I think the problem is less of the sniper's performance and more of the fact that the weapons that could actually face them have been nerfed to shit (Thorn and Hawkmoon, TLW to a lesser extent). Give me my 2-shot Hawkmoon back. What's the point of having extra damage if it takes the same amount of shots to kill?

NOBODY CAN CONSISTENTLY SNIPE WHILE BEING SHOT BY PRIMARY. FLINCH IS ALREADY VERY EFFECTIVE!

Not defending snipers, I think they could use some tweaking as well, and I have mained a sniper in the crucible for a long time now. However, if you are losing 90% of your duels at close to mid range, you need to practice and improve your aim. There aren't that many God-tier snipers in the crucible.

I was in a game where 12 players were running NLB and sniper.

I have a solution and it's easy with a few steps! 1. Buy bombs 2. Tape them to you 3. Run right at the sniper 4. Yell these exact words in order to succeed. "BABALALALALALALALALI YALI!!!!!!!!!!!!" 5. Explode 6. Prof- *Sniped*

I e said it before you should descope on a sniper when your health hits red

Long ass post about what to do with snipers. This wouldn't exist in a vacuum and would accompany shotgun sidearm and fusion changes as they still need work. Here's what I think of sniping styles: 1. Hardscopers looking down pretty much designated lanes picking off heads or cleaning up ally kills from far away. Completely fine. It's literally what snipers are designed to do. It makes games incredibly boring when it becomes twelve players playing sniper peekaboo on maps like bannerfall but that's a map design problem as sniper lanes shouldn't be the only way though a map. 2. Any iteration of "I'm in a pinch let me swap to/from my sniper" Stupid. Body shotting then swapping to a primary to finish them off as a reliable way to get kills should be an act of desperation not a viable strategy to engage every mid/close range encounter. Snipers are long range headshot weapons and you should be punished for missing. Conversely getting into a gunfight, shooting your target once with a primary and being able to swap ads and shoot in the leg and win should be a miracle of precision and luck like getting a noscope. [b]Nerfs[/b] Snipers should get the equip time/handling nerf that shotguns got. Snapshot should either be limited to the lowest impact snipers or removed entirely from snipers. Performing actions like jumping/sliding/running/or swapping weapons should give a bigger moment of sway in more of a left/right direction when scoping in. Or you literally buff the ttk of all primary weapons. Honestly I'd take either. The result is that you need to take care to keep track of your radar because getting ambushed is actually something scary. If you are getting killed because you are trying to swap weapons and get body shots it means you should 1. Actually get the headshot or 2. Back up to a real sniper distance. [b]buffs[/b] Here's some sniper buffs I'd like to see to offset the harshness. 1. Change perfectionist to every precision kill returns a bullet to the mag in return for lowering your mag by a small number of bullets. Doesn't matter for pve because it doesn't melt bosses. Makes a really fun risk reward that actually does something in pvp. 2. Make unflinching do a little more. Also make high caliber rounds do a little more. If HCR hits someone with unflinching it negates each other. 3. Fuse Armor Piercing Rounds and Skip Rounds together as they both really suck individually. Bask in the youtube videos of rare skip multikills. 4. Lower the magnification of the stupidly high magnification scopes. No one uses them. No one. If everyone is going to use ambush/slr/slh then you may as well just make everything that magnification. It's not like there are any long range pvp maps anymore or there's any distance that extreme in pve. I don't know the aim assist stats off the top of my head but they can be adjusted if it's too much to give Hawkeye lower magnification. 5. Lengthen the invis time on p&t and decrease the zoom a little. Make hereafter do an arcbolt scan for the blinding effect and move the zoom in toggle on the RS button instead of crouch (get that halo sniping going) because exotic snipers should be worth using. Idk what to do with zen meteor because I still can't get it. 6. Y2 Icebreaker. Sorry not sorry. Bungie made better encounters than the shit show bullet sponges at launch so using IB in that way isn't necessary anymore. Or just make it act like sniper invective. I may add more buffs I just gotta think about them. Really anything that will reward precision and discourage current close/medium range tactics. I wanna see what a guerilla fighter buff would look like.

I can tell when snipers play... The timer expires.

They need more flinch, and not just vertical flinch it needs to go horizontal as well so it's not just knocking a body shot in to a headshot. That's about it really, just in instances I'm shooting someone with high caliber rounds on my pulse rifle or I've got 3 rounds from a scout rifle in their head they shouldn't be able to hit me in the head, not as much as it happens anyway