The Gage Sniper Pack and You

[MAJOR WIP] This guide is designed to be a primer on the nuances of the sniper rifles introduced in the Gage Sniper Pack, and the drastic changes they make to PAYDAY 2 gameplay.

Introduction

Hey Steam! The Gage Sniper Pack introduced sniper rifles into the game, as had been requested by the community before. This has resulted in some major changes to gameplay as the previous "sniper" rifle, the M308, has a Rate of Fire of 710, with the true sniper rifles having a RoF of 60 and under. While the GSP is still new and people are still figuring out the nuances of the changes, too many people are using sniper rifles as general-purpose weapons and wielding them against general police - that is to say, outside of their intended use.

The Role of a Sniper

As a sniper, you're going to break all the established rules of PAYDAY 2 so far. Stay mobile, stick with the team, focus on the objective - all that goes out the window, to a certain extent. However, PAYDAY 2 is a cooperative game, and that doesn't stop just because you've got a perch above the action to pick off targets as you see fit. You are an assassin in the sense that you're eliminating HVTs, but you're a designated marksman in that you're in a vantage point picking off targets to support your team, be it by thinning the ranks, eliminating Specials before they get to your crew, etc.

The most important thing to remember is that as a sniper, your role is that of team support. The medic buffs and revives, the heavy soaks fire with a LMG and ICTV, the tech focuses on the objectives. If you fill the role of a sniper in a heist, your task is to make the heist easier for the rest of your crew by picking off Specials and other high-threat LEOs so that your crew can focus on the objectives.

Specialty Weapons and Funnel Techniques

The sniper rifles added in GSP are specialty weapons - weapons used by specialists. Real-world military squads don't have five people running around with LMGs, because the LMG is a suppression weapon, designed to use its large magazine and high rate of fire to pin hostile forces down or remove them from cover. Much like in the real world, many of the DLC weapons in PAYDAY 2 are specialty weapons.

For example, let's look at the LMG. The KSP or Brenner-21 (opinion: don't use the RPK) are big, mean ass-kickers that have average damage and subpar accuracy before mods, but boast the highest magazines and total ammo in the game, high recoil reduction, and high rate of fire, allowing them to fill a room with lead for an extended period of time and put out high DPS on targets (pre-Gage Mod Pack, the KSP was said to have the highest DPS potential of any weapon in PD2). They work well with traditional PAYDAY 2 defensive strategy, that being funneling.

The basic idea of funneling is that the fewer avenues of entry that the police have to your position, the better, as you're not being flanked and are able to focus firepower on a single direction. This is why more experienced players will board windows and open as few doors as possible on Trustee Bank and hole up in the basement on Rats Day 1 after blowing up the lab; these strategies minimize the number of approach vectors for police. This is where LMGs excel. If you defend inside the basement of the house on Rats, one LMG can hold the line by shredding any LEOs that walk through the one entryway, with the exception of Shields, which can be flanked by a second player.

For the most part, sniper rifles completely throw funneling out the window. A sniper doesn't want swarms of cops coming through one entryway because he is limited by rate of fire (more on that in the next section). A sniper rifle is ideally wielded with long, open sight lines and a position where there is a range advantage. Simply put, you are outgunned in almost any situation where the cops can shoot back at you. As a sniper, you'll want to thin the ranks while avoiding fire as much as possible. This means making every second you're in the open and every shot count. The logical conclusion here is that you need a priority system for what to shoot to make every bullet count. That will vary by weapon, due to differences between each package, but your highest priority, no matter what sniper rifle you're using, will always be eliminating Specials first.

Damage Limitation vs. RoF Limitation

Let me start this off with an analogy that I hope will help explain it better. Modern PCs are capable of some pretty high-performance tasks - for example, rendering graphics for a video game in real time at 1080p resolution at 60+ frames per second. However, to get there, you need (among other things), a hefty processor and video card. Two phrases that get thrown around a lot when discussing technical specs for gaming are CPU limitation and GPU limitation. Essentially (and I mean essentially, please don't tear me apart over the specifics), if your PC is CPU limited, it means that your processor is the "weak link" in your system. Your video card is having to sit around doing nothing because your processor work fast enough to get through all the stuff your video card is throwing at it. GPU limitation is the other way around; your processor is having to wait on your GPU to produce frames for it to push.

Basically, this is how damage limitation and Rate of Fire limitation works in PAYDAY 2. If your gun is damage limited, the weak link that limits its effectiveness is how much damage it is able to deal with a single shot. Most assault rifles, SMGs, pistols, and all of the LMGs are damage limited. A ROF limited gun, on the other hand, can do a massive amount of damage, but its DPS is limited by how fast it can fire. Examples of ROF limited guns include the Bronco revolver, the Reinbeck shotgun, and the sniper rifles.

What does this mean for sniper rifles? If you look at the R93, it deals 250 damage per shot. This is enough to kill any non-Special law enforcer in a single shot on Overkill. However, its rate of fire is a very low 50 rounds per minute - less than one shot per second. A modded Eagle Heavy Rifle is capable of dealing 50+ damage per shot, enough to kill a FBI Swat in two headshots to the R93's one. However, it has a ROF of 610 rounds per minute. This means that against the same target, the R93 deals 208 damage per second, where the Eagle Heavy deals 508 at 50 damage per shot. Does this mean that sniper rifles (excepting the Thanatos, obviously) are statistically inferior to assault rifles in terms of damage output? Technically, yes. However, something to keep in mind is that if you're fighting a law enforcer that can survive more than one shot from an assault rifle, he will be returning fire as you kill him. With a sniper rifle that can eliminate the same LEO in one shot, he is dead instantly and unable to return fire. What this means for sniper rifles is that you have to leverage your high damage output to eliminate targets before they have the opportunity to return fire - the age-old adage, one shot, one kill.

As tempting an arguement I've just made as to why you should kill regular cops, you should focus on specials with a sniper rifle because there is no advantage over an assault rifle against normal LEOs. A R93 can kill a FBI Swat in one shot, where it takes two from an Eagle Heavy. However, the time-to-kill for the Eagle Heavy is around 0.2 seconds (two shots at 610 rounds per minute). A R93's time to kill is technically instant (the target is dead as soon as you fire), but functionally is over one second, as you will need to prepare the next shot. This means that an Eagle Heavy rifle can kill 5 FBI Swat in the time it takes a R93 to kill one. However, an Eagle Heavy will take several more shots to kill a Taser and must flank a Shield before being able to deal damage to it, where the R93 can kill the Taser instantly with a single headshot and kill the Shield with a single headshot through the shield. This is why it is far more important for you to kill Specials as a sniper - they are eliminated instantly (excepting Bulldozers) and cannot deal damage or crowd control your crew, and it allows them to focus on regular LEOs.

Sero's Sniping Rules

Now for the do's and dont's of being crew sniper. Keep in mind that at the end of the day, these "rules" are simply my opinion. I feel very strongly that my opinion is right, but it's still just an opinion.

Rule #1. The sniper is a specialist. There's nothing special about a team of four people all using sniper rifles. Your team should have one sniper, or if you absolutely will die if you don't get to snipe, you're so close to your achievement, a two-sniper team. One is good. Two makes me personally nervous. Three is bad. Four means you've already failed the heist.

Rule #2. Get the tools of the trade. These are:

• Good Aim
  
• High FPS
  
• Low Latency

Yes, I know that you spent money on the Sniper Pack. Yes, I know that there is literally no benefit to you owning it if you don't use the sniper rifles. However, if you can't hit a cop standing ten meters away from you, you're contributing less to your team than you would have last week when sniper rifles didn't exist and you were happy to roll around with an assault rifle. This goes for any point in the above trifecta. If you have amazing aim, but play on a potato that gets 12 FPS, you're not gonna land every shot. Turn those settings down, cowboy. The blotches of color that vaguely resemble SWATs might even be easier to see on Low. Likewise with low latency. This isn't always under your control, but there are steps you can take. Do what you can to optimize your connection, and remember that Payday is played peer-to-peer. If you're positive you're landing your shots but nothing's dying, host.

Rule #3. Waste Not, Want Not. What sets the GSP sniper rifles apart from the game's previous only "sniper rifle", the M308, is an exchange of massive damage per shot and punchthrough at the expense of fire rate and ammo capacity. Take your time. The Rattlesnake will oneshot nearly anything on Overkill with a headshot. The R93 will oneshot anything except a Bulldozer with a headshot. The Thanatos is so ridiculously powerful, you don't want to take headshots (more on that later). Don't waste precious ammo and your rifle's ponderously slow refire rate taking snap shots. Similarly, make sure you don't waste damage. You will do the least amount of overkill damage to specials and tans, so they should be your first priority.

Rule #4. DON'T DIE! Sniping will sometimes place you in vantage points or other areas where you're separated from your crew. In these situations, the worst possible thing you can do is get downed. I'm guilty of this one: I was riding the zipline to the vantage point on Trustee Bank during an assault, and got my ass kicked. I get downed on the vantage point and call for help. The team medic rides the zipline to me, and is downed. The host sprints up to the zipline to save the medic, rides it across, and gets downed. Heist good to heist failed in one minute.

Rule #5. Play the Objective. Someone on Reddit said that PAYDAY 2 is a speedrunning game, and it's true. Your team has an objective, let's say drill into a vault, drill/c4/saw a second door, bag loot, and escape, and the goal is to complete it as fast as possible before you're overwhelmed by LEOs. Everyone has a part to play in this. The Ghost attempts to stealth, shortening the loud portion of the heist or negating it entirely. The Technician/Sawforcer speed up the loud portion of the heist by drilling faster and/or negating obstacles with C4 or the saw. As a sniper, your objective is to make it easier for your crew to do their objective by killing LEOs before they even make it into range of your crew, specifically Specials, which can't do too much to you on your perch, but can derail the whole mission with one lucky tase or jump kick. Since Specials are the greatest threats, your job is to pick them off first.

The Rattlesnake

Base Stats: 10 Magazine Size, 50 Total Ammo, 60 Rate of FIre, 130 Damage/Shot, 18 Accuracy, 3 Stability, 5 Concealment, 78 Threat.

Weapon-Specific Mods: Long Barrel (+7 Accuracy/-3 Concealment), Sniper Suppressor (-26 damage, -2 Accuracy, +9 Stability, -2 Concealment, -66 Threat), Tactical Aluminim Body (-3 Stability, +6 Concealment).

The Rattlesnake is Babby's First Sniper Rifle in PAYDAY 2. Unlike Babby's First Guns (the AMCAR and Chimano 88), however, the Rattlesnake isn't completely outclassed by everything else in its category. The 'Snake is effective in a general-purpose role, being able to oneshot both FBI SWAT and MFRs (tans) with a headshot, and taking down Shields in two shots through the shield. A (relatively) high rate of fire and ammo capacity round it out.

"But Serothel", I pretend you ask, "You said that you should never shoot normal LEOs with a sniper rifle. What gives?" I'm glad I pretended you asked! The Rattlesnake has nearly double the maximum ammo capacity of the R93 rifle, obtains 1 shot from every 2 (or so) ammo drops from kills, and still has the damage potential to oneshot regular cops and 1-2 shot Specials. What this means is that if you run out of ammo for your secondary, or are switching back and forth between your primary and secondary to maximize ammo gains from drops, you could do a hell of a lot worse than the R93. While your ammo is still crucial, a missed shot isn't nearly as painful, and the lower damage means that you're not wasting as much damage output if you pick off normal LEOs.

Additionally, the Rattlesnake is the best support sniper rifle for someone who wants to stick with their team in close quarters (re: not be a liability on a vantage point). It may seem counterintuitive, but if you replace the regular scope with a Red Dot Sight or Milspec Scope and stick with your team in combat, you'll have a powerful close-mid ranged weapon that can oneshot LEOs and quickly eliminate Shields without having to flank them, which is in my opinion the best use of this weapon. The Rattlesnake is a bit like an M308 with the ability to shoot through shields, which is awesome, and is my go-to when I have to snipe. Anything else on Overkill or lower is, pardon the pun, overkill.

The R93

Information on the R93 coming soon.

The Thanatos

Base Stats: 5 Magazine Size, 15 Total Ammo, 40 Rate of Fire, 2880 Damage, 18 Accuracy, 0 Stability, 2 Concealment, 185 Threat.

Specific Mods: Tank Buster Barrel (+10 Accuracy, -1 Concealment, +30 Threat), CQB Barrel (-3 Accuracy, +8 Concealment), Suppressed Barrel (-480 Damage, +6 Stability, +2 Concealment, -135 Threat)

Dear Sweet Baby Jesus, THIS GUN. When the Gage Sniper Pack rifles and stats were revealed, I didn't believe that the stats on this thing were right. I looked at it and said "No way." Then the Thanatos, in all its might and glory, said...

"Way."

So yes, the Thanatos is awesome. It's extremely loud, it's flashy, and it makes itself the center of attention wherever it goes. This thing is the Kanye West of guns. More importantly, The Thanatos is the PAYDAY Gang's answer to the Bulldozer.

Let me be clear.

THE THANATOS IS AN ANTI-BULLDOZER WEAPON.

One more step.

If you are shooting a Thanatos at anything that isn't a Bulldozer, you're probably doing it wrong.

I mentioned up in "Sniping Rules" that, as counterintuitive as it sounds, you shouldn't aim for the head with the Thanatos. Here's why: In Counter-Strike, the one thing that makes me angrier than anything else in the planet is getting killed by someone with the AWP. It's a high-powered sniper rifle that produces a one-hit kill... no matter where the shot hits. The Thanatos works on the same principle. You WILL kill whatever you hit, so it makes more sense to aim center of mass to minimize your missed shots. This is, of course, a subjective thing. You should "never" waste one of this gun's precious 15 shots, but if you absolutely, positively have to kill a Taser, Cloaker, or Shield RIGHT NOW, shoot them in the chest and it'll still do enough damage to kill them twice. The exception to this is Bulldozers, because a) they have a very large, clear headshot box and b) it's completely plausible to oneshot a Bulldozer with a single headshot in the right conditios (still need to personally test this.) In any case, 2 or 3 shots will take down a Bulldozer, which is why it's so important to use the Thanatos correctly.

When you do a bank heist and you're planning to pop the deposit boxes, you don't bring a saw and then run around sawing LEOs in the face. Not only does that make you a deeply disturbed person, but it's an enormous waste of precious saw blades you can only restock from ammo bags. The Thanatos works on exactly the same principle. There are three things you can shoot with it that aren't a waste of ammo:

1. Skulldozer
2. Blackdozer
3. Bulldozer

Anything else is a waste of ammo. Some things are less wasteful than others, but if you're dealing 2000+ damage to anything that isn't a bulldozer, you are not applying your damage output properly. The best crews have someone who each brings a different field of expertise to the heist. When you bring a Thanatos to the job, your specialty is "Killing Bulldozers." You need to remember that Dozers are slow-moving, ponderous titans that can ruin a heist in seconds, and you are the mighty hand of Zeus that can cast them back into the abyss in a few trigger pulls.

TL;DR Version: If you have a Thanatos, drop EVERYTHING and kill Bulldozers when you see them. Your team should never have to fight Dozers while you have ammo.

Snipers in Stealth

I'm hesitant to suggest the use of sniper rifles in stealth, because in my experience they've done more harm than good. However, it is possible (let me stress: POSSIBLE - not recommended) to contribute to the crew in stealth using a sniper rifle. The package to use is, hilariously enough, the Thanatos.

Despite being the Kanye West of guns, the Thanatos can be made to settle down. Its base Concealment is 2, as low as a LMG, but it can get a boost from the CQB Barrel and GWP#01 Straight Grip (p.s. the Thanatos is the only sniper with a pistol grip, so you can mount the basic grip mods on it). This puts it up to 12 Concealability (9 with Theia), making it the most concealable of the sniper rifles, but not by much. In a suit with a full (33) concealability Swedish K as a secondary weapon, you can bring yourself down to the surprisingly low detection risk of 23 before Ghost T4 bonus - not great, but you're hiding a .50 cal sniper rifle. This should only be done as a specialist build in coordinated crews, as you are functionally useless in combat, as the Swedish K is absolute garbage when built for stealth and you only have 15 shots for your Thanatos, the accuracy of which has been reduced from relatively pinpoint into the realm of standard weapons. Additionally, you CANNOT fire it during stealth, as the CQB Barrel does not silence it. If you want to use a suppressed sniper rifle in stealth, your best option is the Rattlesnake with Tactical Aluminum Body, Suppressed Barrel, and optionally Theia scope. Do not use the Long Barrel.

The point of building these sniper rifles is to make you the crew spotter during stealth. There are very few situations in which this is useful, unfortunately; the Theia scope does not spot through glass (thanks Frankelstner). Next thing to consider is your overwatch area. You're only accomplishing as much as the rest of your crew if you're slinking around with them, only you're far less sneaky, so don't do that. You'll need to (unfortunately) make use of the purchaseable vantage points, which gives you a specific overwatch area:

Bank Heist/Firestarter 3: Front of bank, roof, street behind bank
Firestarter 1: More or less the entire airfield (This is the best vantage point by far).
Framing Frame 3: Grand foyer of the Senator's apartment. On FF3 you are more or less filling in any gaps that the camera operator can't see.
Election Day 1: Pretty much the entire yard. I do not recommend this for stealth as you are in the middle of the yard, making it very easy to be spotted. However, this vantage point does make reaching the computer in stealth significantly easier.
Jewelry Store/Ukrainian Job: This vantage point sucks, and these jobs are easy enough to stealth without a spotter.
Rats: Cannot be stealthed, so not a possibility here.

Closing

I hope this has cleared up misconceptions regarding the sniper rifles in PAYDAY 2 and how they should be used. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to put them in the comments. I am also active on reddit.com/r/paydaytheheist, which is a fantastic community for PAYDAY 2 full of people that can help you and answer questions. Thanks for reading!

[Changelog]
Build 3 - August 6 2014. Snipers in Stealth section more or less finished.
Build 2 - May 14 2014. Weapon-specific information for Rattlesnake and Thanatos rifles added. Discussion of sniper rifles in stealth added.
Build 1 - May 12 2014. General theory, numbers, and "rules of sniping" in place. Weapon-specific tips on the way.

[Lemon Demon - Two Trucks]

@CEU160193C17 1) How do you login?! 2) I don't like the Theia, it's too zoomed for me, and the insta-spot is nice, but I can just handle learning to press F fast.

[Serothel]

@CEU160193C17L I need to do a little more playing with the Theia to get a full write about it. I have listed in the Stealth section that you are essentially the replacement/supplement to the Sniper asset. Also, it is worth noting that in Frankelstner's Long Guide, he notes that the Theia scope cannot spot through the glass on Framing Frame 3, making the vantage point there much less useful than you might think.

[Kairi ♡]

There is nothing said about Theia scope. This thing is absolutely best scope, for 2 reasons:
1. It marks any special walking into your sight instantly from any range. Revealing positions of special enemies - even if they quickly escaped your sight - is helpful.
2. During stealth it marks guards, making it some kind of Spotter asset replacement.

[Lemon Demon - Two Trucks]

Thanks, my Payday 2 buddy just got GSP, and this'll help him on how to use it well, I'd hope. Also, I would prefer to read any guide that has humor, it's how I learn well, so thanks for that.

[Serothel]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I'm without a PC right now but will be continuing work on this once I'm operational. @Alcat101: thanks for the correction regarding oneshotting dozers with the Thanny. @Mars: what mods do you use for a stealth compact 5 and what is its concealment stat? 33 concealment with Swedish K is the best I've found.

[Insidious]

Wow! Great job Serothel. This was very rewarding and easy to read, keep up the great work! Have a great day.

[♥みちる ・ Michiru♥]

@Hatty Hattington im rolling with the Rattlesnake as my main, did you see how it looked with the aluminium body? sexy.

[itsmes3]

Sir there are 2 skill trees that are good for sniper rifles the first 1 is tech because of all of the rifle perks and the second is stealth and that is if you put a supressor on your gun and have professional or the one that increases damage

[Guillotine Operator]

Alcat101 you are wrong the black dozer and the green one share the same ammount of health the only diffrence is the blackdozer is a bit taller and wields a izhma shotgun with a drum magazine.Only the skulldozer has greater health than the other two.But still with thnatos can kill em all.

[Alcat101]

very thorough and 'light' guide (thanks to the comical joke and analogy)

1 thing you might fix though,
In my knowing, you can't oneshot kill a full-health Bulldozer with Thanatos in any condition.
As the lowest level Bulldozer (the green Bulldozer), have 5000/6000 health (depending on diff maybe...)
So it takes 2-3 shot from Thanatos to bring the lowest Bulldozer down

Another thing in my experience, Thanatos max damage -when complimented with the right mod and skill- can be boosted to around approx. 3200 points
This gives you 2-bodyshot kill to Green Bulldozer, 2-headshot kill to Black Bulldozer, and 3-headshot kills to Skulldozer (if i remember correctly), even on death wish diff