since it requires no skills to use as some people suggested (I don’t think so actually).

 

You’re assuming sniper doesn’t miss at long range and you’re assuming every single shot is a crit, but in reality, sniper does miss at long range and has at least 55% chance (if it’s a rare sniper, at least 62.5% chance) to not crit. You can assume flare/blast to miss at close range, I can also assume a sniper only crit once in a game.

And when sniper doesn’t crit it’s not only a “slight” drop in power, it’s worse than a standard cannon of similar level with all damage perks.

 

Who cares? You and I are upper percentile players. Of COURSE we would opt for raw power over convenience and be willing to learn how to make it work. But, at least per Miika's last chart I'm in the top 5th percentile. 95% of people aren't playing at that caliber and it's easy to understand why they would opt for a sniper or 3.

Interesting note... the triple sniper M6 enfo I fought in Wayward pains did kill me. But he also missed me 4 times while I was fleeing. I came SO close to getting away. And I was in a freakin' long narrow hallway. I had what.... 4 or 5 boat widths to dodge in. So much for the perfect hit record of sniper rifles.

 

Wrong on all counts. I don’t assume Sniper will hit often at long range, but I know for a fact Blast won’t hit because it’s out of range entirely, so Sniper still wins that round.

I don’t assume it will crit ‘all the time’. But when you average a 45% crit chance into the damage, it pushes the damage up very close to what Blast can achieve, assuming Blast can hit as frequently (which it can’t), so even at point blank range, the weapons are close. Remember a non-crit is still far better than a miss.

At medium range Blast will miss fairly consistently, but it’s an optimal range for Sniper, so it should easily beat out Blast there too.

Sniper wins every conceivable comparison, apart from point blank power — and only if you assume Blast is ‘at least’ 75% as accurate (which is dubious), and shooting over waves (which, as a Blast user, I never do anyway, because Blast also hits waves, and it’s too risky).

So even in the areas where Blast does best, Sniper is very close, and might even be better. And then Sniper also wins in every other area: long range, mid range, projectile speed, accuracy, crit chance, area control, early damage, etc... it’s clearly a superior weapon when all these things are taken into account, which is reflected in its popularity.