Sniper class feels really bad

[StuckInWashingMachine]

Especially in a game where most of the maps are just narrow corridors.
The sniper is just so bad on some of the most common maps. Abandoned, Sewers, City center and Shanty town. It's just also so bad against all of The Chosen.

I very much am of the opinion in that Snipers should have the phantom perk rather then rangers. I think Quick Draw should come a little more early and should have a lower cool down considering how aggro this game still forces you to be.

That being said, yes I know the Sniper class becomes almost stupidly OP to the point in where the end game feels really boring, but that's just the thing. There has to be something of a balance, I almost feel compelled to make all my snipers do all the low risk covert operations.

[Create@Review(Ravire)]

Snipers can go gunslinger so if you want a sniper for close range get a sniper trained as a gunslinger or look up mods

[sick duck]

Sniper can be stupidly OP in the first month or two if you're lucky. +2 pistol damage from research breakthroughs will make it like a god gun in the early game. When the sniper works, it works amazingly well. 4-6 damage at the start of the game and high accuracy is great, and the ability to destroy relays without getting into danger or to pistol the lost and mini-relays without reloading has won objectives for me. You should really use the pistol and grenades a lot until the sniper levels up a couple of times. As weak as the pistol is, I find that each turn usually has an enemy weak enough that a pistol or grenade will finish them off. If you are lucky with the upgrades the starter pistol will become a 4-5 damage weapon which is just incredible for a thing that has infinite ammo and fair accuracy.

At the end of the day, xcom is a very RNG based game. We just have to suck at the game until we recognize what cards the game can give and understand what do with them.

[Amanoob105]

They work fine for me. Personally it was rangers I found a bit lackluster ever since the hero units came along.

I use them in one of two ways, with a few exceptions:

Exceptions.
-They always get Long Watch. Return Fire is one of those skills that work better on any other class that can get it and being able to overwatch at any range if they get to use the rifle is too good to pass up.
-Early game they always get Lightning Hands. The damage boost from Deadeye may well be fantastic, but a -20% to hit is a bit much to ask in the early game, so the Classic snipers only get access to that option in the mid-to-late game when they have the Aim to make it work.
-Always Bluescreen rounds, most of the more annoying and dangerous of enemies in this game are weak to them so these guys are the ones who help get rid of them faster. Codexes get shot at first as this lets me reliably OHK them if I'm keeping up with weapons research.
-Always Spider Suits/Wraith Suits. They're one of the two classes that benefit from it the most, although depending on the build for different reasons.

1) Classic sniper.
For this version it's all about placement and fire support.
Squadsight snipers save lives. If there's a big enemy in front of you, you could try shooting it yourself, or you could blow up it's cover and let the guy with the huge gun do the heavy lifting.
The thing about narrow corridors is that it doesn't give the enemy a lot of options about where to go when there's a guy with a very high damage gun at the other end that doesn't care about range.
Most other maps have somewhere on it you can find to it on top of and see large areas of the map to cover with sniper fire. Any members of the party that go that way are never truly attacking at a target alone. It doesn't even have to be particularly high, just so long as it's still one level above most of the other ground.
Weapon mods are Scopes (with priority on them over the second lot) and extended mags.

2) Gunslinger.
For this version it's all about getting into short range and drowning them in fire.
A pistol shot doesn't do much damage. Multiple pistol shots can easily add up to a lot of damage.
Now, granted, you need to get your Sharpshooter up to Lieutenant rank for this to really come into its own, but at least until them they can moonlight as a standard sniper.
What tends to decide if they take this route is what extra abilities they are starting to get access to from the Training Center as these can help to get it off the ground for when that rank hits.
They're the class that typically always has an action left to finish off weakened targets, with the Aim to make sure it hits or (more so if they're weak to Bluescreen rounds) drown them in often more damage than the rifle could dream of doing on a crit.
Extreme example. Tier 3 pistol + bluescreen rounds + five shots = 40 damage minimum.
Weapon mods are Scopes (though will take laser sights if not an option) and autoloaders.

[sick duck]

gunslinger can actually kill a sectopod with just one use of fan fire. It isn't a high probablity when the sectopodd is 40 health and unshredded, but the second attack will definitely do it.

[Talana 💃]

Snipers as gunslingers are excellent !

[Alex Darkcrowne]

Sharpshooters are realistically as difficult to use as it would be to lug around an Anti-Materiel Rifle. That being said, they're incredibly useful and can take out powerful threats with minimal risk to them or the squad.

-Return Fire vs. Long Watch is no contest. In a game where a single attack on a soldier could get them killed or comatose, anything that relies on you getting attacked is iffy at best.
Long Watch is just too useful, as it means Overwatch now shares the same targeting range as normal attacks.
-The fact that Snipers can attack anyone an ally sees and they have unobstructed vision of means you get a bit more leeway with risk. After all, if a Sniper is keeping an eye on everyone on the ground, that means they're not really alone, are they?
They're also useful for covering Stealthed Units, like Rangers or Reapers.
Bladestorm builds also synergise nicely with Killzone.
-Lightning Hands is another no-brainer. It's a free-attack. Who doesn't want that? Useful for getting some damage in before moving for Snipers, while Gunslingers want to START BLASTING and never stop. This helps both builds.
-Bluescreen Rounds is the best option for both builds, followed by AP Rounds. Bluescreen Rounds is +5 damage vs. Robots (MECs, Codices, Andromedon Shells, Turrets, Sectopods). It's per attack, so Gunslingers get a bit more out of it than Snipers.
They still get a lot of value out of it, though, letting them one-shot Codices semi-reliably.
-Fan Fire is 15 + (12-15) damage with Plasma Pistol and Bluescreen Rounds. Yeaaaaah.
-No one does better against the Lost than a Sharpshooter. Pistols have unlimited ammo, so you can just keep chaining headshots until you run out of targets or you fail to kill a Lost. Whichever comes first.
-Faceoff is an amazing move for clearing out or softening up a lot of enemies. Great for setting up ridiculous combos like Reaper's Annihilate killing 7 targets, or Reaper nailing like half a dozen kills.
Absolutely bonkers the Alien Hunters DLC intro mission.
-Sharpshooters are the best units for killing Sectopods quickly when armed with Bluescreen Rounds.
Fan Fire + Lightning Hands + Quick Draw = robowalker go boom

-Regardless of which build you're going for, Sharpshooters live or die on positioning. Taking advantage of terrain, understanding how line-of-sight works and making the most of movement are all vital for a Sharpshooter.
-Naturally, this means they should get Light Armour. Grappling doesn't count as movement, which means you can shoot twice, on top of avoiding a couple of nasty abilities.
-As useful as Aim is in general, Sharpshooters are the most reliant units on it, bar none. This means they need Scopes and Aim PCSs more than anyone else.
-Snipers have functionally unlimited range, limited only by the FoV and Aim stat. This allows for stuff like completing Avenger Defence with only 2 soldiers moving out of the ramp.
It also lets them counter Archons (they're the ones with the easiest time landing a hit if Pinions come into play), and 'Zerkers and Chrysalids (because they can kill melee-only units from very, VERY safe range).

-Assassin with her stealth naturally counters sniping, until she's broken out of it. After that you have a CQC specialist in the crosshairs of a Sniper. The results are exactly what you'd expect.
-Warlock relies on hanging back and spawning adds, so he's probably the most vulnerable to Sharpshooters. Snipers can tap him from across the map the moment his shields go down, Sharpshooters can drown his lackeys and him in shots in the same turn.
-Hunter is a sniper duel, and is about as interesting and fun as you'd expect that to be. Best way to fight him, in my opinion.
Out of all the Chosen Weapons, Darklance and Darkclaw are the most broken.

So you see, Sharpshooters having a terrible early game is used to balance out the fact that they're absolute MONSTERS in the late game.
They have the steepest growth curve in terms of power in the game, contrasting with Grenadiers, who start off leading in the early game before transitioning into supports at the late game.

[RamboRusina]

Snipers need spider-suit(should be baseline for them) or chosen sniper rifle(since it costs only 1 action point to use) to really get any shine. By the time you get either of those you already have much better group done anyway. Ideally they also need grenadier to enable them better lines of sight and clear shots.
Ultimately it comes down to ranger and specialist being safe picks that work everywhere and have highest reliability which really matters on legendary ironman. Snipers are clumsy to use and don't really provide anything to truly lift them up outside reaper + sniper squad cheese. All while grenadiers are fillers you can throw to just about any group if you got no good units available and won't feel as slow/clumsy to use as snipers are.

[Hayaji]

If anyone is interested in even more OP snipers, play LWotC and get him to colonel rank, where you can buy all his max rank skills, meaning - double tap (allows for two shots per turn), alpha mike foxtrot (+4 damage with sniper rifles!) and serial (actions refunded on kill, but decreases min. and max. damage by one each shot). My sniper once totally destroyed about 7 enemies in one turn, and all of them had 12+ HP.

On a recent Avenger Defence Mission, she had 194 damage from 45 enemies total. When I exclude my reaper (ofc reaper had also around 190 dmg), none of the others didn't even come close to this number.

[Crypto Gamer]

Sniper with chosen pistol+bluescreens can easily solo the sectopod/gate-keeper on legend difficulty aside from reaper with banish no one else can do it and sniper can do it more than once.......

Sniper with death from above with chosen sniper rifle+squad removing cover can solo half the map in 1 turn on legend and he can have very high aim.

Reaper scouting and sniper shooting down object eg.cannon from 80 tiles away with 100% object hit chance making missions much easier.

Without RNG no other class can do that.
And can alos be used to soften up enemies with 100% safety as the mobs have to reach you can also be used to pull out pods if they are near to each other.

If you have lost die in 1 hit order than sniper with any pistol can almost solo the whole map with no issues much more effectively than any other class.

Yes early snipers are more restricted and on council missions in cities they are less good.
They more than make up for it for being OP with the right conditions.

They are similar to Xcom 1 weak early on very strong mid late game.

[CommanderWyro]

at a certain point snipers become OP as hell. Longshot + high ground + chosen sniper rifle is insane. especially giving them the armor with thrusters for height movement, you can be one shotting enemies across the map

[zeeter]

I never understood the love of snipers as gunslingers. A fully decked out sharpshooter as a sniper is almost unfair once the chosen rifle and the icharus armor are available. Couple this with Death from Above and the game actually gets boring.