Comments on: Sniper Tips

By: Shady Business

Shady Business — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 02:29:42 +0000

In my opinion as a career sniper, the tips here are worthwhile mainly to beginners. Once you really can begin holding your own as a sniper, tips, walkthroughs, tutorials, most of them become irrelevant due to you progressing to where your style of play shadows over everything you do. It can become very harmful to try and change your style because of articles like this. For example, when you say that Soldiers and Demomen are more useful offensively then a sniper, I would have to respectfully disagree. As a sniper who frequently pushes offensively, I have to say that the sniper has more offensive capability against single or small groups of targets than any other class, after all, All classes can be killed with 1 or two quick shots. Average classes that have 200 health can be dispatched by a quickscoping shot to the head, then a noscope to the body, scouts die instantly from any headshot, heavy’s are killed in three, but if it’s a charged shot, they die instantly. A sniper with a keen aim who is focused is the most dangerous class in the game. Bar none. Snipers can be game changing in many ways. One way, is on payload maps from the gates you can often see medics who have an uber ready. Experienced snipers can kill a medic with a single shot when the gates open and rob the team of their healing, and their target of the uber, allowing your team’s uber to dominate. And to say that quantity is better than quality is utter heresy. No sniper ever got good by not aiming. That’s going to be my daily rant today.

By: Raptor

Raptor — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:38:57 +0000

I disagree with the 1 Sniper argument. Usually, if you have 12 or 16 players (24 or 32 player servers) you can afford having 2 Snipers, and it is actually a very tactical advantage. An example being if I headshot a troublesome soldier with a buff banner, and a kritzkrieg’d heavy comes around the corner, I have to wait for the full charge to be able to kill him. If there are 2 snipers, that means that you have a fully charged bullet every 1.5 seconds. It may not sound like much, but it can make an enemy team think twice about offensive strategy.

Also, know your targets. A scout dosent have much health, and if hes being shot at, a quarter charged chest shot is usually enough to take him down. Pay attention to your charge meter, and pick your targets. Killing 4 hurt enemies or taking 4 shots to kill a 450HP Heavy. Your choice.

By: Pie21

Pie21 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:25:16 +0000

Math? That’s just numbers. Take an engineering course, and thou shalt know math

In English, don’t bother fully charging every shot, because you probably don’t need to. More, weaker shots is likely more effective than less, more powerful shots.

By: NeonDarkness

NeonDarkness — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:08:08 +0000

OK, dude, I like the advice and think your awesome and all, but you shouldn’t try to bring math into a video game, it has the similar effect of dividing by zero. That is to say… TEH HOL UNEEVRS WIL XPLOD!!! BOOM!!!

Good advice though.

By: itburns

itburns — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:22:35 +0000

I would also recommend that, when possible, you position yourself near a friendly sentry (dustbowl and goldrush have several good oppurtunities). Spies will be less likely to backstab you with a sentry around, and you can use your powerful machete to take care of any spies which go after the buildings first. Having a dispenser nearby also tops up your health passively. The only downside to this is that the sentry may become a target, exposing you to splash damage. In that event just run away.

By: itburns

itburns — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:15:59 +0000

Overall speed of the target is entirely irrelevant when choosing a target. The important factor with regard to movement is transversal (or angular velocity). Transversal is, in layman’s terms, the speed of the target with regards only to the left/right/up/down movement relative to your position. For example, someone running directly towards you has a transversal of 0; they are effectively standing still. Someone running to your right has a transversal of… well its a lot of math but its more than zero, trust me. Because of this a scout running towards you may actually be an easier target than a heavy strafing to your left or right. Choosing targets with low/no transversal is the key to getting headshots consistently. This is the same reason that it is harder to hit targets which are closer even when their overall absolute speed is the same, as transversal takes into account the distance between the observer and the target.