PC Sniper OP???

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The best part about the sniper rifle is that every single shot with it is a quickscope... Sorry, just had to.

Also, the sniper is great for picking off individual targets, I'm keeping it around. I get +1200 damage every shot, it's awesome.
 
Currently, it is the only weapon I'm aware of that can easily reach a crit rate of OVER 100%.

If I TRIED to go for crit increases, it'd be even higher.

It also in my opinion, is one of the few weapon that synergizes well with Shroomite armor. Shroomite armor is the armor tier around the Sniper Rifle and the Tactical Shotgun. Given the set-bonus... which one is going to win? The "wait-somewhere-far-back-and-safe gun" so my stealth can work better, or the "get-right-in-their-faces-because-I-suck-at-accuracy gun"? To be fair, a large part of what's taking place here is play style related. I'm more comfortable in the backlines. I'm an endless musket-bag type person for 85% of the time. My style of play does not compliment the tactical shotgun.

But in all seriousness, I do not like the tactical shotgun. I'd prefer the normal shotgun, simply because the necessity of having to click between shots meant I'd hit a flying eye in my face more often, as it'd be deliberate. The auto-fire? Gah. I... I just can't get behind the feel of it. It sets it too far apart from the other shotguns. :sigh:

Plus, it's more inaccurate somehow despite having more pellets.
 
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For PVP, the sniper rifle is excellent. (With buffs and a high damage ranged setup, one can 1-shot players most of the time, even with the max hp of 600.) Unfortunately, you can't be in shroomite stealth while mounted anymore.

PVE seems more relevant, since PVP balancing has clearly never been a high priority. :p

The damage/defense calculations in Terraria help balancing very well.
Let's say two weapons have a raw DPS of 1000. A pistol fires 10 times per second for 100 damage each, and a rifle fires 1 time per second for 1000 damage. The sole difference is the ratio of fire rate and damage per shot. The pistol's DPS is based more on a high fire rate, while the rifle's DPS is based more on a high damage per shot.

In most games, the pistol would always be a better choice, disregarding ammo consumption and precision. Why? Because the pistol is more flexible; with crowds of low-HP mobs, the rifle would be wasting overkill damage on each enemy, and while DPS is a good statistic to compare, what we really want is a high rate of kills (but we use DPS since mob HP varies). But on a single high-HP mob, the pistol also has no disadvantage, and may even kill slightly faster since there may be overkill damage with the rifle. (Example: for a 2100 hp mob, the rifle takes 3 shots, for a total of 3 seconds. The pistol takes 21 shots, for a total of 2.1 seconds.)

Terraria balances this by making defense subtract from the per-hit damage instead of act as a percentage. (Excluding the endurance potion, worm scarf, and frozen turtle shell.) This makes weapons with more of their DPS based on low use times less effective for mobs with defense, up to a certain point.


Let's have a mob with 100 defense in normal mode, where half of the mob's defense is subtracted from the damage of each shot:
Rifle: 1 shot/sec (1000 Initial damage/shot - 50) = 950 damage dealt
Pistol: 10 shots/sec (100 Initial damage/shot - 50) = 500 damage dealt.

However, in extreme cases of high-defense, the pistol is more effective. When both are reduced to 1 damage, fire rate and critical chance (chance to double damage after defense reductions) are all that matter.

Given 1 second of attacking a mob with 5000 defense:
Rifle: 1 shot (1000 Initial damage/shot - 2500) --> 1 damage dealt. (Values round up.)
Pistol: 10 shots (100 Initial damage/shot - 2500) --> 10 damage dealt.


But there's another factor to consider. Ammunition.
Ammunition damage is simply added on to the weapon damage. However, weapons with more of their DPS based on a high fire rate will benefit more from high-damage ammo, since this acts as a flat increase to their damage/shot.

With bullets of 10 damage:
Rifle: 1 shot/second (1000 Initial damage/shot + 10 damage/shot) = 1010 DPS
Pistol: 10 shots/second (100 Initial damage/shot +10 damage/shot) = 1100 DPS

There's no clear winner between two weapons of equal DPS, with the only difference being Damage/shot vs. shots/second. It's dependent on defense, bullet damage, exact mob HP, etc.

And of course, there's the more practical aspect to consider. With the rifle, for any mob we could 1-shot, the kill time wouldn't be 1 second, really, it'd be near-instantaneous. This may be why some think the sniper rifle seems OP, since almost every common mob will die in 1 shot when wearing endgame ranger armor, and this is the effectiveness people often look for outside of invasions and boss fights.
 
It is not OP. It is pretty underpowered since it is good only on non bosses and single enemies or in PvP. But most of the items are OP in PvP so who cares?
 
The thing is, the Sniper's DPS is indeed insane when you are getting more reliable figures from bosses. I got over 2k easy on both Tactical Shotgun and Sniper; anyone saying that its DPS sucks now are speaking lies.

I found it much easier to use than the Shotty, and it only has marginally better DPS if you're hitting all shots (though it is a very forgiving weapon to use on, say, Duke Fishron).

I'm not saying the Sniper is over-powered, but can someone compare a weapon that has higher single-target damage to it that isn't above its tier (Fishron, Moon events, Lunar stuff)? Or does it not exist?
 
Aiming isn't hard, keeping track of the very inconspicuous cursor is. They still haven't fixed that.
You can fix it yourself. Go into your config.json, and around the bottom there should be something along the lines of "ThickMouseEdges" and it will be set to "false,". If you set it to "true," then you'll have a thick white edge around your cursor. Makes it much easier to keep track of.
 
You can fix it yourself. Go into your config.json, and around the bottom there should be something along the lines of "ThickMouseEdges" and it will be set to "false,". If you set it to "true," then you'll have a thick white edge around your cursor. Makes it much easier to keep track of.

I'd still prefer the Windows cursor but it is an improvement, thanks.
 
I suppose if there's something else that I like about the Sniper that while nice, also often doesn't get used... it's the range of the weapon, or more specifically, the range the bullets have. Being able to finish off the somewhat nearby Solar Pillar from your spawn is rather nice.
 
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