Sniper changes (good and bad)

[saltychipmunk]

So after some initial games with rangers I have a few things of note , some good some bad.


The good obviously is that the snipers no longer cheese through vulnerable infantry units for easy model losses , this means the nerf was absolutely effective at curbing the whole unfun this unit is good vs both infantry and heavy infantry too thing.

That being said it is more than obvious that the new sniping mechanics have had their damage so diluted over several shots that they have effectively lost the majority of their field presence and most of the reason why their over all dps was technically pretty low. Their dps was low on purpose to off set the spike damage , the same is true for the set up time.

However now that they no longer really do spike damage (even to heavy infantry races) I cant help but feel that they are essentially a power heavy standard unit with a longer range and alot more vulnerability.

even against heavy infantry races like sm or chaos , all one really needs is a support commander with some limited capacity to heal will almost entirely counter the effects of the snipers.

That again would be totally fine ... if rangers and scouts weren't also a 400 ish hp unit with infantry armor with the setup/tear down mechanics.

They lost much of their one shot potency good riddance but my god they have no right being so vulnerable now at least.

[Atlas]

If only every faction had a commander/subcommander that heals. I've only played one match where my opponent has gone sniper heavy on me (he was tm vs my sorc, with 3 snipers) and while I agree that the bleed on the bigger boys have gone down substantially, these guys wreck heretics now.

Same with guardsman and other such units. I think we're going to see them used a lot more to clean up rabble before a fight now so your other units can pick off the juicier targets. They do very good damage to commander armor as well which is a big deal imo. I kinda think of them as pikemen now rather than artillery in the sense that they are not dealing crippling damage to expensive targets now but rather good damage to everything.

[DandyFrontline]

I think the goal was reached - for now snipers are not so annoying/?op against heavy infantry, because they cant inflict too much damage before opponent react (before - 2 snipers, 1 shot = 1 model of tac's or csm down or 2 snipers against senteniel = almost 50% hp off) and in same time they are much more useful against any other faction then SM and CSM. I see them much more fun to play against and to play with. Also, the become much more useful against HMG units.

[Batpimp]

SO FAR, I have to say I love them. Of course this is from a team game perspective but they are not as annoying as before. Being that I almost never use a support commander, please take my perspective that playing as the WB/knob HT/RA/LA SC and CL have not made me go crazy as before.

[Cheekie Monkie]

The cost changes are also quite a deal, since fielding double snipers is a decent 10 power cheaper than it used to be.

[saltychipmunk]

to be clear I am not saying their dps is low or that i hate how they do their damage now. Like many people I disliked how much of a crutch the spike damage model rape of snipers was for sm and eldar.

that being said , I am having difficulty seeing a reason for them to have such low hp pools or the tear down/ set up time (which were both technically put in place explicitly because of that ability to one shot kill low hp models).

apart from heretics and gaunts you wont be one shotting anything these days. So there really is alot less stopping them from just charging sniper positions while taking no losses.

they are still a 9 pop squad after all so looking at their durability with the new mechanics is something worth discussing.
And maybe It wont amount to anything . but I would like some perspective in regards to their durability vs potency in the new meta.

[Torpid]

to be clear I am not saying their dps is low or that i hate how they do their damage now. Like many people I disliked how much of a crutch the spike damage model rape of snipers was for sm and eldar.

that being said , I am having difficulty seeing a reason for them to have such low hp pools or the tear down/ set up time (which were both technically put in place explicitly because of that ability to one shot kill low hp models).

How about their range?

[Ven]

How about their range?

range doesn't mean anything if you dont have the view of the enemy units due to fog of war. this usually means that you're going to want to play aggressively to get that line of sight and take advantage of snipers high range. however if i was a SM playing offensively, i would very likely get shotguns instead of snipers provided i could soak damage elsewhere, pre-patch i would likely get snipers if pushing vs chaos/sm/gk, but now the thought barely crosses my mind, the disruption and suppression is a lot more useful in my mind due to the sniper changes .

i havent even seen many rangers since the patch dropped. and even then now they're even more of an annoyance, slowly picking away at the health of my CSM or using kinetic pulse. but since the patch all they've killed is heretic models.

all this said however, snipers now do help force off things a lot easier. before you used to wipe squads take models in an instant not allowing your oponent to react, the post-patch snipers now have semi-consistent dps so usually will force things off a lot quicker due to your oponent not wanting to loose models. but again, this doesnt bleed or wipe stuff nearly as much as it used to. it forces stuff off sure so you can bash power, but what're you going to bash power with? double snipers? good luck with that.

[Torpid]

You're not meant to be pushing with snipers, they're more a defensive unit used to force the enemy to push against you. If you just have snipers out in the open all alone they're horrible because 1) nothing stops the enemy charging at them and bleeding them with ranged attacks due to their tear down time and low hp and 2) the don't get to exploit their range if you are trying to push with them.

Of course sometimes they can be used to aid in a push by taking out enemy set-up teams but they're best used defensively so that if the enemy pushes up to them they get suppressed or are exposed out of cover and have to run through the fire of you numerous other ranged squads/into the hands of dedicated melee.

I was trying them out yesterday and I have to say I like their state at the moment quite a lot, the only problem with it is that SM are ridiculously good vs eldar now that rangers don't lulwut slaughter scouts. Still, I guess SM deserves at least one proper MU advantage.

They're not just a cheese unit anymore that you can a-move and have a good chance of winning with and they're certainly not as effective when spammed in teams. They still work you just have to properly incorporate them into your build - you have to use them properly, like any other squad, rather than just spamming them, which was legit before.

[Nurland]

Scouts have 55 sight radius and 55 weapon range (rangers 60 for both with the pathfinder) So fog of war should not really limit the usefulness of your sniper units. It limits your enemies ability to keep track of them.
I have seen Eldar players get reworked rangers in the games I play fairly often.

[Dark Riku]

I was trying them out yesterday and I have to say I like their state at the moment quite a lot, the only problem with it is that SM are ridiculously good vs eldar now that rangers don't lulwut slaughter scouts. Still, I guess SM deserves at least one proper MU advantage.

This is not a problem but merely your own opinion. Eldar are still favoured vs SM.
Rangers still "lulwhut" trade with sniper scouts while retaining their shotgun blast across the map.

[Torpid]

@Riku Every balance problem is an opinion. Do you have a point by that or are you suggesting that what I said previously was me saying it was someone else's opinion? Also, regarding rangers vs scouts, why do always go back to how rangers must be better than scouts because rangers beat scouts? That's not how balance works. Banshees lose to ork sluggas with equal resources invested in each. That doesn't make banshees a better unit than sluggas, it just makes them better in slugga vs banshee engagements. My point is that of course rangers are better snipers than space marine scouts. Rangers are eldar's main suppression team counter in T1 whereas SM get ASM and infiltrated grenade-throwing-sarges. Furthermore rangers are always an on-top-purchase, on top of avengers whereas you get to pick whether you want your default scouts to be snipers or shotguns. That flexibility aspect of scouts is tremendously powerful and is what makes scouts so OP vs the PC, it's not like the PC just can't fight scouts in combat, yes he can if he makes the right purchases, but the SM can always make their purchases second at no detriment to themselves since default scouts are so good and they have two very different upgrades compositionally, so the PC is always at a macro-disadvantage, although he need not micro as much as his units 1v1 tend to better.

The sight radius vs weapon range thing is interesting. While what you say is true Nurland you still don't want to be leading with your scouts even with the extra sight range they have compared to other units (unless you have infiltration) in case you bleed models. You don't want to fire at an enemy at maximum range with a sniper unless you have further sight-range back a bit because you may miss a priority target and hit an enemy hero or tactical marine or something not very useful to hit. If you had no FOW it would make it much easier to decide when to stop moving your snipers/where to move them.

[Cheekie Monkie]

This is where I wish there was a hold fire option. You no longer lead with snipers, fair enough, but if you hold them back like a setup team they might automatically waste their shots.

This means that you'll have to dance dance dance until you're ready to take a good shot. It also doesn't help that they automatically set up when you want to keep them mobile. Not gamebreaking, but still an annoyance which has always put me off buying them (partly alleviated by grabbing infiltrate, but scouts don't always take that)

[Caeltos]

Tbh, it's probably doable to add a hold-fire option.

[Forestradio]

I'm sad you can't one-shot upgraded gants/gaunts under synapse

But other than that I have no complaints because I never liked sniper units very much to begin with.

[Dalakh]

Tbh, it's probably doable to add a hold-fire option.

I think if only for pdevs and the like it would be awesome to have.

[Torpid]

It would also be VERY useful for infiltrated melee units as it is extremely frustrating when you click to specify a target with an infiltrated melee squad and they start shooting their pathetic guns and revealing themselves.

[Cheekie Monkie]

It would also be VERY useful for infiltrated melee units as it is extremely frustrating when you click to specify a target with an infiltrated melee squad and they start shooting their pathetic guns and revealing themselves.

Every bit of dps helps!

I guess it depends on what your view of hold fire is. What I meant was that a unit will not fire until you tell it to - so that lascannon will stop peashooting those heretics until I actively click on that bloodcrusher.

In your example, those sluggas will still fire their pistols since you declared a charge. Orks cannot resist firing their weapons, even when you tell them not to! Likewise, it would be awkward for me to set up a cunning ambush for the aforementioned bloodcrusher, furiously clicking it only to find out that my devs refused to fire because I told them not to earlier.

[Torpid]

Hmm that's true. Damnit, I wanted it to stop having my slugga boyz shooting those useless sluggas at people and making me fail to kill their set-up team because of it... Or my banshees shooting their useless pistols at people from cloak of shadows... Or my ogryns from firing those not-so-useless-but-still-not-tactically-useful ripper guns after being infiltrated by 'silently'

I guess that concern is a smaller one than the problem of las-cannons firing at infantry or snipers 'wasting' their shots. I agree with you that a hold fire which would work for infiltrated melee units wouldn't be very useful for snipers/set-up teams or any other burst fire thingy and so I guess any change wouldn't benefit melee units unless we were willing to grant two more abilities to suit both scenarios but honestly I don't that is worth the mess it would cause on the UI...

Damn, I was optimistic for my ogryns then

[Dark Riku]

@Torpid: My point being is to voice my own opinion.
Rangers aren't "better" than scouts just because they beat scouts in a 1v1 situation. It's because they do so so much more than the scouts do, better sight/detection range, shotgunblast across the map while having a sniper rifle, etc. Scout are faster, more flexible, etc, but they also don't do much in combat unupgraded. In your SM vs Eldar T1 suppression counter comparison don't forget that asm and infiltrated scout nades both cost more, are less reliable and are more risky to use.

Banshees lose to sluggas --> banshees are better? ( I think you made a typo somewhere, but I get what you are saying ^^)

Scouts OP? That's a first...


It would be nice to have a hold fire button. When using infiltrated melee units, don't click to attack the enemy unit, run up besides them, then attack, no shooting will be done.

[Ven]

When using infiltrated melee units, don't click to attack the enemy unit, run up besides them, then attack, no shooting will be done.

totally agree. if something like a "stop auto-fire" button was implemented. then the meta for eldar would be as follows.

get rangers -> use hollowfield -> click attackmove on enemy army -> ??? -> profit.

[Torpid]

@Torpid: My point being is to voice my own opinion.
Rangers aren't "better" than scouts just because they beat scouts in a 1v1 situation. It's because they do so so much more than the scouts do, better sight/detection range, shotgunblast across the map while having a sniper rifle, etc. Scout are faster, more flexible, etc, but they also don't do much in combat unupgraded. In your SM vs Eldar T1 suppression counter comparison don't forget that asm and infiltrated scout nades both cost more, are less reliable and are more risky to use.

Banshees lose to sluggas --> banshees are better? ( I think you made a typo somewhere, but I get what you are saying ^^)

Scouts OP? That's a first...

I feel you're sticking to the eldar vs SM MU too much though. I think in the eldar vs SM MU rangers are more influential than scouts for the overall state of balance in that MU (although scouts and their inf+sarge are very pivotal since they stop shuriken spams which in elite are otherwise massively powerful since you can swap to a BL), but overall in the greater balance of eldar and SM I think scouts are more influential in what makes SM good at what they are good at than rangers are for making eldar good at what they are good at. Scouts may suck at straight-up combat but the fact that they are so cheap and so fast, can serve as disruption, anti-melee, get snipers, grenades and infiltration as well as repairing. That's such an amazing unit and it covers a lot of the weaknesses that SM otherwise have. Suffice to say scouts are way more important to SM than avengers are to eldar. Imagine if avengers/scouts swapped races? Would you, as an SM player be pissed? I would. As an eldar player I would be over the moon, or at least I would have been last patch with OP rangers, maybe not anymore... Just imagine 2 shotgun scouts + 1 shuriken + 2 rangers...

The banshee thing was a typo, whoops, banshees > sluggas (as a unit) even if in a fight between the two sluggas are more cost effective.

I say OP. I mean they overperform vs chaos, I don't mean they overperform vs everything so scouts themselves aren't OP. They're OP when fighting chaos... Kinda like the weirdboy is OP vs IG even if he's not straight up OP?

It would be nice to have a hold fire button. When using infiltrated melee units, don't click to attack the enemy unit, run up besides them, then attack, no shooting will be done.

I know that, but you lose a precious 2 or so seconds of melee charge with that which is... Unfortunate.

@Ven, I'm not sure I get your point. It would hardly be any different as your units don't automatically attack when infiltrated anyway, if you a-move after the hold-fire change that would do exactly the same as moving normally under holo-field does right now?

[Cheah18]

No one listened to me when I suggested that a delay between set up and first shot was all that was necessary to fix snipers

No one cares about little old <1000 hour cheah

[Torpid]

No one listened to me when I suggested that a delay between set up and first shot was all that was necessary to fix snipers

But that would only nerf their offensive potential even further since they'de have to stick around at the front-lines even longer to get that shot off vs those devastators behind the enemy tacs.

[Cheah18]

Is that bad? It would mean you would have to draw fire to allow your snipers to get their shot off. And, if infiltrated, it would just mean you'd have to wait a bit instead of run in, set up, thank you for that model or two, see ya (assuming no detectors). It would also prevent kiting because every time you moved you would incur a delay.

[Dark Riku]

I feel you're sticking to the eldar vs SM MU too much though.

You feel wrong ^^

Imagine if avengers/scouts swapped races? Would you, as an SM player be pissed?

Tacs ranged dps starting squad with cheap nades and perfect cover placing? I wouldn't mind that.
As long as detection and the sniper option comes from somewhere else in T1, preferably from an added ranger squad then to fill the gap of snipers, (bonus long range) detection, (bonus long range) disruption and bonus army infiltrating all in one. Approved!

[Torpid]

I feel you're sticking to the eldar vs SM MU too much though.

You feel wrong ^^

Imagine if avengers/scouts swapped races? Would you, as an SM player be pissed?

Tacs ranged dps starting squad with cheap nades and perfect cover placing? I wouldn't mind that.
As long as detection and the sniper option comes from somewhere else in T1, preferably from an added ranger squad then to fill the gap of snipers, (bonus long range) detection, (bonus long range) disruption and bonus army infiltrating all in one. Approved!

Detection would be problematic, just ignore that to save the analogy

But no, you wouldn't get the snipers/infiltration, that's kind of the point I'm trying to make. Scouts do a lot. The SM T1/T2 are tremendously versatile because of scouts, ASM, space marine dreads and the libby and they should always be the basis of good SM play.

[Atlas]

I don't really know if I'd call the SM Librarian a core part of the sm t2 play. At least not at the same level as asm and dreads.

As for the whole pushing thing, I actually do think snipers are used in the pushing part of play. For eldar in particular, rangers are used to soften up the entrenched positions like setup teams and when they're taken out the picture the actual assault can begin.

I'd also be ok with avengers and scouts swapping lol. Those shields are crazy good.

[Torpid]

I don't really know if I'd call the SM Librarian a core part of the sm t2 play. At least not at the same level as asm and dreads.

As for the whole pushing thing, I actually do think snipers are used in the pushing part of play. For eldar in particular, rangers are used to soften up the entrenched positions like setup teams and when they're taken out the picture the actual assault can begin.

I'd also be ok with avengers and scouts swapping lol. Those shields are crazy good.

I definitely would, although the meta wouldn't, but I'm adamant the meta is wrong here and I've had more than enough games using the libby last-patch to prove it. Now that devs have melee resist... Well. I don't suspect the meta for SM will change though, at least not at the non-tournament level because the libby is certainly harder to use optimally than ASM/dreadnoughts and SM players, for the same reason that they are the most commonly seen race, also tend to have the lowest skill level.

I agree that in the past snipers have been used rather offensively. I think that was what was OP about snipers. It was made worse by their high burst damage but now they aren't as good at it, especially without infiltration upgrades. But my point was that such is totally fine! They shouldn't have been able to pick out enemy scout squad's from behind the rest of the foe's army and force them off instantly, it was absurd. If you are an eldar and need to deal with set-up teams then flank around, you have speed, shees (with their FoF), immolate/ghosthelm/wse, grenades and kinetic pulse + energy shields/shurikens to deal with suppression other than using sniper fire. So what if it takes too long to force off the devs behind the tacs now? If you are patient you will wittle down the tacs instead then move on to the devs. If not then you go elsewhere. I feel that is how snipers should be played and still can be played.

Losing shotguns and the inf+sarge combo would be dire for SM. Losing the potential for snipers would also hurt their strength vs chaos/IG. I would see such a change as a massive nerf for SM. I mean, the avengers bleed WAY more than scouts too, so you would most certainly not be getting ASM out as fast either.

[Sub_Zero]

My prediction was completely right. Snipers are annoying to use now and a joke to play against. They lost their ability to cause loses, now you can easily assault their positions without taking any loses and that is not right if you ask me. The point of snipers is that they force you to engage instantly and if you do you will stop their killing spree and if you don't you will be punished with further model loses. If this change stays I doubt I will ever use them. I like the point that was brought in the initial post. If snipers don't cause any loses now why would they remain so vulnerable? Tear down time should be minimal now. 1 second. Not more. Even for scouts despite their high speed.

I cannot be absolutely certain whether the previous state of snipers were balanced. But the argument that it is not fun to play against snipers seems a bit off for a mod centred around balance.