Ok, enough with the sniper hate circle jerk. Let’s take it back a step and chill… All points I am making are through personal experience in organized 5v5s, not pubs…
Sniping
We are all familiar with the concept; almost all games have some sort of ‘marksman’ role that rewards players for being more precise with their shooting. Sniping in most other games can be seen as pretty stale and even lame in some circumstances. Usually a sniper is a one shot body shot, the sniper is very immobile while scoped, and as a result, has to resort to camping and staying away from all danger, making the sniper sometimes useless against smart players. Sounds boring right? It’s boring to watch and play.
This is where I was pleasantly surprised when I started playing Dirty Bomb (DB). When I first picked up the game, I always thought sniping was going to be useless, because of how hard it seemed to hit all these mercs moving very erratically, because, after all, the both of the bolt action snipers take several body shots to kill and the head is a small target. After one of the better instances of the beta (with almost all of the mercs), I found myself playing Vassili religiously. I was hooked. I loved exploring new ways to innovate sniping to make it even more potent and interesting to use – I was the first one to start bunny jumping while sniping. To me, I was in my own world, where only my ability to click dots was the limit; I wasn’t inhibited by aimpunch, scope sway, or any other RNG (anti-skill) mechanic. It was a ****ing blast.
Of course I can still player all the other mercs at a high level, but Vassili was always the one that felt the most rewarding (not just because of instagibbing), and as a result, I almost never switched off of him. Almost every day, I would practice and practice, for hours on end just trying to get more consistent at headshotting, because back then, there was no skill ceiling for sniping.
Last patch took a dark turn though.
As you all know, Vassili was silently nerfed for the worse, but before we go into how he was nerfed, let’s brush up on why he was nerfed.
Wait, why was he nerfed in the first place?
I mean really, the status-quo right now for competitive 5v5 is almost always as follows:
2xFragger
2xSawbonez (aura stations are pretty terrible for attacking now)
1xUtility (Proxy, Nader, Sky, Vassili)
I tried to make Vassili not a utility and niche class. I really did. I would switch on and off from Vassili to Fragger when I stopped hitting my shots, but at times, it was just too difficult to keep up with the k121 and frag grenades, as crouchspamming and aimpunch still exist. Vassili doesn’t even offer any, if at all, utility to the team. He is a pure fragging role. Spotting can only do so much, but the maps, as they are now, have very few attack routes to cover, so the heartbeat is only useful for knowing when an enemy is going to peek. The heartbeat is by no means a game-changing ability.
So right now, you see almost no snipers on both teams, and if you do, their performance is not up to par to any other frag heavy class. The only real reason to pick Vassili, is because he instagibs on a headshot. If you get rid of that attribute, you will literally make him the most deadweight class in a game. Why the **** do you want 100 hp, a sniper rifle on cqc maps, and a ****ty ability when you can just go 150 hp fragger with the k121 and nades? Nades have a pretty low skill cap anyways, and even they instagib (whole teams) for christ’s sake.
So who here can really justify nerfing Vassili? I can bet money that you guys have never sniped Vs. Hubris, v586, zfz, f8, ect… like I have now you? Even at my tip top performance in scrims I have never been able to fully achieve the impact that I am expecting. It’s just not worth it to snipe. This is
coming from a guy who ONLY snipes!
I’ve said this a hundred times before: any nerf to Vassili will make him useless in a competitive 5v5 settings, as he is a risky pick that requires a high level of effort and luck to be useful.
In the end, it becomes not worth it to take a sniper over say, a 2nd fragger, or a skyhammner, and even nader now that she is in the mix. Instagibbing was the only thing that kept Vassili somewhat viable, but they didn’t even remove that, they just made his sniping too RNG dependent now.
Scope sway is probably the worst thing that SD could have ever done to balance snipers (I still stand by that they needed no balancing, we haven’t even had a ****ing tournament for god sakes, you guys really believe that the team with a sniper would have won? Of course not, most people just think it’s lame to be taken out of a battle instantly for bad game sense.
Scope sway, jump scope sway, and aimpunch all add randomness and limit the skill cap of sniping. Things like jump sniping, aggressive and mobile sniping, and bunny jump sniping are all viable and skillful mechanics that I believe add depth to the combat in the game.
As it is right now, I refuse to play Vassili anymore, it’s just too frustrating to play like a stationary turret. I loved dirty bomb, because I was gladly rewarded for having good movement and good flick aim. I played Vassili non-stop for months, and now I just don’t want to deal with all the bull****. Limiting skill is the last thing that anybody wants…
:stroggbanana: :stroggbanana: :stroggbanana: :stroggbanana: :stroggbanana:
