How to not be noob: Sniper

Want to not be a newbie at snoipah? Want to know the tips and tricks to playing sniper RIGHT? This is the guide for you! In this guide, I will go through tactics, weapons, recommended loadouts, and tips.

Basics

This is the Sniper. He is in the Support tier with 125 health, the lowest possible health you can have. With 100% speed, the Sniper specializes in long-range combat, prefering to stay behind to fight. His 3 weapons are the Sniper Rifle, the Submachine Gun (SMG), and the trusty Kukri. The Sniper's special ability is the ability to headshot classes with nearly every sniper rifle in his arsenal. The Sniper is highly mistaken as a powerful class that can take multiple hits from a shotgun. Now with the basics out of the way, here are some more things to learn about Sniper.

Know when to play Sniper

Before you even click that 8th slot in the class selection screen, you need to know how well your team composition is. Most times when a team loses on a public server, 90% of the time it is because of poor team compositon. If you have heard of the old classic TF2 saying, "3 snipers and 3 spies", this is an example of team composition. Some of the questions that you should ask yourself before you choose Sniper are

• Is my team losing?
  
• How many Snipers are on my team?
  
• Does my team need a power class? (Heavy, Soldier, etc.)
  
• Am I on Hightower?

You can help yourself answer these questions by looking at the class selection screen and looking at the numbers on the slot. On the regular HUD, they are on the top of a slot. Those numbers are how many of that class is on your team. If there are 2 snipers, you should probably help your team by chosing a power class. In fact, this can apply to any class you really like to play. 5 Bagillilion Scouts on your team? Choose a Soldier to outweigh the Scouts. The only time when you don't need to worry about team composition is when you are not playing Hightower competitevly, which is all of the public servers on TF2. This is a screwaround map and a great place to mess with classes and wierd weapons. So if you are being bossed around on Hightower to choose a Heavy to push the cart, just say screw it and that capping Hightower is for n00bies. You should be fine after that.

WASD all the time

You always want to move as sniper. It lessens the chance of getting counter-sniped, and you might find some more people to head/bodyshot. When you WASD, you are going to move in unpredicible patterns so that not only you won't get shot by other snipers, but buys you more time from getting stabbed by a Spy. Although you will get backstabbed, that 1 or 2 seconds you are giving yourself to headshot someone might make a difference.

Don't EVER use Aimbot hacks

If you are terrible at Sniper, lets say, you are a CoD boy looking to go into TF2, don't ever use aimbot hacks. Gabe Newell (the CEO of Valve and Steam, the company that made TF2) will beat your a** with his Ban hammer with the power of VAC (Valve Anti-Cheating). So if you are desperate, don't ever use aimbot. You will be banned for eternity.

Know where to be on a map

There are certain places to be in a map. On most maps, you will be in your perch the whole round. On Payload, you may or may not be in your perch. You might be at the entrance to a door way or something. The only time you will be in your perch for the whole round of Payload, is the last stage of Thunder Mountain, where the 2 points circle around the last point. If you want to, you can pick out the enemies in front of their front lines, but you don't deal a lot of damage at close range. You might be able to get away with an Engineer without his buildings, but a Soldier or Heavy will mow you down. To know where to be on a map, look where a pro Sniper is on a map. That's where you need to be.

Primary Weapons

I will list all of Sniper's weapons with the exception of his reskins.

Primary
-Sniper Rifle: This is the best weapon to use if you are going tryhard Sniper. It deals a modest amount of damage from nonscopes to body shots to headshots. At full charge you can headshot a full overhealed Heavy.


-Huntsman/ Fortified Compound: This is the weapon that uses projectiles instead of bullets to kill people. Therefore, you need to be on the front lines with this weapon. This does crazy damage to enemies and can pin them to the wall. Press and hold the Primary Fire button (Left-Click on default) to charge your bow for maximum damage. People that get this weapon just click and the arrow isn't doing a lot of damage. Due to a delay of you shooting your bow and the bow hitting the target, many people refer this weapon as the "Lucksman" due to the extreme amount of luck involved. You can also taunt kill with this weapon, which will make Snoipah take his arrow and stab it in the enemie. This is the quickest taunt kill to perform, and is also the easiest.


-Machina: If you suck at headshots, this is the weapon for you. The base damage of the rifle is 25% more than normal, which means you can still do a hell of a lot of damage even though you didn't do a headshot. Since the stock sniper has enough damage to take out an overhealed Heavy, doing a full charge headshot with this will surely kill them. When you get really good with this weapon, if you headshot someone, the bullet can pass through multiple people. When you headshot 2 or more people at once, a cool little badass noise plays thoughout the whole server of your achievement. But, you can only shoot the weapon when you are scoped in, and it leaves a team colored trail when you shoot, leaving you vulnerable to backstabs.


-Hitman's Heatmaker: If you are good at headshots, this is the weapon you use. Every time you headshot someone, your sniper rifle charges up faster. But you have to consecuativly have to headshot someone, or else you lower your charge time. If you don't aim for the head, you will get a 20% damage loss on a body shot, so pro's should use this weapon.


-Bazzar Bargain: This weapon is very similar to the Hitman's Heatmaker, but there are some differences. For instence, you won't lose heads when you miss, and to add to your head counter, you need to get a headshot kill, not just a headshot. Also, your base charge rate for your focus is 50% slower, and you need to score 2 heads to get back to the standard speed. Just like with the HH, if you can headshot well, you should be using this weapon.


-Sydney Sleaper: If you want to put SUPPORT in Sniper, this is the weapon. Sadly, this can't headshot people, so no random crits. Every shot you deal will apply Jarate to your enemy, but the amount of charge is the duration of the Jarate effect, from 2 seconds to 8 (If you don't know what Jarate does, go over to the Secondary Weapon section). You can use this weapon to help your teammates out with killing select targets. I would prefer that this weapon deals less damage so you can fulfill the support act that this rifle carries.


-The Classic: Basically, this is a rifle that can charge seperatly from scoping, so you can charge your rifle and see what to shoot before scoping in for the headshot. Bad thing is, you can only headshot if the rifle is charged all the way up, and bodyshots are 10% less damage than normal. The Classic is terrible. Not only does it take away Sniper's bread and butter, but when you are charging, you are terribly crippled in speed. This is a straight reference to the orignial sniper rifle from Team Fortress Classic back in 1999, but with a longer barrel and other differences.

Secondary Weapons

Here are all the Secondary Weapons

-Submachine Gun (SMG): This is the stock weapon that you get. It is a great secondary and can be used with the Huntsman to finish off enemies. (POINTLESS PROMOTION BUT MY PRIMARY GROUP IS ABOUT SMG'S CHECK IT OUT SMG ARMY!!!) The reason why people shame it as a bad weapon is because people from CoD use it as a primary weapon and run all over with it. DON'T BE THOSE PEOPLE! Useless fact of the day: The SMG used to be for the Scout in the TF2 2006 Beta phase.


-Cleaner's Carbine: For a mini-crit push, you are lookin' at the gun to do it. It is a SMG that fires 20% slower, has a smaller clip size, but in return, when you deal damage with this weapon, it fills your mini-crit meter, labeled as 'CRIKEY'. Pressing Alt-Fire when the meter is full grants you mini-crits! Great for use with the Bushwacka for 195 damage swings!


-Jarate/ Self-Aware Beauty Mark: This is the classic Sniper secondary. Throwing this on an enemie will enable all fire going to it to be mini-crits, unless if the damage is a critical hit, then the crit will override the minicrit. It can be used to make the cloak on a Spy useless. Although you won't see this, the jar-based karate (AKA Jarate) can be reflected by enemy Pyros. This is the weapon that you should have on you at all times, because nothing is better than puting out your friends with your piss. Also good to add, extinguishing teammates with your jar will fill your meter up to 20% faster, so you can go back to drowning people again quicker. Thank god you can't consume this for health, or else you are one-step closer to being a survival extreamist.



-Razorback: Absolute Garbage. This weapon prevents one backstab. The bad thing is, Spy has a revolver. Ether way, you will die. Don't use this.


-Darwin's Danger Shield: If you want to stay in the fight with the Huntsman, use this. It will give you 25 more health to a max of 150. It also reduces bullet damage by 15%! But, you will be blasted to sh*t by Demos and Soldiers, so watch it.


-Cozy Camper: Yet another useless back weapon for the Snoipah. It gives you 4 health a second, irradicates flinching while shooting, and knockback is also gone. But you will recieve 20% more damage from everything. So what would you rather have: a bottle of your own liquid feces that deals more damage to people, or a backpack with a cute little koala that draws more damage to you?

Melee Weapons

At last, here are the melee weapons!

-Kukri: This is the stock melee you get with Sniper. It functions like a regular melee weapon, so it's good.


-Shahanshah: If you are used to the Equalizer, this weapon is the same thing. If your health is higher than 50% it will deal 25% less damage, and its the other way around, if your health is lower than 50% it will deal 25% more damage. This really depends on your playstyle. Expiriment with it to see if it really is you.


-Tribalman's Shiv: If you want to spycheck with more than your Jarate, this is the meat knife for you. It inflicts 5 seconds of bleed damage to someone, but base damage really sucks. Only use this to spycheck.


-Bushwacka: When used with Jarate, this makes the Sniper a deadly class up close. All minicrits with this weapon upgrade to a crit. The only bad thing about this is that it draws more fire damage to you when it's out and being used, about 20% more damage.

Recommended Loadouts

Now that you know some weapons, here are some loadouts to go with.

My personal loadout
-Sniper Rifle
-SMG
-Bushwacka

Nothing to say. If I need to play seriously, I will have this out.

I ♥ Pee
-Sydnee Sleeper
-Jarate
-Bushwacka

This is all about pee! What else is there to say.

Offensive Sniper
-Huntsman
-Darwin's Danger Shield/ SMG
-Melee of choice

If you are on the move, use this. Use the Darwin's Shield if you will be with another teammate(s), and if you are alone, use the SMG to finish off the enemie after you shoot them with an arrow.

If you have a personal loadout you like, you are welcome to post it in the comments below.

Summary and Other Things

To sum things up, you learned that

• Team Composition is important
  
• Always WASD
  
• Never Cheat
  
• Never cap Hightower
  
• Koalas can kill you
  
• Sniper drinks alot

Some other Tips to keep in mind
-Always spread yourself apart from friendly Snipers. Nothing is worse than 5 snipers in a cluster trying to headshot the same enemie
-Taunting with the Huntsman can kill an enemie within 1 hit. They are tricky to pull off, but with the Huntsman it is easier.
-Thank god that the scoping is not like in Team Fortress Classic, because there is no focus boarders and the crosshairs are for ants.

Thanks for reading this guide. If I forgot something in my guide, put in the comments below what I missed. I am making a whole series of How not to be Noob for all the classes. All of my guides can be found in my guide portal.
If there are any more weapon updates, I will try to keep up with the stats. And as Gabe Newell always says,
"Thanks, and Have Fun!" -Gaben

Update Notes

June 21st, 2014: Guide posted.
July 8th, 2015: Updated guide to fit changes in Gun Mettle update.
December 22nd, 2015: Updated guide to fit changes in Tough Break update.

[lotto]

comeme el moco

[TomBoi]

*NOTE* Added update section named "Update Notes".

[Bogdan Off]

cosy dosent make you take extra self damage anymore, i find it worthwile sometimes now, especially when there are many heavies on the enemy team.

[TomBoi]

*NOTE* Guide updated on July 8th to match the changes made in the Gun Mettle update.

[Big Pharma]

huntsman, jarate, and bushwacka/tribalmans shiv baby!

[Bogdan Off]

The loadout i perfer is the hitmans heatmaker, jarate, and bushwaka.

[[AGGC] Airforce Magical Spoy!]

Also, (Coming from a pro huntsman snipah not me, someone elze.) It's best to actually use huntsman, jarate and tribals shivman with huntsman m8.

[Vallinek]

Engie is more of a support class, actually. His Dispensers and Teleporters support the team, and he definitely can't uphold is Sentry unless someone else from the team is helping him out (a Pybro spychecking and reflecting projectiles, for example).
Medic is the most underplayed class in the game, that's true. Some people would rather go sixth Sniper than first Medic.

[TomBoi]

Engie is considered a power class because he can output a lot of damage with his sentry. And thanks for saying the Bushwacka doesn't get random crits. I will change that. Medic, I forgot, wasn't a power class. But he is important to the team and can be powerful with Ubercharges.

[Vallinek]

Third, Bazaar Bargain and Hitman's Heatmaker aren't the same weapon. Bazaar works like you explained, but Hitman's Heatmaker charges a special Focus gauge whenever you get kills or kill assists, and allows you to deploy the Focus for no-unscope shots and faster charging when you press the reload button. Drawback? -20% damage on bodyshots.
Fourth, Sydney Sleeper can Jarate people on 50% charge. Fully-charged bodyshots is actually a horrible misuse of this weapon (deathcam reveals your position and on most classes, the Jarate doesn't even kick in).
Fifth, Bushwacka was nerfed and doesn't get random crits anymore.