You know why shotguns were nerfed into the ground? Because they were effective at ranges that no one expected them to be, the result is that they were vastly over used. You know why sniper rifles are now vastly over used? Because they are effective at ranges no one expects them to be (IE medium, and occasionally close range.) Bungie's solution with shotguns was to make them utterly useless outside of their expected range. So what is the solution with snipers? You guessed it! Make them useless outside of their expected range. How do you do that? Simple! One word: descope. If you take damage while looking down the scope, you unscope. The trick to balancing shooters, or any other game, is meeting people's expectations. Any inveterate player of games expects shotguns to work mainly in close quarters, and snipers to preform optimally at long distances. Its when these expectations are NOT met that people become whiney and cry nerf. Because lets face it, [i]nobody[/i] expects a shotgun to one shot you at 10 meters, because generally thats not how shotguns work in videogames. Conversely, nobody expects a sniper rifle to be effective at 15 meters, because once again, other games don't really do that. They are called [i]SPECIAL[/i] weapons for a reason, they are to be used in situations where your primary weapon does not cut it, IE extreme long or extreme close range. Its when these weapons start to overlap with primary weapons that people start begging for nerfs.