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Sniper in Solo Queue


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Hi There.

 

 

Been playing Sniper for a couple of weeks now, seem to perform well in Warzones and also in team ranked with tank and tank+healer games.

 

Same for Solo Ranked when we have a healer or a Tank.

 

Just had a few 4 dps games,, against some pretty decent players and basically got globalled. Not literally but I died pretty fast.

I tried to cycle through my cool downs and kite but still riperino.

 

Other than the ever so common "l2p noobs" or "Stop queueing". Anyone got any good advice for surviving in 4 dps ranked matches.

 

Especially against good players it seems I don't have an 'oh ****' button compared to say my merc or Mara's with stealth and undying.

 

I'm playing Engi by the way.

Edited by jimalexblack
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  • 2 weeks later...

this is really difficult to do in a forum post as it's really a combination of several little things and practice with 4 dps matchups, which really are a completely different animal from anything else you'll experience in pvp but I will do my best without writing a novel. just so you know I at least vaguely know what I'm doing, my sniper in solo ranked this season has 126 wins and 49 losses which comes to 2100 rating

 

before anything even happens you need to consider how likely it is their team will go 100% all out on you. this is based on experience, team comps, and even the map a little bit. if they might conceivably heavily focus you it's paramount to not extend out too far and take a position, preferably near your spawn thus forcing the other team to spend as much time and effort as possible to ever engage you in the first place. how far back you hang should be based on your best guess about how likely they are to focus you. placing yourself in a spot to force ranged to get very close to you and/or get really good knockbacks on any melee is also extremely useful and can extend your life enormously (this is heavily map dependent). also, if you know you're being hard focused encourage your team to push up and use their own mezzes, roots, and knockbacks to make the other team work to start attacking you

 

use of evasion is particularly huge. for example, a decent sniper might mindlessly press evasion when he sees some mercs opening on him, catching their blazing bolts and opening tracer missle. where as a top tier sniper might allow their ballistic dampers and shield probe to eat the opening damage and then pop evasion to catch the 30K auto crit heatseekers that are triggered by that opening blazing bolts and perhaps the railshot coming soon after as well. Other classes though may have heavy burst right from the get go so it may be better to get evasion up early. My point is that how you're going to use evasion is something that should take some forethought, but mostly a lot of practice.

 

if you're being 3 or 4 man zerged, strongly consider putting the vast majority of your effort into dying as slowly as possible. I've had genuinely "good" rounds where I did an otherwise bad amount of damage like 50K but heavily contributed to the round win by soaking up so much time and effort from the other team, mainly by just running away. sniper, and marksman in particular, actually have a lot of mobility in covered escape, speed boosts while entrench is active, and the counter measures speed boost (and a reset for all of these). I don't run the counter measures speed boost because I tend not to be focused and I dislike PB giving people resolve but it's a really strong utility if you have issues with surviving. The enormous caveat to running away, of course, is that it leaves you open to hard stuns if you aren't already full resolved. When to make a break for it is something you'll learn with practice, and there's various tricks to increasing your odds of pulling it off like running away just after using cover pulse because it roots for so long or getting your adrenal up before you run in case you do end up hardstunned.

 

some less generic, more specific miscellaneous stuff: make sure to have ballistic dampers, seek cover, probably reestablish range, pillbox sniper, and tactical retreat among others. defensive safeguards is hugely nerfed so I don't run it in regs or group ranked but I think it's probably still the best option for your last point for solo ranked, the healing is better than nothing and the extra damage reduction can be pretty strong in the right circumstances.

 

don't be afraid to use cooldowns like diversion and ballistic shield early if you get caught out - you get more mileage out of them with more targets on you, and with opening burst and relic procs as well.

 

and of course do not break anything stupid

 

the last thing I will say is that sometimes your teammates are unhelpful and the other team is stacked with predations, nets, and diversions and they cycle these on you in a way that is almost impossible to counter particularly effectively and you just get rekt. this can and does happen even to good solo ranked snipers so keep that in mind

 

I ended up writing a novel anyway and am burned out on it so here ya go

Edited by yellow_
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  • 2 weeks later...
Hi There.

 

 

Been playing Sniper for a couple of weeks now, seem to perform well in Warzones and also in team ranked with tank and tank+healer games.

 

Same for Solo Ranked when we have a healer or a Tank.

 

Just had a few 4 dps games,, against some pretty decent players and basically got globalled. Not literally but I died pretty fast.

I tried to cycle through my cool downs and kite but still riperino.

 

Other than the ever so common "l2p noobs" or "Stop queueing". Anyone got any good advice for surviving in 4 dps ranked matches.

 

Especially against good players it seems I don't have an 'oh ****' button compared to say my merc or Mara's with stealth and undying.

 

I'm playing Engi by the way.

 

I'll try to offer some advice with the caveat that I'm not an expert player. My first question would be what utilities are you using?

 

Personally, I've found the following utilities to be very helpful in solo queue:

 

SKILLFULL:

Ballistic Dampeners - The key to this utility is remembering to reset it. You get three which will disappear quickly when you're under fire but can be reset every 6 seconds. It's a good habit to get into to pop into and out of cover every so often in order to reset your stacks of dampeners.

 

Vital Regulators - This is a very good passive heal that can add a substantial amount of survival capability to your character without or without a healer, particularly given the amount of time you're going to be spending in cover

 

MASTERFUL:

Seek Cover - You want to be free to move when you're not in cover and you want to be in cover as much as possible, so minimizing the amount of time it takes you to get from cover to cover and having immunity to movement impairing while moving between covers is excellent.

 

Reestablish Range - Countermeasures serves no purpose in PvP, it's a wasted ability. This utility fixes that and turns it into another movement purge and speed boost, same line of thinking as above. Further it builds a knock back into your Penetrating Blasts that helps in several situations.

 

Evacuate - Maim and Flash Bang are your CC abilities, using them more often is good.

 

HEROIC:

Pillbox Sniper - You want Entrench up as often as possible. Not only does it protect you from control effects, it also contributes to your speed boost and movement-impairment immunity with Seek Cover utility above. Reducing the cooldown on Entrench is very good. Knocking people further back with Cover Pulse is just a plus.

 

LEGENDARY:

Tactical Retreat - A 10% heal on a 20 second cooldown that automatically puts you in cover (with Entrench built in for 3 seconds due to your built-in passives) is hands down the best legendary utility you have. The 2 second duration increase on Evasion is excellent as well.

 

Deployed Shields - This is the one major "iffy" one to me because I simply use it because I haven't found a good alternative. The 5% increase in damage reduction while in cover is nice since, as stated above, you'll be in cover a lot. The reduction in Ballistic Shield cooldown is also nice since it's one of your best, if not your best, defensive cooldowns.

 

If your utilities are correct then the general practice for surviving is pacing your cooldowns and using the right ones at the right time.

 

Cover Pulse is great, use it when you have more than one melee enemy on you or when you can gain a tactical advantage with it (like knocking an enemy off a bridge). Don't spam it too early or you'll lose a very good defensive tool.

 

Evasion should be your go to defense in most situations. Guaranteed dodge chance from most attacks combined with 75% reduction in Force and Tech attack damage is extremely good and you have the duration increase on it as well if you took Deployed Shields (as suggested above).

 

Shield Probe should be used when Evasion is NOT active, it will mitigate more damage this way and you waste it when you already dodge most attacks with Evasion.

 

Use Penetrating Blasts wisely, the knockback can be very useful, follow it up with a Leg Shot on the same person and you buy yourself some time against melee characters. You can chain this together with Penetraing Blasts => Sniper Volley => Penetrating Blasts => Leg Shot or Flash Bang (depending on whether you plan to hit the same target or not, Flash Bang will mez them for 8 seconds if you switch targets).

 

Use Maim. It's also not a bad idea to Maim someone, Snipe them, Cover Pulse to knock them back while they're still stunned (immobilizing them afterward), followed by Leg Shot.

 

Make very good use of your Imperial Tactics cooldown. It will reset all of your survival abilities and if you're cycling them correctly combined with the passive healing and your Ballistic Shields, you can survive for quite some time.

 

Lastly, use your Roll for more than just a chance to reposition yourself. You have a 100% chance to avoid all attacks while you're rolling. Use it when you see enemies preparing to hit you hard (Ambush from another Sniper or a similar ability).

 

Good luck out there, hope this helps!

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  • 10 months later...

Hey there,

I so just committed to maining my sniper in ranked for the next few seasons, and this has been extremely helpful! Thank you so much for sharing this information!

 

 

this is really difficult to do in a forum post as it's really a combination of several little things and practice with 4 dps matchups, which really are a completely different animal from anything else you'll experience in pvp but I will do my best without writing a novel. just so you know I at least vaguely know what I'm doing, my sniper in solo ranked this season has 126 wins and 49 losses which comes to 2100 rating

 

before anything even happens you need to consider how likely it is their team will go 100% all out on you. this is based on experience, team comps, and even the map a little bit. if they might conceivably heavily focus you it's paramount to not extend out too far and take a position, preferably near your spawn thus forcing the other team to spend as much time and effort as possible to ever engage you in the first place. how far back you hang should be based on your best guess about how likely they are to focus you. placing yourself in a spot to force ranged to get very close to you and/or get really good knockbacks on any melee is also extremely useful and can extend your life enormously (this is heavily map dependent). also, if you know you're being hard focused encourage your team to push up and use their own mezzes, roots, and knockbacks to make the other team work to start attacking you

 

use of evasion is particularly huge. for example, a decent sniper might mindlessly press evasion when he sees some mercs opening on him, catching their blazing bolts and opening tracer missle. where as a top tier sniper might allow their ballistic dampers and shield probe to eat the opening damage and then pop evasion to catch the 30K auto crit heatseekers that are triggered by that opening blazing bolts and perhaps the railshot coming soon after as well. Other classes though may have heavy burst right from the get go so it may be better to get evasion up early. My point is that how you're going to use evasion is something that should take some forethought, but mostly a lot of practice.

 

if you're being 3 or 4 man zerged, strongly consider putting the vast majority of your effort into dying as slowly as possible. I've had genuinely "good" rounds where I did an otherwise bad amount of damage like 50K but heavily contributed to the round win by soaking up so much time and effort from the other team, mainly by just running away. sniper, and marksman in particular, actually have a lot of mobility in covered escape, speed boosts while entrench is active, and the counter measures speed boost (and a reset for all of these). I don't run the counter measures speed boost because I tend not to be focused and I dislike PB giving people resolve but it's a really strong utility if you have issues with surviving. The enormous caveat to running away, of course, is that it leaves you open to hard stuns if you aren't already full resolved. When to make a break for it is something you'll learn with practice, and there's various tricks to increasing your odds of pulling it off like running away just after using cover pulse because it roots for so long or getting your adrenal up before you run in case you do end up hardstunned.

 

some less generic, more specific miscellaneous stuff: make sure to have ballistic dampers, seek cover, probably reestablish range, pillbox sniper, and tactical retreat among others. defensive safeguards is hugely nerfed so I don't run it in regs or group ranked but I think it's probably still the best option for your last point for solo ranked, the healing is better than nothing and the extra damage reduction can be pretty strong in the right circumstances.

 

don't be afraid to use cooldowns like diversion and ballistic shield early if you get caught out - you get more mileage out of them with more targets on you, and with opening burst and relic procs as well.

 

and of course do not break anything stupid

 

the last thing I will say is that sometimes your teammates are unhelpful and the other team is stacked with predations, nets, and diversions and they cycle these on you in a way that is almost impossible to counter particularly effectively and you just get rekt. this can and does happen even to good solo ranked snipers so keep that in mind

 

I ended up writing a novel anyway and am burned out on it so here ya go

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