Have a trusty sidekick first of all. I recommend a fusion or sidearm (sidearm are better). Also, gheleon is a must have. It's not the kind of sniper you can quick scope with as often as others, so you should find out the lanes and be hard scoped at head level. It has insane aim assist to compensate for its terrible ROF. Use the aim assist to your advantage. It's has very little effect on flinch, meaning don't mind the flinch. This is one of those weapons that can shoot through flinch and get you the kill. Shoot, hide. Always have a fall back plan. Learning the lanes is very important. Drag scoping with this gun is insanely effective. So practice that. If you're being rushed, get your shot off quickly and swap because you won't get a second chance at it (rof is low). Don't use up your melee/nades aggressively unless you know what you're doing. I find having them handy when enemies are trying to close the gap. Go into patrol, preferably on the cosmodrome and equip NLB as well as a second sniper. What you want to do is snipe, switch, snipe and repeat. Do this on the run too. As in work on your quick scopes. Dregs and vandals are about guardian height so they're the ones you want to go for. Doing this exercise will help you to use it in quick response situations as well as getting you better at using your hip fire. When you run, the little caret that shows up on screen is the center of your bullets. Use that to line up shots off the sprint. Lastly, keep practicing. Using the NLB is a great way to play defensively. It might take a bit to get use to it, but it's definitely one of the most fun weapons to play with. I'm not a great sniper, but I've had enough practice with them to say that these tips will help you get better.

I tried using this gun and didn't do too well with it. I think my biggest mistake was overestimating it's hitting power. I expected one-shot body kills. Not. I really don't understand the draw for this weapon. What sniper doesn't get one-shot head kills? All of them do.

1) Do not try to cancle the bolt cycle animation, it causes the game to not know wether or not you should be able to fire resulting in the "jam" people talk about. 2) Forget that it is a sniper rifle. Trying to treat it like a sniper results in a lot of missed shots and deaths. Think of it more like a hand cannon, get in close-mid range, and pace your shots. 3) Use a sidearm, it makes a great back up weapon. 4) Try out multiple combinations of abilities and movement styles. Use it on all of your subclasses and play around with the nodes untill you find some comfortable. 5) Practice. Perhaps the best way to get good with anything. Use the gun, figure out the quirks and what works best for you. 6) Do not do the bolt cancle, it jams the gun. 7) Have fun!

After using the gun for 2 years I have 3 golden rules: 1) Know where heads are going to be, i'm not just talking about "git scopez or git rekt" either, all guardians are the same height, and a lot of scenery in maps are eye level especially something like pantheon's walls, accuracy comes with practice ,the gun only seems punishing if you are reliant on body shots 2) Know when you have the upper hand, you will learn when to run away from a fight, such as if you see a glint before you're aiming you've already lost. 3) Know your loadout, not just your secondary, but also your subclass abilities/movement, I use my defender religiously, I don't know how many times i've been saved by my bubble or my stickies, I can say I know my strengths and weaknesses with this setup, my conviction ii sidearm packs quite a punch as well. This video shows my playstyle/experience: https://youtu.be/T6w2sRtDkYk Other pointers: Some will say use gheleon's artifact, I think one might become too dependent on it. I find the reload glitch unreliable, sure you shoot faster maybe you'll get a double but accuracy is best (my opinion) the gun can jam and completely mess you if mulligan proxs. Don't move so much, the nlb is inaccurate when moving, you'll get used to it. Confidence comes from experience, experience comes from practice HAVE FUN, if you die you just spawn with more ammo to shoot with.

Tune your sensitivity, avoid hardscoping as you do still have lens glare, focus on making headshots, and practice practice practice. You are going to need at least 1500 kills in pvp before for you to understand the gun, 5000 for expertise, and 10k for mastery. Goodluck and remember there is "No land for skrubs".

Easiest sniper in the game, why do u even need tips?

Learn the reload cancel. Its on youtube but short story is after you fire a shot reload. As soon as the animation starts, sprint to cancel it. This makes it much faster to fire. Although once you get experienced with it i began to do it on evry sniper lol

I've also been trying to use it, and it seems like maybe you shouldn't be moving while you're trying to shoot. Can anyone who's experienced with the gun confirm?

It's not very hard to use, ultra low zoom, crazy high aim assist, very little flinch, this coming from somebody who has a fair bit of experience with the weapon, use it as you would a hand cannon, for a bonus use the Gheleons artifact for radar. Its not very hard to use in the first place tbh, a lot of people really overrate the amount of skill required to use it.

Best thing to do is practice practice practice. There is no way for me to tell you how to get used to the iron sights, or have the natural instinct to relapse cancel after every shot. But once you practice enough and get used to the sights and remember to reload cancel (which btw if you didn't know already, when you Fire quickly reload and then sprint) after every shot, then you'll be on your way to be being pretty adequate with the NLB! I personally have over 5000 kills with it. Never used it in PVE. Have roughly 45 000 crucible kills too so that's 1/8 of all my crucible kills.

Shoot them in the head

Equip the artifact that gives you radar on all primaries. Now you can hard scope NLB everywhere as you casually walk around the map with third eye on the least nerfed sniper in the game.

Play YouTube or Netflix while in PvP

When you aim focus on the sights and wait until you see something in them to fire don't focus on what's behind the sights. Essentially always look directly at the sights when you aim.