Sniper Rifles useless???

[JohnTheMad]

Sup, i started out with the Sniper Assassin and i got the hang of it. Stacking the perk that refreshes the Sniper Shot cooldown when it one shots so i can one hit chain an entire mob.

So after about 40 hours i decided to try out melee just to open up the other passive tree's and i fell in love with the clear time. There was a serious boost to momentum and zone clearing with melee over range combat at least vs a Sniper Rifle.

It was so much so that with my melee build i am unkillable because of stacking Rosarios and supply drops on kill. So i looked at my items and passives i discovered that other than the melee tree itself i'm not really that melee focused. So i respected to put bonuses back to Aimed/Sniper shot and tried the good old One-shot spam build with a solid Needler Sniper because reloading after 5 shots is annoying and slow.

Well even with all the same bonuses to Physical that my melee build has and the same exact armor the Sniper shot just couldn't one shot anything at all. I tried the classic +5 levels Tarot run; which with melee i can just spam AoE attacks and kill as fast as i can move. But with a Sniper Rifle that should be dealing over 6k damage a shot with aimed shot. The speed just turns into a crawl of tapping at the enemy from distance and praying for a crit with 30% crit chance.

That is usually when i get one tapped from some invisible frame warping attack that has no animation so i have no chance to dodge or use my belt skill.

Sorry for the length of background to my reason to rant, but this is very disappointing. Is there any type of range build that is viable for the Sniper Assassin that can compete with higher difficulty curves? Or is Melee the only meta?

[Jhörbirn Lokrisson]

Just Use a boltgun.

[JohnTheMad]

Alright i'll grind for a decent bolt gun and see how it works. That just verifies that Sniper Rifles are useless.

[Fentanyl George]

Originally posted by JohnTheMad:

i am unkillable

Unrelated but how many levels above yours can you take?

[JohnTheMad]

Originally posted by Çetin Antalya:

Originally posted by JohnTheMad:

i am unkillable

Unrelated but how many levels above yours can you take?

I have went through +10 lvl missions are a decent pace, i never bothered with going beyond that because the time to kill is just so long i could run through several missions in the same time.

[JohnTheMad]

Originally posted by Jhörbirn Lokrisson:

Just Use a boltgun.

Well i found and built a solid Relic Bolter and added the +100% Rifle damage doctrine just like i have on my Carthean Sword. In a +5 lvl Purge and the Bolter just can't compete with the Sword in either Single target or AoE kills.

It was a serious struggle to finish the mission, i died twice simply because i couldn't kill the group in time before i ran out of Supply. So i switched to the Sword without any perks that benefit melee and literally walked through the mob in 4 seconds.

The Bolters performance was much better than any Sniper Rifle i used but the damage just isn't there. I guess i'll pick the melee focus class next time.

Thank you for the input

[Kalenath]

Originally posted by JohnTheMad:

Originally posted by Jhörbirn Lokrisson:

Just Use a boltgun.

Well i found and built a solid Relic Bolter and added the +100% Rifle damage doctrine just like i have on my Carthean Sword. In a +5 lvl Purge and the Bolter just can't compete with the Sword in either Single target or AoE kills.

It was a serious struggle to finish the mission, i died twice simply because i couldn't kill the group in time before i ran out of Supply. So i switched to the Sword without any perks that benefit melee and literally walked through the mob in 4 seconds.

The Bolters performance was much better than any Sniper Rifle i used but the damage just isn't there. I guess i'll pick the melee focus class next time.

Thank you for the input

Snipers are situational, unfortunately. Melee has always out damaged most ranged weapons in this game anyway and sniper rifles fire so slowly that it is just impossible to take out mobs unless you luck out and get one with the 'AOE on single hit kill' perk and even then, you will struggle to handle anything over +5. One reason that even my sniper main carries a Carthean Sword as backup to her Exitus.

That said? There IS that sweet moment when you get that nice little crit and 1-shot an Impaler... Pity that it is so rare.

[Lyncher]

Sniper rifles are ok when built correctly for them up until about 90%+ enemy damage reduction. Then they start to fall off hard because they lack good aoe and all but needler (which doesn't even go for the one shot kill sniper style) lack sustained damage as well which is a problem when you stop one hit killing things and don't get the bonuses from trees the spec needs to function well. Another problem with it also is vulnerabilities are quite critical in the game at that point to dps and one shot kill builds are not making use of stacking them.

Nothing compares to most of the melee weapons in this game but its pretty much always been like this. Mostly melee is often superior to ranged through out the game's lifespan as long as you can survive the extra dangers of being melee (which honestly is how it should be). Not the case for everything but it is for the vast majority.

[Licher.Rus]

This is ARPG
ARPG means "1 player vs hordes of monsters"
And, at least for me, "single target weapons" is something, that can't be good choice vs "hordes"

[JohnTheMad]

Perhaps if they give all Sniper Rifles a Passive multiple enemy penetration, so one shot can hit 3 enemy's in a row while still counting as a Single Target.

I can't think of anything else that could help the Sniper Rifle become more viable, but it's not a ground breaking OP idea.

[Schalimah]

Originally posted by JohnTheMad:

Perhaps if they give all Sniper Rifles a Passive multiple enemy penetration, so one shot can hit 3 enemy's in a row while still counting as a Single Target.

I can't think of anything else that could help the Sniper Rifle become more viable, but it's not a ground breaking OP idea.

They did exactly that to the psychers force staff, which removed the single target tag.
I doubt they would treat it differently for snipers.

As previously stated: AoE is king in this type of game.

[Lyncher]

Originally posted by SilverWF:

This is ARPG
ARPG means "1 player vs hordes of monsters"
And, at least for me, "single target weapons" is something, that can't be good choice vs "hordes"

Single target dps is important Vs bosses and tougher enemies in any ARPG as well. POE for example has builds such as essence drain/contagion with very strong (almost insane) AOE clear speed but utterly rubbish single target dps and when you fight end game bosses it takes forever to kill them vs builds that have good single target dps as well.

If you are lacking in either aspect you tend to clear that aspect less efficiently which affects the build's overall strength. Best builds tend to bring both aspects strongly to the table for dps.

[Licher.Rus]

Originally posted by Lyncher:

Originally posted by SilverWF:

This is ARPG
ARPG means "1 player vs hordes of monsters"
And, at least for me, "single target weapons" is something, that can't be good choice vs "hordes"

Single target dps is important Vs bosses and tougher enemies in any ARPG as well. POE for example has builds such as essence drain/contagion with very strong (almost insane) AOE clear speed but utterly rubbish single target dps and when you fight end game bosses it takes forever to kill them

That only means they have bad build or ain't RMT enough to buy all required gear.
Completely proves my point.

[Lyncher]

Originally posted by SilverWF:

That only means they have bad build or ain't RMT enough to buy all required gear.
Completely proves my point.

It literally proves that said build is lacking single target damage from the way it functions so its weaker vs bosses or stronger enemies which are a part of any arpg. It proves nothing for you since you are basically stating single target dps is irrelevant in arpgs when it is very much relevant for bosses and tougher enemies in arpgs which are apart of the genre to contend with since its not all fight hordes of weaker enemies only.

[JohnTheMad]

I think it really depends on the game. In PoE i would have my mobbing skill and my single target boss killing skill. Where as in Grim Dawn you can focus entirely for mobbing and still drop bosses at decent speeds.

In Inquisitor i just focus everything onto the damage type of my weapon so i don't have to worry about hunting/rolling enhancements for AoE alone.

Which is one of the reasons why i'm so shocked that range weapons in Inquisitor for the Assassin are just so useless despite having the exact same bonus (physical) as the general damage bonuses.

I might try a heat plasma rifle build, but that will take lots of time and money to reroll items to give me heat bonuses.

[Lyncher]

Originally posted by JohnTheMad:

Where as in Grim Dawn you can focus entirely for mobbing and still drop bosses at decent speeds.

This just means the AOE also has decent single target damage which is what makes it strong (or vice versa for something that's primarily single target that then has good aoe when speced, something like fire strike in GD is a good example). A lot of builds in POE can have both as well. You can think less of them as separate skills and more of just an identity of what each skill/build is capable of. Some only have good single or aoe damage output/clearing and others (usually the best builds/skills) have both.