there seems to be a lot of people who still seem confused when it comes to quality of Sniper Rifles. for better clarification i am only going to consider guns that have (or CAN have) 331 attack, simply because 331>300 ;) for the record - i have Ice Breaker, Patience and Time as well as Black Hammer (BH needs 2 more damage upgrades tho) in order of quality: 1. Patience and Time 2. Black Hammer 3. Ice Breaker 4. ANY RANDOM Legendary based on the perks it's been rolled with ...sorry, but Legendary sniper rifles available at Vendors won't make the cut, the perks are not that great, however as long as you don't have ANY of the above 4, even one of these will do now, you must think i have gone mad, but think about it for a while, what would you want from your sniper rifle? me, i want ACCURACY (well, possibly even range, but i never found that to be an issue with Sniper rifles in this game IceBreaker - this thing kicks like a dying horse (or a Rodeo one), trying to land at least two consecutive headshots with this rifle is therefore rather difficult which has moved this to 3rd place (and im telling you that if it wasn't for the ammo regen this would hardly qualify for an Exotic) Black Hammer - this one's got a lot less kick when fired, although the problem here is low mag size, 3 could possibly be enough, however there would have to be a lot more punch to beat our BEST sniper rifle in Destiny... Patience & Time - next to no recoil, 6 rounds in a magazine, landing consecutive headshots alomst 100% of the time Damage-wise these 3 are pretty close to one another, and i know that ammo regen on IB and 'back-to-mag' on BH are great, if,....IF...and thats the biggest problem - both these guns are GREAT, however rather situational P&T on the other hand works ALL the time, EVERY time - i can guarantee you that by the time you get those 6 shots ON TARGET with the IB, i would have already fired my first mag, reloaded and most likely emptied the second one as well -> twice as many shots Plus, it unique perk does not require any further conditions to be met (you can ADS anytime), and it looks best EDIT_1: i am not saying other sniper rifles are bad, and i obviously haven't tested them all EDIT_2: this post is mainly for all those recklessly chasing Ice Breaker while it is obviously nowhere near being The Sniper Rifle of Destiny ;) look at the comments below, no one seems to be arguing about me not placing IB on top ;) EDIT_3: you have asked for it - below is the info from Destiny Gun Data, although most likely for 300 weapons, so scale ICEBREAKER: dmg/shot: 1,284 DPS: 9,630 ADJUSTED DPS: 1,148 Patience and Time: dmg/shot: 1,033 DPS: 9,471 ADJUSTED DPS: 7,306 *ADJUSTED = Damage per second adjusted for reload time, and per this P&T does almost 7x more damage EDIT_4: this post is PvE oriented EDIT_5: i stand CORRECTED - my bad for missing out Efrideet's Spear, i would say its probably better than IB though, thus also better than BH as ES doesn't seem situational ;)