A while back I decided to use new the sniper Mechabre on a GM and its performance was pitiful. This made me consider about sniper rifles in general and honestly, you're better off using Arby or a heavy linear instead if you're looking for a longe range damage dealer. Because of the weapon kick you'll have to use a brief period for correcting your aim after each shot, which means you'll be unable to use your gun at its full potential. Achieving max fire rate is out of the question because laying on the trigger will naturally mean less precision, and of course not firing fast enough will hurt your already low dps even further, which especially hurts rapid fire frames. Only good place to use them is against things like Oryx with a huge crit spot or when there is div bubble. Meanwhile Linear's recoil is much more predictable, less intense and you can also use a linear's charge time as a break time for correcting your aim without hurting your dps. Mag size is also another pain point. All linears (i think?) have 5 on the mag as base and can go to 6 with a mag perk. Meanwhile most high impact snipers have 3, adaptives 4 or 5 and rapid fires 6. This makes it so you'll be reloading a lot more frequently and dealing way less damage than a linear including their special counterparts. 3 shots from an aggressive frame sniper is out damaged by 2 shots from Arby, and Arby still has 4 more shots to fire while the sniper is reloading. Reserve ammo for sniper rifles are also much lower than both special and heavy linears. There is also the flinch factor, aim assist and the scopes. Flinch hurts snipers way more than linears because again, LFR users can use their brief charge time for correcting aim, but if you get flinched with a sniper high chance you simply miss. Linears also have very high aim assist and although this is more of a personal opinion, i think their scopes also makes them much easier to use. When you scope in with a sniper your field of vision is naturally narrowed, and this makes it so visual effects will hurt your vision more, things such as arc energy balls from a hive knight or purple balls from a servitor or burn effects from a fire wall spitted out of a taken knight. Linears however generally have cleaner scopes and this makes it easier to track targets as well as following up your shots even under fire, although some might disagree. I just find linears more easier to aim and shoot for these reasons. There are also the other special weapons you can use in place of a sniper. You can use blinding GLs or glaives for their utility (blinding and DR) and fusion rifles or shotguns for melting down higher health targets closer to you with no precision requirement (can still use a heavy linear for melting enemies farther away). Only thing I wouldn't consider using are trace rifles. Exotic ones at least have nice effects you can benefit greatly from but legendary trace rifles have close to no utility for me. Maybe adaptive munitions to ignore match game, but you can just use Arby for that purpose instead and also benefit from LFR ammo finder/scavenger mods doubly for both Arby and a heavy LFR, and also use an energy weapon matching your subclass for things like volatile rounds or ember of empyrean. All in all, I don't see a reason to use a sniper in pve. Maybe if Bungie were to buff their ammo reserves and mag size instead of their damage it would be nice. Simply buffing the damage to make them compete with special or heavy linears would cause problems on the long run. If they had way more ammo reserves but still dealt less damage there would be a reason to use snipers, which is being more economic. I think what Bungie needs to do is give all weapon types clear pros and cons to fix balance issues which is why I advised this. Things like fire rate and damage can get you only so far. Speaking of weapon balance, double or even triple ammo reserves for machine guns and trace rifles as well as at least double mag size for machine guns would be perfect. Buff to reserve ammo might be a stretch for machine guns but legendary machine guns specifically needs a major buff to their ammo reserves. Give us that Rambo fantasy raining down lead to our enemies with machine guns. At this point they are like glorified auto rifles with more damage. Same deal for trace rifles. They barely deal more damage compared to auto rifles, only good thing they got for themselves being their fire rate, but is it even worth it? Primary ammo is unlimited and energy weapons can be paired with subclasses for synergy, volatile rounds being the best example, and you can't benefit from those type of things if you have no ammo. Again, I don't see a reason to use trace rifles with their limited ammo. This is just an idea but, maybe give all trace rifles intrinsic Adaptive Munitions? I know, I know, this is a bit too much but this kind of a change would make them definitive shield breakers and maybe lowering their already low ammo reserves even further would be justified. Like I said, weapon types need clear cut pros and cons.