i think the problem could be held by nerfing sniper max life to 100, to be more counterable, nerfing the quick scoup time to don´t be so fast, and letting him have his old health back using the DDS to get back to 125, he will be more vunerable to snipers and spy w diamond back or ambassador and can make a trade if the sniper is next to a nest(cof cof turbine), if he is using DDS he can be stabed and die or another secondary,get hs w amby and die (tragic life of a spy), what do you guys think?
@@matheusmartinhogalvani1716 Health nerfs are massive changes, I think simple changes like making the Sniper more noticable so certain counterplay or flanking is allowed is good enough. And although I'm not a big fan of it, having Sniper deal damage ramp-up on shots could also be a solution to quickscopes, a close range headshot could deal theoretically 100 damage instead of 150. This isn't enough to kill most classes, still rewards the Sniper and allows the enemy to actually react and respond to being quickscopped afterwards. Essentially giving themselves an additional second to take out the Sniper or retreat.
Yes, I was playing against a Razorback, I pull out my gun to shoot he random crits when he’s at 5 hp. THIS HAPPENS AGAIN BUT HES AT 4hp. I FUCKING HATE MY LIFE
How to counter spy: turn around, spycheck teammates, listen for decloaking, and don’t engage in melee. How to counter sniper: don’t let him see you or you instantly die
It's also infuriating cause in MVM there are voice lines for classes saying when there are sniper bots, they could've made it a callout in normal pubs but nah
@@Green_2142Such a hard choice between being able to call out a sniper to teammates or being able to beg the f2p scout in pass time to pass the ball instead of running directly into a sentry...
As someone that once mained sniper, he's... got issues. Quickscoping is hard... until you practice it. Seriously, like after a week of just standard play sessions, forcing myself to never charge, use a secondary or a melee... and I was hitting more close range shots by the time next week than I was missing. It's not difficult. Sniper really has a very limited skillset outside of aim. Master quickscoping and even positioning (his second most important skill) just comes down to splash damage and sightlines. My biggest issue... Fighting him isn't really a fight. Either his aim is good and you're dead, or he misses his shot and he's dead. There's no fight, no decision making, not techniques, no complexity. Soldiers might bomb, take highground, disengage, airshot, bounce, direct, use walls and ceilings. Even spies might trickstab or use mindgames with their cloak. Sniper is just: a) He's dead. b) You're dead. This makes getting killed by sniper an annoyance, and killing snipers a chore.
In a game where 9/10 loadouts dont do shit for long range, even if his aiming is bad, he will still get you unless you just decide to give up and go another way. Or you know you could just try and go though his entire team, hope he doesnt kill you during that, and only then you to get behind him, only to get a jar of piss in the face and then one shot.
The very concept of sniper doesnt belong in a close quarters mobility game like tf2. He has so many little nerfs and such an awful skill floor, but its somehow not enough to make him fun to fight against. Snipers just stand 5 miles away, being protected by their team and 5 sentries while they go on a godlike killstreak with no risk whatsoever. Its safe to say valve didnt think that people would play sniper for a thousand hours when designing him.
The problem with sniper (in my opinion) is they keep giving him weapons that completely null all of his counters. Spy’s, pyro flares, chip damage. Heck, at one point snipers were immune to other snipers
@@vikavolt11 yeah because it feels like you're killing a fucking heavy (it grants 50% fire resistance, making his effective health a whopping 250) like wtf im sorry, it takes less to m1 soldier to death than sniper, wtf?
Idk why but one of my favorite things of playing demoknight is harassing snipers by trimping into them and forcing them into really uncomfortable melee fights
Every time theres a video about snipers its like "just flank em" "use the flank routes". Dude, what about dust bowl, thats just a straight line. Not all maps have a convinient passageway that puts you right behind wherever the sniper is. Plus if there were something like that the sniper would just move. Im glad this video didnt just talk about using a flank route, and actually picked apart why sniper is irritating.
Like a wise uncle once said, “there is a huge imbalance of effort here”. To kill a sniper with jarate equipped, you must: 1. Avoid the sniper’s sightlines enough to close the distance between you and him 2. Be observant enough to notice that the sniper has jarate equipped and plan to combat it (not even shown on the character model unlike other secondaries) 3. Be threatening enough to make the sniper miss his shots at close range, forcing him to pull out his jarate 4. Space back out of the jarate’s effective range to bait the sniper into using it or missing 5. Approach the sniper again from mid-range and hope he doesn’t pull a quick scope from out of his ass Meanwhile, the sniper has to: 1. Press their “2” key 2. Aim a projectile with splash radius 3. Left click 4. Press their “3” key 5. Left click
Fighting a good sniper is like that...but most are not that. Fighting a bad or even average sniper player is not that hard...the things that get in the way are not the sniper but the other classes between you and him. Once those are gone...sniper is super vulnerable.
@@nickchavez720 Just because most aren't like that doesn't mean much. All it takes is for 1 good sniper to basically ruin a normal match of tf2. An amazing soldier isn't anywhere nearly as scary and objectively dominating/denying class as sniper... and they're more common than you think. Combine the average skill level/fortitude/awareness of your teammates and there's not much you can do to help them against a good sniper.
0:51 a long range class in a game where most combat takes place at mid to close range and most ranged weapons have damage falloff and random spread that limits their effectiveness past mid range is most certainly flawed.
i mean, a lot of class based games have mechanics like that while also having long range class(es). most of them solve it by having the weaknesses he mentions hear, actually struggling with close range combat and being more vulnerable to harassment
Yeah the revise fall off makes it a decent combat weapon The support element is more powerful but that’s more an issue with how the syringe guns work and the crossbow just exploits them to be a near universal pick
You forgot to mention when the sniper isn’t good on your team, which is also frustrating because they might as well be afk because they either hit nothing at all or get destroyed by the other single sniper even tho you have 5 of them, it is infuriating even when you want to use sniper to counter a single mofo but you feel bad because there are already 5 of them, I hate this so badly
@@olea675 I know, but it can’t find servers like this for Asia, so I just play casual valve servers, thankfully there isn’t that much bot here in comparison to other servers, but random crits and class stacking can be a pain in the rear. Tho I don’t complain much since I much rather die to a random crit or get auto balanced than being kick by 11 bots on my team every match
I hate that in pubs people seem to have a hive mind and switch to sniper as soon as they get headshotted once, immediately destroying their own team comp
Basically the same balance problem happened in Battlefield franchise: jet pilots, the only counters to them are better jet pilots. If your team has a worse jet pilot be prepared to have all your vehicles and infantry groups get bombed to shit consistently. In both cases jet pilots and snipers classes have a very high skill ceiling, but when the skill reaches certain threshold it breaks the game. balance.
@@jakman8515 Nah, Spy has to get up close & personal to get his instant kill while Sniper can chill on the other end of the map safe from everyone except another sniper. A bit a false equivalence IMO
So a quick summary,sniper is hated because he’s: -Hard to spot -Super strong in long range -Also super strong in mid-close range -Super punishing for both the sniper and the sniped-er -Hard to close up the distance in the first place -No counters besides out sniping him -Has weapons that specifically counter some classes
For me. Unless you have a Spy ( with Stock or Diamondback If the Sniper goes Razorback ) or a really discrete Pyro, Sniper is annoying. Without a Pybro, Sniper even with Jarate isn't really going to survive if: A. A Spy gets the backstab ( all thing considered the Spy gets it, since without teammates Sniper is a prime target for Spies other then Engineer's ) or a Trickstab ( again most spies by now should know how to Trickstab, it's essential to spy as is Rocket and Sticky Jumping is to the Soldier and Demoman ). B. A Pyro, especially with Phlog available and he conveniently runs into a lone Sniper. C. A better Sniper really. Better if the Sniper has Huntsman and is at point blank range.
@@eagleye2893 Spy can only use the ambit/diamondback because the revolver requires 3 shots to kill,and there's enough time for the sniper to react to the first shot and quickscope the spy(As seen in lazy purple's sniper vid),and with if the sniper runs the razorback you're really kinda fucked as you can only use your gun and there's most likely gonna be a sentry around the sniper. Also hoping a phlog pyro is gonna reach your sniper is really not a great tactic since I doubt he's gonna even get past your soldier/heavy/demo/sentry if they are semi-competent
@@Holenpense even still, depending on the map, a sentry next to a sniper will be a bad idea, especially of the sniper is holding up in an otherwise wide open chokepoint. Soldiers and Demos would dominate the sentry if this happens. And even then the Spy can always just duck the quickscope. In my Experience no sniper I tried to gun down tried to quickscope. And even then they only kill me with Kukri random crits. But most of the time I either gun them down, Trickstab them due to the janky hit reg, or the friendly Sniper headshots them. This is especially true in 2fort. But nowadays I just cloak since the Sniper in 2fort usually has other Snipers because, you know 2fort.
I feel like there’s almost no middle ground for sniper A: you’re me and you hit almost nothing B: you’re pretty much everyone else and can hit literally anything Although I don’t play much sniper so take this with a grain of salt
It’s more of a day thing really, I only have 200 hours as him so I’m not super good at him but I’m at least somewhat confidant. Some days i do awesome and hit most of my shots, some days I fucking suck and switch off to medic or someone else. Consistently good snipers are scary, I’m not one of them but I’m also not consistently shit. It’s a bit of a spectrum but some days I’m okay, some days I’m the top scorer (rare for reasons), and some days I can’t hit the broad side of a barn. But that’s for me, idk about other snipers.
@@TKmeh I have the same thing but with spy, sometimes I win the entire match for my team by backstabbing everyone and sometimes I get killed and dominated by everyone because hitbox ignored that I was backstabing enemy
Nah, there's a decent amount of snipers who can headshot heavies and hardscoping snipers and body shot people with the machina consistently. But they aren't quickscoping gods.
@@SpaceGuyOnline for the solider he easily hated (by me) for his upward rocket knock back that stun locks you in the air for the simple act of trying to counter his bs splash damage by jumping, because of splash damage for free on the rocket launcher and the upwards knock-back I think the soldier’s primary is less fun to fight against (and takes less skill to effectively use) than the demoman’s primary (edit for clarification on the “splash damage for free” part. I said that because demoman’s grenade launcher does not have projectiles that explode instantly unless gets a direct hit with them. Now that I’m reading this comment I think i should not have brought up the “splash damage for free” thing to begin with because that has nothing to do with my hot take on soldier’s primary weapons fundamental mechanics on knock back)
@BradynLee09 actually for demoman i have one thing (stickyspam hate incoming) the stickylauncher: >8 explosives in one clip >over 300 damage from one explosive >i will turn 184 years old by the time the stickylauncher fully reloaded (if you get what i mean, but eh it is only a complaint when i have literally nothing else to do) >very short arm time that can be negated (while stickyspamming) by being like ten meter away in other words, i believe the stickylauncher works very good as a trap layer but too good as a stickyspamming tool, thats why i like the quickiebomb launcher, because 4 explosives are more fair than 8 when i want to use it offensively (also reduced charge time pog)
He does have a design flaw. That's the entire reason he's a problem. He's incredibly oppressive and there is literally no counter except for another sniper. Well, reliably anyway. Combat in TF2 takes place at close to mid range. Any kind of high damage (instakill really in most cases) long range hitscan is broken. If I even recall, it was a debated last-minute decision by the devs to even add the Sniper, so that should say something. Map design has a lot to do with his power though. Also according to the Developers, if they HAD to remove a class from TF2, they unanimously all agreed that it would be Sniper. So let that sink in.
Not arguing that he doesn't have a design flaw, however I doubt on the "debated last-minute decision" to add the Sniper. The sniper class was the 2nd class to be made by Robin Walker way back in the quake mod, after Robin got hired by Valve to make Team Fortress Classic(Also later Team Fortress 2), the Sniper class was in that game as well. Now with the development of TF2 as it was a shaky start, but with the trailers when been shown the sniper class was in during the development of Brotherhood of Arms. After that project was scrapped, Team Fortress Invasion started to get developed. While the sniper rifle wasn't in the game, the sniper class was in the game that weirdly could go invisible. Now with modern TF2, in the developer commentary of gravel pit it was revealed that Sniper was a hard class for them to balance, but no mention of not wanting it in the game. Surprisingly I found an interview of Robin Walker that was from Rock Paper Shotgun in 2007, where Robin talked about phases that the development team went through with playtesting. "One of the things that we’re happiest about is that TF is more about versatility. It’s been really fun watching the online communities go through a micro version of the passage we’ve all gone through here. It’s like, “Oh, they’re all at the Heavy/Medic phase! They’re soon going to get to the, Holy crap, Snipers kick the crap out of that phase!” They’re saying, “This is too powerful,” and we’re thinking, “Well next week you’re going to find that this destroys that.” It’s really fun to see." -Robin Walker Its safe to say that the phase "Well next week you’re going to find that this destroys that." and the fact the sniper archetype was in 5 games(2 scrapped projects) would imply that they felt that Sniper wasn't a "debated last-minute decision".
Buff spy, please. I'm tired of getting one-shot every time a sniper hears me from a mile away. I was playing in trade plaza today and a sniper could hear my decloacks from across the map. I eventually figured out he was cheating in some way and started spamming the shit out of my invis watch to annoy him.
@@ShockyWolf By last minute decision, I meant more along the lines of "is sniper really a good idea?". Not that they threw a class together right before the release. I think he was one of the first 4 foundational characters they had. Pretty simple archtype. That's interesting info though. I can sort of excuse how they balanced TF2 (not just sniper, but random crits, and other odd stuff). it was mid-to-late 2000s, they were subject to trends of the time, the philosophies and thinking, and of course the nature of having to tread new ground. So it's easy to look back in hindsight.
sooo on good maps soldier is a counter to sniper. You bomb him, pop him up, and direct him. On bad maps with improper sightlines sniper has no counters outside of 1million iq spies and other snipers.
This video was done incredibly well. It touched on all my problems with the Sniper, and more. Sniper shouldn't be effective at close range (Cuntsma- Huntsman excluded.) but he has a lot of options available to be so. But one thing I'll touch on is Razorback. Yes like you said, you can still shoot the Sniper. But do you have enough time to do that when they are backed up by their entire team and near a nest? "Take down the nest and pick off other targets first" also doesn't work since both of those will make noises, which alarms the Sniper and therefore most likely makes him approach you with their melee (or quickscope), squeezing you even more. Razorback is just a free upperhand for Sniper against his "supposed counter" if they have a semi competent team.
Would argue that Jarate and being aware of Spies is just a better solution to Spies. Works for all enemies, Spy can't cloak, doesn't require you to return to spawn to recharge it. Only bonus it has is protection from trickstabs or shit detection.
@@SpaceGuyOnline Jarate is an active weapon so it requires at least *some* time to do something. Also since it is not a passive, Spy still has opportunities to go for a stab. Meanwhile, Razorback is passive so Spy has no opportunites for a stab, leaving only his revolver to kill which puts him in danger since he'll lose his disguise and make sounds.
@@SpaceGuyOnline I agree because play alot of spy and extremely observant snipers who actually look around and hear cloaks from a room away are unbackstabbable. You can try to kill him with your revolver but he can simply quickscope you if he is good. If you want to get closer for the damage falloff to be less and be able to kill him quicker he can just get a random crit or jarate bushwacka you.
I join a server I pick pyro Dom an demo He switched to sniper Got me Switched back I use the scotch shot He gets Dom again Goes sniper Repeat until rage quit
as a sniper main one thing i never understood was why does he have 25 shots? i think making the sniper have like 10 shots is a good change because itll force them to actually move and get more ammo from time to time, giving the enemy team a chance to move in
My guess is no scoping, so basically sniper has enough ammo when he needs to defend himself at close range and also to give him more chances when he miss shots too
The best nerf snipe can get tbh is bodyshots because currently you just use the piss rifle and full charge bodyshot and still deal more damage than going for headshots normally. Fully charged bodyshots need nerfed.
Swap Huntsmans and Sniper rifles ammo capacity, since the huntsman requires him to actually go into the battlements, but sniper just chills back there in the background
I had a thought for something about this, why not just add a very short "reverse damage fall off" for the sniper rifle so a sniper can still headshot at long to mid range, but cannot quick scope you literally point blank.
0:42 the problem with sniper skill ceiling is the absence of one. I think cheaters demonstrated that pretty well. Add to that how extremely unfun is getting oneshotted from 100 to 0 half the map away- and you see the problem.
There are only two classes that instakill. Spy and sniper, yes the soldier has the direct hit, but that is inconsistent instakilling. So if you want to pick the medic your spy must weave through the entire front line and then get within melee range of the second most paranoid class in the game (demo-med main here and yes heavy is more paranoid). Sniper has to get an angle on the med, which granted is not always easy if he is smart and uses cover. However, he has to advance and one of the best tricks to effective ubers is to wait till you or your pocket are in danger before popping uber. However, I often find myself having to pop a good 3 sec early just in case the enemy sniper is on his game. Like you said quite well sniper is mostly balanced, but fundamentally flawed in tf2. Almost all weapons encourage you to get closer to be more effective (except demo). Making most encounters mid to close range. Then there is sniper out of everyone's effective range. Even as an awful sniper I enjoy a sniper v sniper deathmatch. However most interactions with him aren't a match there a question of your awareness and his aim. Sniper v engineer for example is me pressing every button on my keyboard as he tries to click my head. Contrast this with a demo and heavy carefully maneuvering to bring out there strong suits. The only "unwinnable/never fun matchups I can think of is scout and pyro vs sentry. Lastly since close range weapons were already covered I have to express my frustration on snipers crits with melee. You finally got to the sniper without getting quickscoped and he pulls out his melee and boom try again. Weak at close range! Honestly medics have the same problem, but they can't quickscope and staying out of melee range is an option. For instance: I was playing some attack defense (med) and I come upon two pyros trying to flare the other at mid range. Obviously my teamate was new to the game so I run in dodging flares, and ubersaw the enemy with a crit. Then turn around and tell the pyro, That is how it is done, do you understand now?" Funny stories aside a medic shouldn't be able to do that. Also I'm done ranting, thx for reading.
Slight correction: there are only four “pick” classes, Sniper, Spy, Trolldier, and Caber Knight. Each one are for say “f**k this guy in particular,” which usually ends up being the enemy medic nine times outta ten. Each one can kill in one hit in a majority of cases. Spy requires getting behind enemy lines, deceiving the enemy team, and asks you to get within an enemy’s melee range to kill them instantly, tons of risk and skill involved. He’s widely considered the weakest class for many reasons. Troldier, well, you’re a flying idiot with a shovel. Even being a meme class, it requires tons of knowledge about rocket jumping and swing timing, and you’ll be left using just melee or running away. Caber Knight, well, you a running idiot with a grenade. Wait a minute... anyway, you generally have to be good at playing normal Demo Knight, the Caber hardly works half of the time, it’s useless after it’s first swing, but when it does work it kills the entire enemy team if they’re grouped up. It’s basically pure chance and not at all viable unless you’re Solar Light. All three of these pick classes are restricted to melee, and frankly none of them are very good. Even a great spy will be caught out due to the habit of spy checking and just how predictable their tool set is. All of them put you at risk, asking you to go into the front lines with nothing but a melee weapon. And then there’s sniper, the infinite range hit scan class that kills in one shot. Positioning is easy, it’s hardly a skill you have to learn, and you can often sit in one spot racking up kills for basically the entire match. Aiming is the only real skill sniper uses, but even with just a week of practice it becomes fairly trivial, you can usually preemptively aim where you know an enemy is likely to pop up from. Now that is a skill that most other classes uses, like when Heavy pre-revs before turning a corner. The difference is that Sniper can delete any other class both defensively and offensively. Even if you think you’ve cornered him, he’ll just throw piss on you and one shot you with his melee, even his default melee has an insane crit rate, a problem among melees as a whole really.
It's interesting, I've always found bodyshots to be the least infuriating part of playing against a sniper. I'm like, "okay, he spent 3 seconds zoomed in which he was vulnerable to spies and generally tunnel visioned so he could only be covering a limited area, and maybe i even could have found the sniper dot, fair enough." Basically the same sort of thing as walking into a sticky trap
Great video! I like how you structure your points and the the sfm or Gmod renders you make for your examples are really nice. Very entertaining. It's nice to hear from a Sniper player who doesn't have their head up their ass and thinks that just because they can aim well, they're the best player in the game and any criticism directed at them is moot.
I disagree, spy does more as do sticky traps and yes you can usually see stickies but not all the time. Its more about effort required to produce that much dmg.
@@timothyjacksondrake4454 i disagree to you disagreeing as spy requires a lot more than 0.2 seconds to kill someone. Sticky tracks are another thing, but like, it's a massive chunk of damage enough to kill 5/9 classes and almost kill almost all the other classes.
@@timothyjacksondrake4454 In a game with a general rule of thumb of high stakes and high rewards, the sniper just doesn't work that well when a player has a high skill level with this class for the opposing team the "fun factor" is ruined But when a spy is very good and kills you it is more your fault since you must pay attention it is not always possible since sometimes you simply cannot turn around or you die but it is part of the grace of fighting this class apart the spy is considered one of the weaker classes because it does not work in all scenarios
I don't care he has infinite range because his skill ceiling is so f*cking high with him, my problem with him is: After who knows how long I've managed to stay alive and fight with multiple enemies, I get killed by a treat I didn’t even know it was there because there is no notable indication (the dot is very easy to miss) and the moment I think I've got him because I finally got close to him, I get killed to 1 or 2 quickscopes depending who I wanted to play...
I have this exact problem too With a bit of an extra, he has too much ammo capacity and the fire rate is a bit too fast for long range, which makes missing not much of a problem and not really needing to change position to resupply or avoid getting spotted I don't think quickscopes need a significant nerf though, a minor nerf to them will be fine to me
the classic is sniper's best primary, 1. you can't quick-scope, 2. it gibs enemies. You literally can't counter it either, 'cause he can retain his charge while not scoped in.
I'll say this. My point of contention with sniper doesn't really lie with quickscopes and/or how oppressive he is (that tends to be more of a map problem than anything, with payload maps being the prime offender), but rather with his unlocks and base bodyshot damage. There's these 2 guys that go by Beletrix and King with their own balance mod that aims to balance the game around both casual, comp, and MVM play, with various comp players providing feedback (like degen, a HL pyro player). Their changes to sniper go as follows: -Reduce fully charged bodyshot damage to 140 -Trying to nerf jarate by making the recharges long as fuck -Make the Darwins not so much of a fuck you to pyros -Make the cozy camper less powerful -Most of his other unlocks are undergoing modifications, save for the bushwhaka. These are my ideal changes, as consistently getting quickscopes is hard as fuck, and thus should be rewarded. The way I see it, the mod is trying to take the pressure off meds (instead of 150 bodyshots its now 140) and reduce how blatantly overpowered jarate is, which are really his 2 largest problems. Unfortunately, they're using a plugin that doesn't allow for complete weapon overhauls, so their options for balancing are limited. Anyways, I'll provide my take on the JarateWhaka combo. It's just a mediocre combo. There's a reason most high level players don't run the Bushwhaka, and that's because that damage vulnerability is crippling. Going from needing 3 shots to die down to just 2 is a big deal, and most spies who encounter a jaratewhaka sniper will just backpedal and shoot, easily killing the sniper due to the damage vuln. As such, I believe that it's not really OP, just really fucking annoying when he does land a crit. It's more that the jarate is the issue than the bushwhaka.
@@DankDimensionMemes Sniper isn't OP, being annoying to play against isn't overpowered. A div 1 demoman in casual is as destructive as a div 1 sniper but the sniper is just less fun to play against
Was recently in a 2fort match with a snipwr named blackjack, literally unkillable, if he saw you you were instantly headshoted, he used the classic at one point, it took an uber charged pyro to kill him after he killed like 10 people camping at our sewer entrance, the man was literally a god, you could not do a thing, at all, at one point i got him to 30 hp befor he headshot me, i considered that win, i think the only time he died was from the uber pyro.
Without those options to deal with a sniper, the last resort is The vaccinator, it's not only about someone actually wanting to play medic, but also knowing how to use it, if the requirements are met is really effective, the flat resisteance without popping bubble makes the medic able to survive a quickscope headshot, taking 140 instead of 150, and bubbles make headshots and crits overall useless.
@@KellerTheDominatorthe sniper hears the sentry being sapped and/or the engi saying the voice line, turns around whips out his melee and random crits the spy or quick scopes him
I do think the issue with Sniper is mostly a map issue, though there are some issues with the Sniper. As a Scout main, the Jarate Bushwaka combo hasn't ever been much of an issue recently because I've become better at avoiding a sniper B-Lining straight for me, though I do think it's bullshit for every other class.
@ You see the problem isn’t that there aren’t like 5000 pro snipers the problem is those 100 pro snipers can shut down entire teams or at least half and force the enemies to expend all there resources just to kill him. The problem isn’t that there are too many pro snipers the problem I that when a pro sniper is in the game you basically just drop dead,like for a pro demo or soldier you still have a fighting chance most of the time if your say a pretty solid player, but when it comes to sniper it’s entirely based on if the sniper knows how to track and headshot not if your good at avoiding air shots minimizing splash damage,your best bet is spam keys and pray.
@@saltynope4819 you also forgot that sniper's "counter" might be a glitch (using your character model's arms to block the view of your head by looking in a weird direction)
• anyone with decent aim can go god mode with him • has weapons that render specific classes useless • can only be countered by another sniper • slows the entire game down Yeah, *seems balanced*
I disagree > Sniper is rendered useless if soldiers, pyros, and other snipers because of projectiles which could hit them. > Once sniper is detected he is practicing under complete kos by scouts,spies, soldiers and demoman being classes that can easily close the gap on him and overpower him entirely. > Sniper has only fee playstyle making him very less versatile then he already is. > Only a supports and one offensive class can be one headshot killed by sniper, most of time once a sniper headshots a soldier hes instantly tracked and killed. > Sniper is practically dead once someone is in close range to him being overpowered by every single class except medic. > He lacks the health pool and mobility to have a substantial change on the frontlines being almost entirely dependent being in the back or in the group of the team. Sniper is a glass canon that relies on long range, Think of him like a zoner in fighting games.
@@presidentofthegalaxy784 ive got well over 700 hours on sniper and i gotta disagree with you. N.1 - the only time sniper is useless against pyro, soldier, spy, demo and scout is in competitive, in casual those classes rarely can get close to you without dying to your team (considering sniper sticks to his team or near it), with the only exception being spy. Soldier and demo have to either flank and due to their already slow walk speed theyre usually spotted by teammates, or rocket/sticky jumping which already lower their health significantlly so theyre still sacrificing themselves for a *chance* at killing him, not a 100% kill chance. Meanwhile a sniper doesnt risk anything when killing other classes as he is usually protected, theres a reason good snipers usually top score or almost top score in highlander and casual matches. N.2 - "only supports and 1 offensive class can be one headshot killed" again, just no, being able to one shot a medic can even stop a full on push, killing a sniper in one shot also grants his team way more freedom in positioning themselves as they wouldnt need to fear having their head blown off, and sniper can legit just, scope 3 4 seconds longer and one shot a pyro, demo a n d a soldier with no downsides. If he headshots a soldier he isnt "instantly tracked and killed" if anything he either follows up with a bodyshot and kills the soldier o r the soldier has to retreat for health. N.3 - "he lacks health and mobility to have substantial change on the frontlines" first of all what? A good sniper will make more of a change on the frontlines than a good soldier in most cases he doesnt n e e d a big healthpool since hes already miles away from any potential damage other than spies, and if his team is getting pushed back sniper has more than enough time to retreat. Countering sniper isnt just "oh flank him or rush him easy". You have to avoid his shots, avoid his team, make behind them a n d then you have a better chance at killing him. Also dont forget that sniper doesnt have to wait too long before he can one shot a fully overhealed heavy. Youll see that even in competitive Highlander once a sniper is killed the team with the sniper usually has more freedom of positioning giving them a massive advantage. Sniper being "hard to master" does not make him fair and balanced, i couldnt count the amount of times me and my friends shut down a whole casual match and most casual matches i end up top scoring since all i need to be aware of is enemy snipers and occasionally spy check. For a game where 7 of the classes are mid to close range fighters (not counting medic since hes mostly for healing) having a class that can 1 shot hitscan from as far away as he wants to is n o t balanced no matter how hard sniper it is to fully master him
@@presidentofthegalaxy784 Easy, you add falloff damage just like on the Ambassador. I can tell you that Sniper won't be even nearly as effective as it is right now
@@presidentofthegalaxy784 Easily fall off damage as explained in the video's mention of the ambassador. It's really not that difficult to balance sniper, it's just that valve doesn't care about tf2 anymore and there's a lot of sniper mains who never touched any other class who don't want to see this happen.
I guess a big problem in countering Sniper is that TF2 doesn’t offers a vast arrangement of long range weapons for the other classes (and rightfully so, since most of them are designed for mid to close range), however, this and the random bullet spread really becomes frustrating when you spot a sniper on the other side of the map, protected by his team and you not only have to fight them, but also only giving him just chip damage because of the distance, assuming the bullets collide.
I don't like Sniper because it can easy spam camp you, do max headshot damage with a unfair 000000.1 sec quickcope that no human can react to...and because i think TF2 has so much jumping mechanics and Snipers jump come in and say... no.. just boring.
there is no 0.000000001 hs quickscope lol but spawncamping should be punishable u should like be taking dmg when outside of enemy spawn or smth or idk but then again some maps would also cause problems like that esp in comp
For me the most infuriating about sniper is that while I am enjoying a skillful duel and about to fairly die to the scout I challenged as engineer a sniper just kills me robbing the scout. Very fun class
i think i like this more than zesty's video on it because theirs is about headshots whereas this is about how broken sniper is in general. i've never really been a fan of sniper classes in fps games in general for the reason that - yes, while it does take an immense amount of skill to lock down an area - it's not fun to play against. you're basically not allowed to play the game when you come across someone who's put time in. it's like the inverse issue of spy, at a certain point the enemy team is experienced and skilled enough to nullify his entire thing and you don't get to play him. i genuinely have no idea what they could do to even-out sniper right now tho? like with the bot problems i've found the vaccinator to be a pretty nice counter but that's also a hard-counter to fighting anyone 2v1. a sniper can basically whip themselves into being a long-range sentry without the downsides that sentries have. anyway! good vid, good watch.
Hahaha i am a medic main and when i see many snipers the vaccinator will do its vest job for no headshots so the sniper is fucked or if i use it on a good sniper he will be invisible until a soldier comes and kills us both lol
THANK YOU! as a sniper main myself I like it when people point out the fact it takes skill to play. I feel like adding a weakness like getting rid of the razorback or nerfing bodyshots would be ok. (PLEASE NO HEADSHOT NERF VALVE!) I also want the jarate bushwaka combo GONE! Even though I main him, I HATE this combo. Using it myself feels cheap.
The problem with sniper in casual and, especially in competitive setting that isn't 5cp 6s and KOTH is that it's stupid easy to neutralize his weakness of close combat simply by having teammates. A sniper can make it significantly harder to break through his team's defensive hold while at the same time requiring you to break through his team's defensive hold to get to him as he is the only long ranged class in the game. You can attempt to go around a sniper's team defensive hold but that bring's it's own issues such as needing to walk past a sentry nest all of which is all rather time consuming, time in which a decent sniper has already killed your medic 3 times. There's also the issue with spy effectiveness diminishes the moment the enemy team know your team has a spy, which is why in Highlander, the only competitive format he ran full time, usually has a low KDR rate and rarely went for kills, instead acts more of an informant. Which leads to the situation that the most time efficient, effective method and real counter to deal with a sniper is by beating him in long range combat with another sniper. Sniper is balanced by having really shit mobility and health, obviously, so he can't really keep up with faster classes and it's a lot harder for him to fight them. The problem is Sniper never really is in a 1v1 situation, and often ends up protected pretty fiercely if a team is competent. There's also the problem where the Sniper synergizes too well with defensive specialists, which makes the weakness of having no consistent close combat ability not an actual problem. This is also why you hear very few complaints about sniper being op in 6s 5cp and koth. He's extremely powerful in situations where he doesn't have to move or adjust his position much, and is not as oppressive in situations and gamemodes where constant movement is encouraged. Which explains why sniper is very dominating and oppressive outside of competitive 6s 5cp and KOTH to an extent, such as 6s Prolander 7s Prolander and Highlander. Which technically makes sniper OP, just not in a way that nerfing sniper himself is going to fix. Close range quickscope as bullshit as it is, it's inconsistent. Otherwise sniper would've been dominate in every competitive format, which isn't the case. In fact, most competitive sniper rarely uses quickscope as charged shots are reliable, safe to one shot medics and you're already protected by your teammates to need to worry about tunnel vision. This is the only good video that explain the actual problem with sniper on youtube, kudos.
Alterative to counter sniper: Trolldier, rocket jump your way quickly behind the whole enemy team and shove a shovel into his brain. As long as you are going fast enough, you will not be hit or noticed by the sniper
i think all sniper rifles in general just need to be nerfed, 150 damage on a headshot is just too much, at least 110 would allow the possibility that they survive
if you dont want to watch a 12 minute video about an obvious question: dying instantly from across the map with no input to counterplay on your end is not fun. compared to other classes in this game sniper is very shallow in terms of depth. all you have to do is aim good.
This is why Snipers shouldn't be the only long-range classes. Almost every class should have long-range options for attacking snipers (Except for classes whose weaknesses literally are their short range)
It wouldn't be if majority of the cast were also hitscan aka, other shooters. No one complains about sniping being overpowered in most other shooters. In tf2, most things are projectiles with fucking fall off damage while this hitscan class called sniper can insta 150 from across the map, and the head hitboxes are sizes of rectangles.
Another issue with Sniper is that he is almost always effective in any situation when the format is not comp 6 v 6. His damage uptime is whenever he can see someone, so even if he does die. Within seconds of respawning he can get back into the action and instakill more people. When you finally kill a really talented spy, you have breathing room for a bit while the spy has to get back to where they were. I don't want to have to permanently switch to the same class as someone AND perform better than them to be able to play the game based around having lots of options.
Focus was mainly on casual play since that's the go to for a majority of the playerbase but even in 6's he's still somewhat effective. Issue with him however is that as soon as one person goes Sniper, the other person on the enemy team must also go Sniper to counter him head-on. It's yet another fight fire with fire situation.
I agree with Zesty's opinion about quickscoping and with quick scope nerf. (I flanked sniper as pyro, burned himand he just turns and instantly 150 damage and i barely live. He didn;t even saw me aproaching).
i agree with all your points, also as people have mentioned here, the maps in tf2 make it impossible to flank a sniper, so your only option is to get through sightlines
No class is perfect. This explains that perfectly. The hard counter to Sniper, may not be another class, but a play style, or circumstance, or possibly even the skill of your own team.
? I'm sorry to hear that. A good portion of the time playing casual there's some stupid idea someones trying that I find and have a really good time with.
I've heard it being spread around about sniper's lack of a fight. If that is the biggest problem, I would say make him have to interact more, either by lowering maximum charge damage so he actually needs to follow up with something, lower his ammo capacity, make all his rifles tracers, (which I would like if you could have a different effect for each rifle), or even just slowing his game play down with a longer reload and being unable to headshot for a few seconds when scoping. Heck, all of them would work, but if I could pick one I'd say lower headshot damage. Imagine combining a headshot then moving in with the SMG to finish them off.
Genuinely didn't think you made this good of content when you commented. Super impressed & mostly agree (especially with the huntsman lmfao) I also want to mention something that people never seem to bring up, and that genuinely affects my playstyle in game. I almost never use the jarate anymore because of how long the reload time is. Yeah, it's super powerful, when you actually have it. There are so many times where I jarate combo someone, then someone else just comes over and destroys me. (Or lets say a pyro looked at me funny and now I'm going to die to afterburn) It's gotten to the point that in pubs, I mainly just take out the kukri and either beg for a crit or do some melee, noscope shit until they die (that's if they miss a lot). And then use the danger shield because "I'm the anti pyro guy and all I do is mald about pyro all day" Also apparently editing my comment removed the heart lmao my bad
Recently played against a sniper who did nothing but sit at the door on high tower with the machina and just camp the sight of the part where you go up the tower, and it was so annoying
When ever I’m on a trade server having a good time killing and getting killed a sniper joins and spawn kills us, camps in spawn or does both and ruins the fun for all of us
To me, good soldiers, demos, scouts, spies, etc feel like a challenge to fight and if they're stomping me I feel like if I evaluate my play and aim and positioning then I can counter them or atleast stand my ground. Good snipers just feel oppressive.
My first half of tf2 live was entirely dedicated to killing snipers on community servers like 2fart and orange. As a scout with force-a-nature (strange with killed snipers tracker).
Here is how to deal with sniper bots: Lock the sniper class off for the first 5 minutes after joining a game. Would love to see bots just choosing amby spy and get immediately kicked for obvious reasons.
there is a more obvious reason: lucksman mains, swatter swagsman bazaar snipers, the jarate and bushwacka combo, desert marauder tryhard snipers, anger snipers who always play that one linkin park song to maximize edginess, body shotter machina snipers and aimbot and triggerbot snipers
I think sniper could use a nerf, but I also think everyone goes overboard by making a whole laundry list of changes that would destroy him. He really only needs 1 or 2 changes to bring him down anyways. My favorite is lowering his primary's reserve ammo to 13-15, which would make him more reliant on ammo pack positions and require him to leave his position (freeing up the sightline) more often. Maybe spy just needs a few buffs so it can become a better counter to sniper, like making cloak remove jarate effects more quickly or higher base health (like 150) so he has more of an advantage in close quarters
With sniper’s new idle taunt (the shooters stakeout) I actually enjoy playing as him for more than I ever did before… Mainly because I’m still doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the game. Only difference is that now I’m not pissing off the other team because rather than instant killing someone from across the map, I’m just sitting in my tent in a high place and watching everything play out while occasionally laughing at it.
A lot of the problem with Sniper is, as you said, his close range potential. A good sniper (which is usually a lot) can deny anyone from both close and long range. Long range is fine, maybe nerf his quick scoping potential a tad bit to make him require a proper delay (0.2s is not enough) before he gets that 150 headshot, but the close range headshotting garbage is annoying. I wonder if Valve would be able to apply the inverse of the ambassador nerf to the sniper, where the sniper deals less damage the closer a target is. I know it makes no sense that a strong sniper rifle would deal less damage the closer you are, however, it means that a sniper needs to take in his positioning and maximizing his range whenever possible to make sure he's always dealing high amounts of damage. They could be generous with the distance, too, but it would feel a hell of a lot better than literally walking up to a sniper and watching him briefly scope in as you're trying to engage him, making him flinch, only for him to instantly down you to 0 because he headshot you at point blank. However, I doubt anyone would be fine with this change. People would say it's unfair for sniper to not deal that potential damage, and I feel more of the complaints stem down to how he gets guaranteed 150 headshots after 0.2s. You could blink and be dead, basically, lol.
my one gripe with sniper is unless youre spy you kind of have to basically fight through a team just to get the sniper if he has good positioning but other than that I don't see the hate
Imagining a post-nerf sniper just conjures up images of post-nerf spy. Like sniper mains just trying to salvage the skill they put into the class as if they dropped their bag of skittles on the floor.
0:40 He does have a low skill floor; you only need like one week of practice before you can hit more close range quickscopes than you miss. And long range quickscopes give you more breathing room since the only class that poses a serious threat at that range is another Sniper.
@@xi4897 If you spend that week purely focused on aim. Not dodging, not getting from spawn to the battlefield, not listening for spies, but just quick-scope aim on something like tr_walkway, then I imagine it’s entirely possible. I did something similar for two days and I went from dog shit to average. A week would definitely make you good at quick scoping.
@@xi4897 Ok, what I meant was, I could hit about 1 out of 5 quick scopes with two days of training, so someone with a week could probably raise that number to 1 out of 2 shots. I believe it’s possible because you can entirely focus on aim, you don’t have to wait for players, and you can get more headshots in one day that you would all month normally. I don’t get how this is hard to believe
How to never be backstabbed as sniper: Turn on sounds so you can hear and track footsteps so a spy walking towards you down the hallway is an easy tell.
I saw Toopy upload a clip where he was fighting a Spy on Upward, got into a pretty intense shootout with him, then when the Spy pulled out the knife to try to finish with a butter, Toopy turned around to force him to hit the Razorback before finishing him off while he was stunned. Never seen anyone use it as an offensive tool like that. Makes me wonder if there'd be a way to achieve a similar effect with it while also fixing all the problems it currently has. Perhaps make it an active weapon that requires good timing to use?
Problem with sniper vs spy matches: A sniper can quickscope faster than a spy can put 3 bullets in his back. If the sniper is good at quickscoping the razorback becomes a 100% effective counter to spy. Either stab and die to a machete or shoot and die to a quickscope. The only way to be faster than a quickscope is the diamondback and the enforcer. The ambassador could work too but you're gonna spend some time repositioning your crosshair from head to body or trying your luck. Quickscopes should start at 120 damage instead of 150. That would let the spy ignore the sniper and keep shooting instead of dodging. Worst case you're left with 5hp and need to run for health. But at least you'll be alive. Spy should be a counter to sniper. Spy is a weak class, taking out snipers with ease should be his strength
7:15 "A close range class shouldn't be good at long range" *The Wrangler, Crossbow, Flaregun, Quickiebomb Launcher, Direct Hit and Cleaver have logged on*
engineers can at least feel satisfying to take down. getting a nest down feels good. a sniper dying feels okay, and the sniper can come back way, way, *way* quicker than an engi can set up their nest.
Engineer isnt all that bad to play against but it does come down to where if the enemy team has at least more than 2 engineers thats when the bullshit starts to appear. Im fine with there being less than 2 lv 3 sentries but once you add more than 2 with good placements then thats where engineer gets annoying.
You bring up a point here that frustrates me with Sniper classes in a whole range of games - they always tend to have that huge long range advantage, while not exactly suffering as badly in close range as you'd expect. That and both teams ending up as Snipers and making the game miserable, you could easily have been talking about Battlefield as well!
the people that argue that sniper taking skill is a fair argument for him to be effective at close range with quickscopes when it isn’t fair. there’s a clear design issue with him. when you get quickscoped you rage because there was no counter play, or at long ranges you have to die to the sniper to see where he was assuming he doesn’t change spots, and this is why people find the huntsman more fun to play against. instead of raging they’ll say “i should’ve dodged that”. and then there’s jarate bushwacka, sniper having random crits and the ammo pool on every rifle being too large. if someone genuinely thinks that sniper takes time to learn how to play, then pick sydney sleeper or machina and go for bodyshots and instakill high value targets such as medics without even headshotting them
The next problem is how do we go about nerfing the sniper without completely taking away what the class is MEANT to do nor without butchering it to the ground so that sniper is even worse than spy
Scale back body shot damage, perhaps down to 75 damage, Give the other classes more tools to cooperatively deal with sniper, without relying on an obnoxious mechanic that ruins the experience of half the classes in the game, (ahem, Vaccinator) like a smoke bomb to cover sight lines, or a Heavy mini gun replacement in the form of a shield that removes his ability to deal massive damage but gives him the ability to absorb more damage, Decrease sniper’s reserve ammunition to something more reasonable, like twelve shots with a thirteenth in the chamber, and create a short delay between the point where sniper scopes in, and the point where he can deal lethal headshot damage. Just to start…
![[TF2] Why Dustbowl is Hated](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/J2dIRImsUmg/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TF2] Sniper's SMG: Subpar or Supreme?](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7-GBYrFbXKI/mqdefault.jpg)
![[TF2] Why People Hate Heavy](/img/n.gif)
Take a shot every time, the shooting star fires two trails.
i wanna save my ammo though
ssend hselp plesssö üim dyiang due alcplogol ğosineng AAAAAAHH-
Halv wey thrugh, now it firs four... Do I take moer?
No, I didn't actually do it, don't worry.
i think the problem could be held by nerfing sniper max life to 100, to be more counterable, nerfing the quick scoup time to don´t be so fast, and letting him have his old health back using the DDS to get back to 125, he will be more vunerable to snipers and spy w diamond back or ambassador and can make a trade if the sniper is next to a nest(cof cof turbine), if he is using DDS he can be stabed and die or another secondary,get hs w amby and die (tragic life of a spy), what do you guys think?
@@matheusmartinhogalvani1716 Health nerfs are massive changes, I think simple changes like making the Sniper more noticable so certain counterplay or flanking is allowed is good enough.
And although I'm not a big fan of it, having Sniper deal damage ramp-up on shots could also be a solution to quickscopes, a close range headshot could deal theoretically 100 damage instead of 150.
This isn't enough to kill most classes, still rewards the Sniper and allows the enemy to actually react and respond to being quickscopped afterwards. Essentially giving themselves an additional second to take out the Sniper or retreat.
-The melee random crit sniper: "Skill always beats luck".
but they would've had to hit the shot said vacuum
Yes, I was playing against a Razorback, I pull out my gun to shoot he random crits when he’s at 5 hp. THIS HAPPENS AGAIN BUT HES AT 4hp. I FUCKING HATE MY LIFE
@@vladiiidracula235 imagine at 1 HP.
@@misterjersey5460 He left soon after the 4hp, but I fucking guarantee it would have continued down to one if he had’t left
@@vladiiidracula235 that's why I don't main spy anymore
How to counter spy: turn around, spycheck teammates, listen for decloaking, and don’t engage in melee.
How to counter sniper: don’t let him see you or you instantly die
Thats a bot not a sniper 🤣
Or you can outrun them sometimes with scout or a demo knight with cover
@@thechroniclegamer4285 nope.
@@thechroniclegamer4285 fast as frick boyyy
@@zeusthefox1585 that is a competent sniper if you have ever encountered one you would know
The fact that there is no “Sniper!” callout similar to “sentry ahead!” or “spy!” Is just extra salt on the wound.
It's also infuriating cause in MVM there are voice lines for classes saying when there are sniper bots, they could've made it a callout in normal pubs but nah
@@ozziemahboi could've easily replaced that stupid "Pass to me!" callout which never gets used
@@Green_2142Such a hard choice between being able to call out a sniper to teammates or being able to beg the f2p scout in pass time to pass the ball instead of running directly into a sentry...
@concerningindividual629 the pass callout literally doesn't do anything if you're not playing passtime, which is EVEN MORE SALT
Don't cry
As someone that once mained sniper, he's... got issues.
Quickscoping is hard... until you practice it. Seriously, like after a week of just standard play sessions, forcing myself to never charge, use a secondary or a melee... and I was hitting more close range shots by the time next week than I was missing. It's not difficult.
Sniper really has a very limited skillset outside of aim. Master quickscoping and even positioning (his second most important skill) just comes down to splash damage and sightlines.
My biggest issue... Fighting him isn't really a fight. Either his aim is good and you're dead, or he misses his shot and he's dead. There's no fight, no decision making, not techniques, no complexity. Soldiers might bomb, take highground, disengage, airshot, bounce, direct, use walls and ceilings. Even spies might trickstab or use mindgames with their cloak.
Sniper is just:
a) He's dead.
b) You're dead.
This makes getting killed by sniper an annoyance, and killing snipers a chore.
Fighting Sniper boils down to: “How much can I spam crouch and WASD before I get insta -killed?”
At least that’s how I feel.
In a game where 9/10 loadouts dont do shit for long range, even if his aiming is bad, he will still get you unless you just decide to give up and go another way. Or you know you could just try and go though his entire team, hope he doesnt kill you during that, and only then you to get behind him, only to get a jar of piss in the face and then one shot.
@@nickjo1492 mfw i die even though i crouch because of how ping works
The very concept of sniper doesnt belong in a close quarters mobility game like tf2. He has so many little nerfs and such an awful skill floor, but its somehow not enough to make him fun to fight against. Snipers just stand 5 miles away, being protected by their team and 5 sentries while they go on a godlike killstreak with no risk whatsoever. Its safe to say valve didnt think that people would play sniper for a thousand hours when designing him.
All classes(not counting sniper) and most weapons are made close range and a ton of dmg, and in my opinion sniper is in the "wrong game".
The problem with sniper (in my opinion) is they keep giving him weapons that completely null all of his counters. Spy’s, pyro flares, chip damage. Heck, at one point snipers were immune to other snipers
I dont even use flare guns and the DDS is still annoying as fuck
@@vikavolt11 yeah because it feels like you're killing a fucking heavy (it grants 50% fire resistance, making his effective health a whopping 250)
like wtf im sorry, it takes less to m1 soldier to death than sniper, wtf?
Also if you have snipers in opposing team, you can constantly jump and crouch while walking to avoid getting shot.
@@chilltrooper9423 you got a point but I hate having to play a very brutal twist on dodgeball just to get to the front lines
@@boneman9751 ok
5:51
Demoknight: never send a spy to do a man's job.
Idk why but one of my favorite things of playing demoknight is harassing snipers by trimping into them and forcing them into really uncomfortable melee fights
@@oualidbro.c6196 if I remember correctly. If you have three or more heads you can survive one swing from a Jarate Bushwacker combo.
@@d0ntfeedphil447 yeah true but I personally don't rely on tanking damage I rely on head on taking so he has almost no time to react properly
Also the existence of random crits handicaps demoknight so much.
@@TheLunarMan true, sadly
Every time theres a video about snipers its like "just flank em" "use the flank routes". Dude, what about dust bowl, thats just a straight line. Not all maps have a convinient passageway that puts you right behind wherever the sniper is. Plus if there were something like that the sniper would just move. Im glad this video didnt just talk about using a flank route, and actually picked apart why sniper is irritating.
yea people who say "just flank the Sniper, noob!" clearly don't know what they're on about since you don't always have that option
turbine is another map with no alternative route that is safe from snipers. that big middle room will expose you to snipers no matter what.
@Shota-kun Because they're still enjoyable nonetheless.
@@thespyfromteamfortress2149 except turbine, all my homies hate turbine
Getting insta-killed by a sniper far across the map outside your effective range in a choke point? Idk sounds like a skill issue
Like a wise uncle once said, “there is a huge imbalance of effort here”.
To kill a sniper with jarate equipped, you must:
1. Avoid the sniper’s sightlines enough to close the distance between you and him
2. Be observant enough to notice that the sniper has jarate equipped and plan to combat it (not even shown on the character model unlike other secondaries)
3. Be threatening enough to make the sniper miss his shots at close range, forcing him to pull out his jarate
4. Space back out of the jarate’s effective range to bait the sniper into using it or missing
5. Approach the sniper again from mid-range and hope he doesn’t pull a quick scope from out of his ass
Meanwhile, the sniper has to:
1. Press their “2” key
2. Aim a projectile with splash radius
3. Left click
4. Press their “3” key
5. Left click
Fighting a good sniper is like that...but most are not that. Fighting a bad or even average sniper player is not that hard...the things that get in the way are not the sniper but the other classes between you and him. Once those are gone...sniper is super vulnerable.
What ankle dan vid is that lol
@@alma_h2410 wrangler vid
well, they can just kill you while you're getting through those frontline classes so...
@@nickchavez720 Just because most aren't like that doesn't mean much. All it takes is for 1 good sniper to basically ruin a normal match of tf2. An amazing soldier isn't anywhere nearly as scary and objectively dominating/denying class as sniper... and they're more common than you think. Combine the average skill level/fortitude/awareness of your teammates and there's not much you can do to help them against a good sniper.
0:51 a long range class in a game where most combat takes place at mid to close range and most ranged weapons have damage falloff and random spread that limits their effectiveness past mid range is most certainly flawed.
i mean, a lot of class based games have mechanics like that while also having long range class(es). most of them solve it by having the weaknesses he mentions hear, actually struggling with close range combat and being more vulnerable to harassment
@S S it's not hit scan weapon
@S S yeah, in a game like tf2, where most attacks are projectiles or short range weapons, a long range hit scan weapon can be pretty op
@S S yeah, fuck the crits on that thing though theyre fucking ridiculous
Yeah the revise fall off makes it a decent combat weapon
The support element is more powerful but that’s more an issue with how the syringe guns work and the crossbow just exploits them to be a near universal pick
You forgot to mention when the sniper isn’t good on your team, which is also frustrating because they might as well be afk because they either hit nothing at all or get destroyed by the other single sniper even tho you have 5 of them, it is infuriating even when you want to use sniper to counter a single mofo but you feel bad because there are already 5 of them, I hate this so badly
You should play or find servers which has a max capacity of each class, they are great for this.
@@olea675 I know, but it can’t find servers like this for Asia, so I just play casual valve servers, thankfully there isn’t that much bot here in comparison to other servers, but random crits and class stacking can be a pain in the rear.
Tho I don’t complain much since I much rather die to a random crit or get auto balanced than being kick by 11 bots on my team every match
I hate that in pubs people seem to have a hive mind and switch to sniper as soon as they get headshotted once, immediately destroying their own team comp
I fucking hate it when there's like 5 snipers on your team in a serious match.
Basically the same balance problem happened in Battlefield franchise: jet pilots, the only counters to them are better jet pilots. If your team has a worse jet pilot be prepared to have all your vehicles and infantry groups get bombed to shit consistently.
In both cases jet pilots and snipers classes have a very high skill ceiling, but when the skill reaches certain threshold it breaks the game. balance.
An infinite range, instant kill class, who's only true weakness is another infinite range, instant kill class
"Yeah sounds about right."
Sounds OP
and well spy I guess
@@jakman8515
Nah, Spy has to get up close & personal to get his instant kill while Sniper can chill on the other end of the map safe from everyone except another sniper.
A bit a false equivalence IMO
@Rodrigo Villa
That too.
So a quick summary,sniper is hated because he’s:
-Hard to spot
-Super strong in long range
-Also super strong in mid-close range
-Super punishing for both the sniper and the sniped-er
-Hard to close up the distance in the first place
-No counters besides out sniping him
-Has weapons that specifically counter some classes
For me. Unless you have a Spy ( with Stock or Diamondback If the Sniper goes Razorback ) or a really discrete Pyro, Sniper is annoying. Without a Pybro, Sniper even with Jarate isn't really going to survive if:
A. A Spy gets the backstab ( all thing considered the Spy gets it, since without teammates Sniper is a prime target for Spies other then Engineer's ) or a Trickstab ( again most spies by now should know how to Trickstab, it's essential to spy as is Rocket and Sticky Jumping is to the Soldier and Demoman ).
B. A Pyro, especially with Phlog available and he conveniently runs into a lone Sniper.
C. A better Sniper really. Better if the Sniper has Huntsman and is at point blank range.
@@eagleye2893 Spy can only use the ambit/diamondback because the revolver requires 3 shots to kill,and there's enough time for the sniper to react to the first shot and quickscope the spy(As seen in lazy purple's sniper vid),and with if the sniper runs the razorback you're really kinda fucked as you can only use your gun and there's most likely gonna be a sentry around the sniper. Also hoping a phlog pyro is gonna reach your sniper is really not a great tactic since I doubt he's gonna even get past your soldier/heavy/demo/sentry if they are semi-competent
@@Holenpense even still, depending on the map, a sentry next to a sniper will be a bad idea, especially of the sniper is holding up in an otherwise wide open chokepoint. Soldiers and Demos would dominate the sentry if this happens. And even then the Spy can always just duck the quickscope. In my Experience no sniper I tried to gun down tried to quickscope. And even then they only kill me with Kukri random crits. But most of the time I either gun them down, Trickstab them due to the janky hit reg, or the friendly Sniper headshots them. This is especially true in 2fort. But nowadays I just cloak since the Sniper in 2fort usually has other Snipers because, you know 2fort.
he has many counters. Good rocket jumping, spy, and vaccinator. Not to mention just outsniping him. Stop crying.
@@borat1 Agreed. Don't forget a well timed Stock Uber.
I feel like there’s almost no middle ground for sniper
A: you’re me and you hit almost nothing
B: you’re pretty much everyone else and can hit literally anything
Although I don’t play much sniper so take this with a grain of salt
Yeah it is kind of weird. I think it’s almost like all of a sudden it clicks and you just become the god of the 2fort battlements.
It’s more of a day thing really, I only have 200 hours as him so I’m not super good at him but I’m at least somewhat confidant. Some days i do awesome and hit most of my shots, some days I fucking suck and switch off to medic or someone else. Consistently good snipers are scary, I’m not one of them but I’m also not consistently shit. It’s a bit of a spectrum but some days I’m okay, some days I’m the top scorer (rare for reasons), and some days I can’t hit the broad side of a barn. But that’s for me, idk about other snipers.
@@TKmeh I have the same thing but with spy, sometimes I win the entire match for my team by backstabbing everyone and sometimes I get killed and dominated by everyone because hitbox ignored that I was backstabing enemy
Nah, there's a decent amount of snipers who can headshot heavies and hardscoping snipers and body shot people with the machina consistently. But they aren't quickscoping gods.
I am the middle I use the bodyshot machine with piss and can't hit shit
Start a whole serie of this ,
exemple : Why is Pyro hated ?
???
Profit
44 easy steps
@BradynLee09 Could probably actually do a Soldier and Demo.
Don't think I can do a medic one or a heavy one.
@@SpaceGuyOnline for the solider he easily hated (by me) for his upward rocket knock back that stun locks you in the air for the simple act of trying to counter his bs splash damage by jumping, because of splash damage for free on the rocket launcher and the upwards knock-back I think the soldier’s primary is less fun to fight against (and takes less skill to effectively use) than the demoman’s primary (edit for clarification on the “splash damage for free” part. I said that because demoman’s grenade launcher does not have projectiles that explode instantly unless gets a direct hit with them. Now that I’m reading this comment I think i should not have brought up the “splash damage for free” thing to begin with because that has nothing to do with my hot take on soldier’s primary weapons fundamental mechanics on knock back)
@BradynLee09 actually for demoman i have one thing (stickyspam hate incoming)
the stickylauncher:
>8 explosives in one clip
>over 300 damage from one explosive
>i will turn 184 years old by the time the stickylauncher fully reloaded (if you get what i mean, but eh it is only a complaint when i have literally nothing else to do)
>very short arm time that can be negated (while stickyspamming) by being like ten meter away
in other words, i believe the stickylauncher works very good as a trap layer but too good as a stickyspamming tool, thats why i like the quickiebomb launcher, because 4 explosives are more fair than 8 when i want to use it offensively (also reduced charge time pog)
@@oof-by1lz Lmao no
Good job, you finally got behind him. You stabbed him, how long does your entire team have to make a push. SECONDS.
Pro tip: cloak and dagger
@@cactusgamingyt9960 jarate that covers the area is a joke for you?
@@Kimo_uwu He is vulnerable to backstabs now
He does have a design flaw. That's the entire reason he's a problem. He's incredibly oppressive and there is literally no counter except for another sniper. Well, reliably anyway. Combat in TF2 takes place at close to mid range. Any kind of high damage (instakill really in most cases) long range hitscan is broken.
If I even recall, it was a debated last-minute decision by the devs to even add the Sniper, so that should say something.
Map design has a lot to do with his power though.
Also according to the Developers, if they HAD to remove a class from TF2, they unanimously all agreed that it would be Sniper. So let that sink in.
Even with bad maps a good sniper will just be with his team or near a dispenser/sentry
Not arguing that he doesn't have a design flaw, however I doubt on the "debated last-minute decision" to add the Sniper. The sniper class was the 2nd class to be made by Robin Walker way back in the quake mod, after Robin got hired by Valve to make Team Fortress Classic(Also later Team Fortress 2), the Sniper class was in that game as well.
Now with the development of TF2 as it was a shaky start, but with the trailers when been shown the sniper class was in during the development of Brotherhood of Arms. After that project was scrapped, Team Fortress Invasion started to get developed. While the sniper rifle wasn't in the game, the sniper class was in the game that weirdly could go invisible.
Now with modern TF2, in the developer commentary of gravel pit it was revealed that Sniper was a hard class for them to balance, but no mention of not wanting it in the game. Surprisingly I found an interview of Robin Walker that was from Rock Paper Shotgun in 2007, where Robin talked about phases that the development team went through with playtesting.
"One of the things that we’re happiest about is that TF is more about versatility. It’s been really fun watching the online communities go through a micro version of the passage we’ve all gone through here. It’s like, “Oh, they’re all at the Heavy/Medic phase! They’re soon going to get to the, Holy crap, Snipers kick the crap out of that phase!” They’re saying, “This is too powerful,” and we’re thinking, “Well next week you’re going to find that this destroys that.” It’s really fun to see." -Robin Walker
Its safe to say that the phase "Well next week you’re going to find that this destroys that." and the fact the sniper archetype was in 5 games(2 scrapped projects) would imply that they felt that Sniper wasn't a "debated last-minute decision".
Buff spy, please. I'm tired of getting one-shot every time a sniper hears me from a mile away. I was playing in trade plaza today and a sniper could hear my decloacks from across the map. I eventually figured out he was cheating in some way and started spamming the shit out of my invis watch to annoy him.
@@ShockyWolf By last minute decision, I meant more along the lines of "is sniper really a good idea?". Not that they threw a class together right before the release. I think he was one of the first 4 foundational characters they had. Pretty simple archtype.
That's interesting info though. I can sort of excuse how they balanced TF2 (not just sniper, but random crits, and other odd stuff). it was mid-to-late 2000s, they were subject to trends of the time, the philosophies and thinking, and of course the nature of having to tread new ground. So it's easy to look back in hindsight.
sooo on good maps soldier is a counter to sniper. You bomb him, pop him up, and direct him. On bad maps with improper sightlines sniper has no counters outside of 1million iq spies and other snipers.
This video was done incredibly well. It touched on all my problems with the Sniper, and more. Sniper shouldn't be effective at close range (Cuntsma- Huntsman excluded.) but he has a lot of options available to be so.
But one thing I'll touch on is Razorback. Yes like you said, you can still shoot the Sniper. But do you have enough time to do that when they are backed up by their entire team and near a nest? "Take down the nest and pick off other targets first" also doesn't work since both of those will make noises, which alarms the Sniper and therefore most likely makes him approach you with their melee (or quickscope), squeezing you even more.
Razorback is just a free upperhand for Sniper against his "supposed counter" if they have a semi competent team.
Would argue that Jarate and being aware of Spies is just a better solution to Spies.
Works for all enemies, Spy can't cloak, doesn't require you to return to spawn to recharge it.
Only bonus it has is protection from trickstabs or shit detection.
@@SpaceGuyOnline Jarate is an active weapon so it requires at least *some* time to do something. Also since it is not a passive, Spy still has opportunities to go for a stab.
Meanwhile, Razorback is passive so Spy has no opportunites for a stab, leaving only his revolver to kill which puts him in danger since he'll lose his disguise and make sounds.
Can we keep it though? I really like double backstabbing clueless snipers. Joking of course but it is so much fun.
@@draforgg5594 agreed. Unless the Sniper gets conveniently abandoned, headshotting a Sniper with Stock is definitely risky.
@@SpaceGuyOnline I agree because play alot of spy and extremely observant snipers who actually look around and hear cloaks from a room away are unbackstabbable. You can try to kill him with your revolver but he can simply quickscope you if he is good. If you want to get closer for the damage falloff to be less and be able to kill him quicker he can just get a random crit or jarate bushwacka you.
*"Why sniper is hated?"*
*"Why murder is a crime?"*
I join a server
I pick pyro
Dom an demo
He switched to sniper
Got me
Switched back
I use the scotch shot
He gets Dom again
Goes sniper
Repeat until rage quit
as a sniper main one thing i never understood was why does he have 25 shots? i think making the sniper have like 10 shots is a good change because itll force them to actually move and get more ammo from time to time, giving the enemy team a chance to move in
My guess is no scoping, so basically sniper has enough ammo when he needs to defend himself at close range and also to give him more chances when he miss shots too
The best nerf snipe can get tbh is bodyshots because currently you just use the piss rifle and full charge bodyshot and still deal more damage than going for headshots normally. Fully charged bodyshots need nerfed.
Swap Huntsmans and Sniper rifles ammo capacity, since the huntsman requires him to actually go into the battlements, but sniper just chills back there in the background
This got recommended to me, and I don’t regret watching it.
Same
I had a thought for something about this, why not just add a very short "reverse damage fall off" for the sniper rifle so a sniper can still headshot at long to mid range, but cannot quick scope you literally point blank.
Pretty smart IMO 👀
Might not be a bad idea to add damage ramp-up. Snipers might complain though
@@pubfries5562 snipers complain no matter what
@@pubfries5562 They propably wouldn't, because good snipers usually dislike close range rifling and bad snipers don't even care.
@@toivoh8738 What snipers have you been fighting against?
0:42 the problem with sniper skill ceiling is the absence of one. I think cheaters demonstrated that pretty well. Add to that how extremely unfun is getting oneshotted from 100 to 0 half the map away- and you see the problem.
Having a character with a potentially limitless skill ceiling while everyone else doesn't have one isn't balanced
any cheater in any game removes everything alse except the ability to insta shoot no sniper legit can do that
There are only two classes that instakill. Spy and sniper, yes the soldier has the direct hit, but that is inconsistent instakilling. So if you want to pick the medic your spy must weave through the entire front line and then get within melee range of the second most paranoid class in the game (demo-med main here and yes heavy is more paranoid). Sniper has to get an angle on the med, which granted is not always easy if he is smart and uses cover. However, he has to advance and one of the best tricks to effective ubers is to wait till you or your pocket are in danger before popping uber.
However, I often find myself having to pop a good 3 sec early just in case the enemy sniper is on his game. Like you said quite well sniper is mostly balanced, but fundamentally flawed in tf2. Almost all weapons encourage you to get closer to be more effective (except demo). Making most encounters mid to close range. Then there is sniper out of everyone's effective range. Even as an awful sniper I enjoy a sniper v sniper deathmatch. However most interactions with him aren't a match there a question of your awareness and his aim. Sniper v engineer for example is me pressing every button on my keyboard as he tries to click my head. Contrast this with a demo and heavy carefully maneuvering to bring out there strong suits. The only "unwinnable/never fun matchups I can think of is scout and pyro vs sentry.
Lastly since close range weapons were already covered I have to express my frustration on snipers crits with melee. You finally got to the sniper without getting quickscoped and he pulls out his melee and boom try again. Weak at close range! Honestly medics have the same problem, but they can't quickscope and staying out of melee range is an option. For instance: I was playing some attack defense (med) and I come upon two pyros trying to flare the other at mid range. Obviously my teamate was new to the game so I run in dodging flares, and ubersaw the enemy with a crit. Then turn around and tell the pyro, That is how it is done, do you understand now?" Funny stories aside a medic shouldn't be able to do that. Also I'm done ranting, thx for reading.
Slight correction: there are only four “pick” classes, Sniper, Spy, Trolldier, and Caber Knight. Each one are for say “f**k this guy in particular,” which usually ends up being the enemy medic nine times outta ten. Each one can kill in one hit in a majority of cases.
Spy requires getting behind enemy lines, deceiving the enemy team, and asks you to get within an enemy’s melee range to kill them instantly, tons of risk and skill involved. He’s widely considered the weakest class for many reasons.
Troldier, well, you’re a flying idiot with a shovel. Even being a meme class, it requires tons of knowledge about rocket jumping and swing timing, and you’ll be left using just melee or running away.
Caber Knight, well, you a running idiot with a grenade. Wait a minute... anyway, you generally have to be good at playing normal Demo Knight, the Caber hardly works half of the time, it’s useless after it’s first swing, but when it does work it kills the entire enemy team if they’re grouped up. It’s basically pure chance and not at all viable unless you’re Solar Light.
All three of these pick classes are restricted to melee, and frankly none of them are very good. Even a great spy will be caught out due to the habit of spy checking and just how predictable their tool set is. All of them put you at risk, asking you to go into the front lines with nothing but a melee weapon.
And then there’s sniper, the infinite range hit scan class that kills in one shot. Positioning is easy, it’s hardly a skill you have to learn, and you can often sit in one spot racking up kills for basically the entire match. Aiming is the only real skill sniper uses, but even with just a week of practice it becomes fairly trivial, you can usually preemptively aim where you know an enemy is likely to pop up from. Now that is a skill that most other classes uses, like when Heavy pre-revs before turning a corner. The difference is that Sniper can delete any other class both defensively and offensively. Even if you think you’ve cornered him, he’ll just throw piss on you and one shot you with his melee, even his default melee has an insane crit rate, a problem among melees as a whole really.
It's interesting, I've always found bodyshots to be the least infuriating part of playing against a sniper. I'm like, "okay, he spent 3 seconds zoomed in which he was vulnerable to spies and generally tunnel visioned so he could only be covering a limited area, and maybe i even could have found the sniper dot, fair enough." Basically the same sort of thing as walking into a sticky trap
No it's pretty cheap. That's why there's loads of F2P snipers on each team, cause they know they can make bodyshot kills.
Its 3 seconds. Also the razorback exists
@@Toons595 May I present to you “Oh yeah spy also just has a gun”
@@CokefishR if you die to a body shot because you were at 50hp or less then that's on you.
i though the charge took 5 seconds?
Great video! I like how you structure your points and the the sfm or Gmod renders you make for your examples are really nice. Very entertaining.
It's nice to hear from a Sniper player who doesn't have their head up their ass and thinks that just because they can aim well, they're the best player in the game and any criticism directed at them is moot.
150 damage in the blink of an eye is too much power for any class
I disagree, spy does more as do sticky traps and yes you can usually see stickies but not all the time. Its more about effort required to produce that much dmg.
@@timothyjacksondrake4454 i disagree to you disagreeing as spy requires a lot more than 0.2 seconds to kill someone. Sticky tracks are another thing, but like, it's a massive chunk of damage enough to kill 5/9 classes and almost kill almost all the other classes.
@@timothyjacksondrake4454 Except spy takes risks his life whe goes for a backstab, sniper doesn't risk anything.
@@timothyjacksondrake4454 In a game with a general rule of thumb of high stakes and high rewards, the sniper just doesn't work that well
when a player has a high skill level with this class for the opposing team the "fun factor" is ruined
But when a spy is very good and kills you it is more your fault since you must pay attention it is not always possible since sometimes you simply cannot turn around or you die but it is part of the grace of fighting this class
apart the spy is considered one of the weaker classes because it does not work in all scenarios
So we're going to get rid of stickytraps then?
7:15 gave me a good chuckle XD Well done video my guy :P
I don't care he has infinite range because his skill ceiling is so f*cking high with him, my problem with him is:
After who knows how long I've managed to stay alive and fight with multiple enemies, I get killed by a treat I didn’t even know it was there because there is no notable indication (the dot is very easy to miss) and the moment I think I've got him because I finally got close to him, I get killed to 1 or 2 quickscopes depending who I wanted to play...
I have this exact problem too
With a bit of an extra, he has too much ammo capacity and the fire rate is a bit too fast for long range, which makes missing not much of a problem and not really needing to change position to resupply or avoid getting spotted
I don't think quickscopes need a significant nerf though, a minor nerf to them will be fine to me
the classic is sniper's best primary, 1. you can't quick-scope, 2. it gibs enemies. You literally can't counter it either, 'cause he can retain his charge while not scoped in.
yes lol
I'll say this.
My point of contention with sniper doesn't really lie with quickscopes and/or how oppressive he is (that tends to be more of a map problem than anything, with payload maps being the prime offender), but rather with his unlocks and base bodyshot damage. There's these 2 guys that go by Beletrix and King with their own balance mod that aims to balance the game around both casual, comp, and MVM play, with various comp players providing feedback (like degen, a HL pyro player). Their changes to sniper go as follows:
-Reduce fully charged bodyshot damage to 140
-Trying to nerf jarate by making the recharges long as fuck
-Make the Darwins not so much of a fuck you to pyros
-Make the cozy camper less powerful
-Most of his other unlocks are undergoing modifications, save for the bushwhaka.
These are my ideal changes, as consistently getting quickscopes is hard as fuck, and thus should be rewarded. The way I see it, the mod is trying to take the pressure off meds (instead of 150 bodyshots its now 140) and reduce how blatantly overpowered jarate is, which are really his 2 largest problems. Unfortunately, they're using a plugin that doesn't allow for complete weapon overhauls, so their options for balancing are limited.
Anyways, I'll provide my take on the JarateWhaka combo.
It's just a mediocre combo. There's a reason most high level players don't run the Bushwhaka, and that's because that damage vulnerability is crippling. Going from needing 3 shots to die down to just 2 is a big deal, and most spies who encounter a jaratewhaka sniper will just backpedal and shoot, easily killing the sniper due to the damage vuln. As such, I believe that it's not really OP, just really fucking annoying when he does land a crit. It's more that the jarate is the issue than the bushwhaka.
I like this guy, smart takes especially in these days when other youtubers are calling sniper OP. I play in plat highlander so i always hear that shit
They ain't that wrong tho
@@DankDimensionMemes Sniper isn't OP, being annoying to play against isn't overpowered. A div 1 demoman in casual is as destructive as a div 1 sniper but the sniper is just less fun to play against
@@xMrPhantofulx I never said it was overpowered
Well in comp, im not sure but his dang good at comp.
@@DankDimensionMemes you said they aint wrong though and the people who were being talked about said sniper is op so yes you did say that sniper is op
Was recently in a 2fort match with a snipwr named blackjack, literally unkillable, if he saw you you were instantly headshoted, he used the classic at one point, it took an uber charged pyro to kill him after he killed like 10 people camping at our sewer entrance, the man was literally a god, you could not do a thing, at all, at one point i got him to 30 hp befor he headshot me, i considered that win, i think the only time he died was from the uber pyro.
"Why would you wear the razorback" getting 2-shot is better than getting 1-shot.
Without those options to deal with a sniper, the last resort is The vaccinator, it's not only about someone actually wanting to play medic, but also knowing how to use it, if the requirements are met is really effective, the flat resisteance without popping bubble makes the medic able to survive a quickscope headshot, taking 140 instead of 150, and bubbles make headshots and crits overall useless.
I'd disagree on the razorback, if youre standing inside the sightline of a t3 sentry, stock cant kill you faster than the sentry will kill the spy.
sap sentry than kill sniper whats the problem?
@@KellerTheDominatorthe sniper hears the sentry being sapped and/or the engi saying the voice line, turns around whips out his melee and random crits the spy or quick scopes him
snipers 90% of the time blind and deaf while scopes. tunnel vision or something like that
The sniper was fine when the game came out now it needs a total nerf.
The best counter against a sniper is the leave game button
I do think the issue with Sniper is mostly a map issue, though there are some issues with the Sniper. As a Scout main, the Jarate Bushwaka combo hasn't ever been much of an issue recently because I've become better at avoiding a sniper B-Lining straight for me, though I do think it's bullshit for every other class.
A truly skilled sniper is terrifying, although most sniper are not this.
Is not terrifying, just pretty damn annoying
@ u can get flanked by a medic on casual random crit is good mechanic
i had that happen to me many times LMAO
@ You see the problem isn’t that there aren’t like 5000 pro snipers the problem is those 100 pro snipers can shut down entire teams or at least half and force the enemies to expend all there resources just to kill him. The problem isn’t that there are too many pro snipers the problem I that when a pro sniper is in the game you basically just drop dead,like for a pro demo or soldier you still have a fighting chance most of the time if your say a pretty solid player, but when it comes to sniper it’s entirely based on if the sniper knows how to track and headshot not if your good at avoiding air shots minimizing splash damage,your best bet is spam keys and pray.
@@saltynope4819 you also forgot that sniper's "counter" might be a glitch (using your character model's arms to block the view of your head by looking in a weird direction)
@@saltynope4819 any class is like that, the best demomen would be getting complaints as well if they entered pubs
your channel needs more love
Tf2 secret ending: next update removes sniper
your sense of humour is on point and also unlike anything ive ever seen, really good but weird haha
• anyone with decent aim can go god mode with him
• has weapons that render specific classes useless
• can only be countered by another sniper
• slows the entire game down
Yeah, *seems balanced*
I disagree
> Sniper is rendered useless if soldiers, pyros, and other snipers because of projectiles which could hit them.
> Once sniper is detected he is practicing under complete kos by scouts,spies, soldiers and demoman being classes that can easily close the gap on him and overpower him entirely.
> Sniper has only fee playstyle making him very less versatile then he already is.
> Only a supports and one offensive class can be one headshot killed by sniper, most of time once a sniper headshots a soldier hes instantly tracked and killed.
> Sniper is practically dead once someone is in close range to him being overpowered by every single class except medic.
> He lacks the health pool and mobility to have a substantial change on the frontlines being almost entirely dependent being in the back or in the group of the team.
Sniper is a glass canon that relies on long range, Think of him like a zoner in fighting games.
@@presidentofthegalaxy784 ive got well over 700 hours on sniper and i gotta disagree with you.
N.1 - the only time sniper is useless against pyro, soldier, spy, demo and scout is in competitive, in casual those classes rarely can get close to you without dying to your team (considering sniper sticks to his team or near it), with the only exception being spy. Soldier and demo have to either flank and due to their already slow walk speed theyre usually spotted by teammates, or rocket/sticky jumping which already lower their health significantlly so theyre still sacrificing themselves for a *chance* at killing him, not a 100% kill chance. Meanwhile a sniper doesnt risk anything when killing other classes as he is usually protected, theres a reason good snipers usually top score or almost top score in highlander and casual matches.
N.2 - "only supports and 1 offensive class can be one headshot killed" again, just no, being able to one shot a medic can even stop a full on push, killing a sniper in one shot also grants his team way more freedom in positioning themselves as they wouldnt need to fear having their head blown off, and sniper can legit just, scope 3 4 seconds longer and one shot a pyro, demo a n d a soldier with no downsides. If he headshots a soldier he isnt "instantly tracked and killed" if anything he either follows up with a bodyshot and kills the soldier o r the soldier has to retreat for health.
N.3 - "he lacks health and mobility to have substantial change on the frontlines" first of all what? A good sniper will make more of a change on the frontlines than a good soldier in most cases he doesnt n e e d a big healthpool since hes already miles away from any potential damage other than spies, and if his team is getting pushed back sniper has more than enough time to retreat.
Countering sniper isnt just "oh flank him or rush him easy".
You have to avoid his shots, avoid his team, make behind them a n d then you have a better chance at killing him. Also dont forget that sniper doesnt have to wait too long before he can one shot a fully overhealed heavy. Youll see that even in competitive Highlander once a sniper is killed the team with the sniper usually has more freedom of positioning giving them a massive advantage.
Sniper being "hard to master" does not make him fair and balanced, i couldnt count the amount of times me and my friends shut down a whole casual match and most casual matches i end up top scoring since all i need to be aware of is enemy snipers and occasionally spy check. For a game where 7 of the classes are mid to close range fighters (not counting medic since hes mostly for healing) having a class that can 1 shot hitscan from as far away as he wants to is n o t balanced no matter how hard sniper it is to fully master him
@@sleepy1066 eh fair point but my question is what would we do to balance him?
@@presidentofthegalaxy784 Easy, you add falloff damage just like on the Ambassador. I can tell you that Sniper won't be even nearly as effective as it is right now
@@presidentofthegalaxy784 Easily fall off damage as explained in the video's mention of the ambassador. It's really not that difficult to balance sniper, it's just that valve doesn't care about tf2 anymore and there's a lot of sniper mains who never touched any other class who don't want to see this happen.
I guess a big problem in countering Sniper is that TF2 doesn’t offers a vast arrangement of long range weapons for the other classes (and rightfully so, since most of them are designed for mid to close range), however, this and the random bullet spread really becomes frustrating when you spot a sniper on the other side of the map, protected by his team and you not only have to fight them, but also only giving him just chip damage because of the distance, assuming the bullets collide.
You know shit gets real when a sniper is able to headshot a jumpy scout
I don't like Sniper because it can easy spam camp you, do max headshot damage with a unfair 000000.1 sec quickcope that no human can react to...and because i think TF2 has so much jumping mechanics and Snipers jump come in and say... no.. just boring.
there is no 0.000000001 hs quickscope lol but spawncamping should be punishable u should like be taking dmg when outside of enemy spawn or smth or idk but then again some maps would also cause problems like that esp in comp
For me the most infuriating about sniper is that while I am enjoying a skillful duel and about to fairly die to the scout I challenged as engineer a sniper just kills me robbing the scout. Very fun class
i think i like this more than zesty's video on it because theirs is about headshots whereas this is about how broken sniper is in general.
i've never really been a fan of sniper classes in fps games in general for the reason that - yes, while it does take an immense amount of skill to lock down an area - it's not fun to play against. you're basically not allowed to play the game when you come across someone who's put time in. it's like the inverse issue of spy, at a certain point the enemy team is experienced and skilled enough to nullify his entire thing and you don't get to play him.
i genuinely have no idea what they could do to even-out sniper right now tho? like with the bot problems i've found the vaccinator to be a pretty nice counter but that's also a hard-counter to fighting anyone 2v1. a sniper can basically whip themselves into being a long-range sentry without the downsides that sentries have.
anyway! good vid, good watch.
At this point all they can do is not have sniper in tf3
Or just make the sniper work like the cactus in the pvz shooter franchise
Hahaha i am a medic main and when i see many snipers the vaccinator will do its vest job for no headshots so the sniper is fucked or if i use it on a good sniper he will be invisible until a soldier comes and kills us both lol
THANK YOU! as a sniper main myself I like it when people point out the fact it takes skill to play. I feel like adding a weakness like getting rid of the razorback or nerfing bodyshots would be ok. (PLEASE NO HEADSHOT NERF VALVE!) I also want the jarate bushwaka combo GONE! Even though I main him, I HATE this combo. Using it myself feels cheap.
Go algorithm go! Send this video all across youtube!
The problem with sniper in casual and, especially in competitive setting that isn't 5cp 6s and KOTH is that it's stupid easy to neutralize his weakness of close combat simply by having teammates.
A sniper can make it significantly harder to break through his team's defensive hold while at the same time requiring you to break through his team's defensive hold to get to him as he is the only long ranged class in the game.
You can attempt to go around a sniper's team defensive hold but that bring's it's own issues such as needing to walk past a sentry nest all of which is all rather time consuming, time in which a decent sniper has already killed your medic 3 times. There's also the issue with spy effectiveness diminishes the moment the enemy team know your team has a spy, which is why in Highlander, the only competitive format he ran full time, usually has a low KDR rate and rarely went for kills, instead acts more of an informant.
Which leads to the situation that the most time efficient, effective method and real counter to deal with a sniper is by beating him in long range combat with another sniper.
Sniper is balanced by having really shit mobility and health, obviously, so he can't really keep up with faster classes and it's a lot harder for him to fight them. The problem is Sniper never really is in a 1v1 situation, and often ends up protected pretty fiercely if a team is competent.
There's also the problem where the Sniper synergizes too well with defensive specialists, which makes the weakness of having no consistent close combat ability not an actual problem. This is also why you hear very few complaints about sniper being op in 6s 5cp and koth.
He's extremely powerful in situations where he doesn't have to move or adjust his position much, and is not as oppressive in situations and gamemodes where constant movement is encouraged. Which explains why sniper is very dominating and oppressive outside of competitive 6s 5cp and KOTH to an extent, such as 6s Prolander 7s Prolander and Highlander.
Which technically makes sniper OP, just not in a way that nerfing sniper himself is going to fix. Close range quickscope as bullshit as it is, it's inconsistent. Otherwise sniper would've been dominate in every competitive format, which isn't the case. In fact, most competitive sniper rarely uses quickscope as charged shots are reliable, safe to one shot medics and you're already protected by your teammates to need to worry about tunnel vision.
This is the only good video that explain the actual problem with sniper on youtube, kudos.
Alterative to counter sniper: Trolldier, rocket jump your way quickly behind the whole enemy team and shove a shovel into his brain. As long as you are going fast enough, you will not be hit or noticed by the sniper
As a Sniper Main I can tell you the sound effects for jumping and falling are a lot more audible and noticable than decloaking
“Its lads like you that give war a bad name!”
-demoman to sniper
Well made vid, subbed, high effort and informative, nice job talking about why this class makes me want to die.
i think all sniper rifles in general just need to be nerfed, 150 damage on a headshot is just too much, at least 110 would allow the possibility that they survive
@smelly paws maybe spy should get a new item that protects his head from headshots then since scout already has bonk
if you dont want to watch a 12 minute video about an obvious question:
dying instantly from across the map with no input to counterplay on your end is not fun. compared to other classes in this game sniper is very shallow in terms of depth. all you have to do is aim good.
There is a certain song that perfectly fits most snipers in casual YOU SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND BABY RIGHT ROUND LIKE A RECORD BABY RIGHT ROUND RIGHT ROUND
this is really well made! glad youtube showed me this
i love the one joyful spy in the thumbnail
This is why Snipers shouldn't be the only long-range classes. Almost every class should have long-range options for attacking snipers (Except for classes whose weaknesses literally are their short range)
Simply put, his core design fundamentally unfun to fight against.
It wouldn't be if majority of the cast were also hitscan aka, other shooters. No one complains about sniping being overpowered in most other shooters. In tf2, most things are projectiles with fucking fall off damage while this hitscan class called sniper can insta 150 from across the map, and the head hitboxes are sizes of rectangles.
Another issue with Sniper is that he is almost always effective in any situation when the format is not comp 6 v 6. His damage uptime is whenever he can see someone, so even if he does die. Within seconds of respawning he can get back into the action and instakill more people. When you finally kill a really talented spy, you have breathing room for a bit while the spy has to get back to where they were. I don't want to have to permanently switch to the same class as someone AND perform better than them to be able to play the game based around having lots of options.
Focus was mainly on casual play since that's the go to for a majority of the playerbase but even in 6's he's still somewhat effective.
Issue with him however is that as soon as one person goes Sniper, the other person on the enemy team must also go Sniper to counter him head-on.
It's yet another fight fire with fire situation.
6's is a different story as its not as much as the sniper killing your team, but its more about the sniper causing a bad uber exchange.
Spy punishes bad game sense. Sniper punishes existing.
more like Sniper punishes lacking map knowledge of sightlines
the first thing i saw when i searched tf2. nice video.
i love it when i cant get to 2fort bridge and trapped in my base because theres 4 snipers on their battlements
I agree with Zesty's opinion about quickscoping and with quick scope nerf. (I flanked sniper as pyro, burned himand he just turns and instantly 150 damage and i barely live. He didn;t even saw me aproaching).
“Sniper isn’t balanced”
Everybody with a single brain cell.
i agree with all your points, also as people have mentioned here, the maps in tf2 make it impossible to flank a sniper, so your only option is to get through sightlines
No class is perfect. This explains that perfectly.
The hard counter to Sniper, may not be another class, but a play style, or circumstance, or possibly even the skill of your own team.
I mean at this point I just hate this game and community but you man you take me back to the good times of watching some random ass tf2 videos thanks
?
I'm sorry to hear that. A good portion of the time playing casual there's some stupid idea someones trying that I find and have a really good time with.
Which part of the community?
Same, the only part of the community that I can tolerate are sfm animators
I've heard it being spread around about sniper's lack of a fight. If that is the biggest problem, I would say make him have to interact more, either by lowering maximum charge damage so he actually needs to follow up with something, lower his ammo capacity, make all his rifles tracers, (which I would like if you could have a different effect for each rifle), or even just slowing his game play down with a longer reload and being unable to headshot for a few seconds when scoping. Heck, all of them would work, but if I could pick one I'd say lower headshot damage. Imagine combining a headshot then moving in with the SMG to finish them off.
Genuinely didn't think you made this good of content when you commented. Super impressed & mostly agree (especially with the huntsman lmfao)
I also want to mention something that people never seem to bring up, and that genuinely affects my playstyle in game. I almost never use the jarate anymore because of how long the reload time is. Yeah, it's super powerful, when you actually have it. There are so many times where I jarate combo someone, then someone else just comes over and destroys me. (Or lets say a pyro looked at me funny and now I'm going to die to afterburn)
It's gotten to the point that in pubs, I mainly just take out the kukri and either beg for a crit or do some melee, noscope shit until they die (that's if they miss a lot). And then use the danger shield because "I'm the anti pyro guy and all I do is mald about pyro all day"
Also apparently editing my comment removed the heart lmao my bad
Recently played against a sniper who did nothing but sit at the door on high tower with the machina and just camp the sight of the part where you go up the tower, and it was so annoying
close range quick scoping a scout feels soooooooooo good tho
As much as I hate sniper in general I never get mad at a quickscope.
>Luck, no skill
@@javierriveraparra7429 Yeah why don't you go quickscoping some good scouts. I'll enjoy never hearing back from you
When ever I’m on a trade server having a good time killing and getting killed a sniper joins and spawn kills us, camps in spawn or does both and ruins the fun for all of us
To me, good soldiers, demos, scouts, spies, etc feel like a challenge to fight and if they're stomping me I feel like if I evaluate my play and aim and positioning then I can counter them or atleast stand my ground.
Good snipers just feel oppressive.
My first half of tf2 live was entirely dedicated to killing snipers on community servers like 2fart and orange. As a scout with force-a-nature (strange with killed snipers tracker).
Here is how to deal with sniper bots:
Lock the sniper class off for the first 5 minutes after joining a game.
Would love to see bots just choosing amby spy and get immediately kicked for obvious reasons.
there is a more obvious reason:
lucksman mains,
swatter swagsman bazaar snipers,
the jarate and bushwacka combo,
desert marauder tryhard snipers,
anger snipers who always play that one linkin park song to maximize edginess,
body shotter machina snipers
and aimbot and triggerbot snipers
7:07 never realized it until the ambassador was this close to my face that theirs a figure of a woman on it
I think sniper could use a nerf, but I also think everyone goes overboard by making a whole laundry list of changes that would destroy him. He really only needs 1 or 2 changes to bring him down anyways. My favorite is lowering his primary's reserve ammo to 13-15, which would make him more reliant on ammo pack positions and require him to leave his position (freeing up the sightline) more often. Maybe spy just needs a few buffs so it can become a better counter to sniper, like making cloak remove jarate effects more quickly or higher base health (like 150) so he has more of an advantage in close quarters
With sniper’s new idle taunt (the shooters stakeout) I actually enjoy playing as him for more than I ever did before… Mainly because I’m still doing absolutely nothing to contribute to the game. Only difference is that now I’m not pissing off the other team because rather than instant killing someone from across the map, I’m just sitting in my tent in a high place and watching everything play out while occasionally laughing at it.
0:32 and 2 X’s instead of a C and K
A lot of the problem with Sniper is, as you said, his close range potential. A good sniper (which is usually a lot) can deny anyone from both close and long range. Long range is fine, maybe nerf his quick scoping potential a tad bit to make him require a proper delay (0.2s is not enough) before he gets that 150 headshot, but the close range headshotting garbage is annoying. I wonder if Valve would be able to apply the inverse of the ambassador nerf to the sniper, where the sniper deals less damage the closer a target is. I know it makes no sense that a strong sniper rifle would deal less damage the closer you are, however, it means that a sniper needs to take in his positioning and maximizing his range whenever possible to make sure he's always dealing high amounts of damage. They could be generous with the distance, too, but it would feel a hell of a lot better than literally walking up to a sniper and watching him briefly scope in as you're trying to engage him, making him flinch, only for him to instantly down you to 0 because he headshot you at point blank. However, I doubt anyone would be fine with this change. People would say it's unfair for sniper to not deal that potential damage, and I feel more of the complaints stem down to how he gets guaranteed 150 headshots after 0.2s. You could blink and be dead, basically, lol.
Sniper 2021 on casual: G O O D S H O T M A T E
my one gripe with sniper is unless youre spy you kind of have to basically fight through a team just to get the sniper if he has good positioning but other than that I don't see the hate
Imagining a post-nerf sniper just conjures up images of post-nerf spy. Like sniper mains just trying to salvage the skill they put into the class as if they dropped their bag of skittles on the floor.
0:40 He does have a low skill floor; you only need like one week of practice before you can hit more close range quickscopes than you miss. And long range quickscopes give you more breathing room since the only class that poses a serious threat at that range is another Sniper.
what????? XDDDDD 1 week of practice? someone is dreaming here
@@xi4897 If you spend that week purely focused on aim. Not dodging, not getting from spawn to the battlefield, not listening for spies, but just quick-scope aim on something like tr_walkway, then I imagine it’s entirely possible.
I did something similar for two days and I went from dog shit to average. A week would definitely make you good at quick scoping.
@@thatguythere6161 being able to do it and being good at it is a whole different universe
@@xi4897 Ok, what I meant was, I could hit about 1 out of 5 quick scopes with two days of training, so someone with a week could probably raise that number to 1 out of 2 shots.
I believe it’s possible because you can entirely focus on aim, you don’t have to wait for players, and you can get more headshots in one day that you would all month normally. I don’t get how this is hard to believe
@@thatguythere6161 its not as easy as you think and ppl in casual have potato movement
How to never be backstabbed as sniper:
Turn on sounds so you can hear and track footsteps so a spy walking towards you down the hallway is an easy tell.
I saw Toopy upload a clip where he was fighting a Spy on Upward, got into a pretty intense shootout with him, then when the Spy pulled out the knife to try to finish with a butter, Toopy turned around to force him to hit the Razorback before finishing him off while he was stunned.
Never seen anyone use it as an offensive tool like that. Makes me wonder if there'd be a way to achieve a similar effect with it while also fixing all the problems it currently has. Perhaps make it an active weapon that requires good timing to use?
Good video
Shit editing,mellow voice nice for backrounds,fun video overall.
Got a sub.
Problem with sniper vs spy matches: A sniper can quickscope faster than a spy can put 3 bullets in his back. If the sniper is good at quickscoping the razorback becomes a 100% effective counter to spy. Either stab and die to a machete or shoot and die to a quickscope. The only way to be faster than a quickscope is the diamondback and the enforcer. The ambassador could work too but you're gonna spend some time repositioning your crosshair from head to body or trying your luck. Quickscopes should start at 120 damage instead of 150. That would let the spy ignore the sniper and keep shooting instead of dodging. Worst case you're left with 5hp and need to run for health. But at least you'll be alive. Spy should be a counter to sniper. Spy is a weak class, taking out snipers with ease should be his strength
7:15
"A close range class shouldn't be good at long range"
*The Wrangler, Crossbow, Flaregun, Quickiebomb Launcher, Direct Hit and Cleaver have logged on*
Scorch Shot
"Sniper is the only class within TF2 that actively ruins and drags out games"
Engineer: Are you sure about that?
Exactly
engineers can at least feel satisfying to take down. getting a nest down feels good. a sniper dying feels okay, and the sniper can come back way, way, *way* quicker than an engi can set up their nest.
Engineer nests can at least be taken down by Spies or decent pushes, since you can actually damage a Sentry before dying.
Engineer isnt all that bad to play against but it does come down to where if the enemy team has at least more than 2 engineers thats when the bullshit starts to appear. Im fine with there being less than 2 lv 3 sentries but once you add more than 2 with good placements then thats where engineer gets annoying.
Well yes, but actually no.
Something about your commentary is just super entertaining. Subbed , great video.
You bring up a point here that frustrates me with Sniper classes in a whole range of games - they always tend to have that huge long range advantage, while not exactly suffering as badly in close range as you'd expect.
That and both teams ending up as Snipers and making the game miserable, you could easily have been talking about Battlefield as well!
Overwatch had a similar problem with Hanzo, he had too many advantages, I don't know one person from that community that likes Hanzo
the people that argue that sniper taking skill is a fair argument for him to be effective at close range with quickscopes when it isn’t fair. there’s a clear design issue with him. when you get quickscoped you rage because there was no counter play, or at long ranges you have to die to the sniper to see where he was assuming he doesn’t change spots, and this is why people find the huntsman more fun to play against. instead of raging they’ll say “i should’ve dodged that”. and then there’s jarate bushwacka, sniper having random crits and the ammo pool on every rifle being too large. if someone genuinely thinks that sniper takes time to learn how to play, then pick sydney sleeper or machina and go for bodyshots and instakill high value targets such as medics without even headshotting them
The next problem is how do we go about nerfing the sniper without completely taking away what the class is MEANT to do nor without butchering it to the ground so that sniper is even worse than spy
Remove him being good at close range I would say is pretty balanced. If spy can't have long range sniper shouldnt have close range
Scale back body shot damage, perhaps down to 75 damage,
Give the other classes more tools to cooperatively deal with sniper, without relying on an obnoxious mechanic that ruins the experience of half the classes in the game, (ahem, Vaccinator) like a smoke bomb to cover sight lines, or a Heavy mini gun replacement in the form of a shield that removes his ability to deal massive damage but gives him the ability to absorb more damage,
Decrease sniper’s reserve ammunition to something more reasonable, like twelve shots with a thirteenth in the chamber, and create a short delay between the point where sniper scopes in, and the point where he can deal lethal headshot damage.
Just to start…
@@jebeb6663 My other idea is while in-scope, decrease the accuracy by 30% when moving.
@@emperorfaiz Fuck no
@@niIIer1 Fuck yes
"sniper has no flaws" says the sniper main
In the video talking all about Snipers flaws?
Leaving a comment for the algorithm gods that brought this to me
great videos dude, just watched your vs saxton hale vid. You have some good potential!