Wait, are you saying that the FEL-IX needs to lose ANOTHER bullet in the mag and have an even SLOWER rate of fire? Cause that’s not going to help its status as the unused rifle…[/quote]
Read the other changes in regards to the Moa. I don’t want to see the FEL IX nerfed the way it is now with the current Moa having the properties it has. If you nerf the Moa without changing something with the FEL IX it will simply become the new standard as opposed to being a meaningful choice. The FEL IX sucks now since the Moa can headshot. But if the Moa loses that then it just becomes the new Moa with only a small loss. But if you nerf the FEL IX a bit more (not a ton) then it becomes the big heavy hitter rifle, the Moa is the medium hitter and the PDP is the hallway/cqc suppressor.[/quote]
…But at the moment Vassili is pretty well balanced in terms of mercs (not in terms of his variety of weapons/loadouts) - there’s no reason to need to nerf the FEL-IX at all. I don’t see your logic at all.
And you’ve been mentioning the “headshot gib issues at the highest levels of competition with the Moa”… I don’t think anyone has been complaining about those “issues” in competitive play. In fact, it makes Vassili fill a niche gap - being good against teams with good medics, but it doesn’t in any way make him overpowered and requiring of a nerf.[/quote]
Pretty much every single one of the high end Vassili players that played DB in the Dirty Cups agree that the instant gib on Moa headshots is ridiculous and most agree it should be removed. It’s just too good at the high level with a super competent player as it is a deciding factor in many matches. I’m not talking about ranked matchmaking. I’m talking about tournament cups and the players who have won/placed highly in them.
If you don’t touch the FEL IX (slightly slower re-chamber time and 1 less round in the mag would be my suggestion) it would mean it would just become the new competitive standard and replace the Moa. But nerfing it slightly makes you have to think about it a bit more and would separate the three rifles quite a bit and let people specialize. You can disagree with the need to nerf but I’m pretty confident in my logic. I’d personally be fine with buffing the FEL-IX’s headshot damage to make sure it could headshot even Rhino (200hp) and Thunder (160HP) to help offset the slight nerfs and emphasize it being the heavy hitter sniper rifle.
Sounds nice, but they would have to get rid of the moving and “rotating” corpses first. Atm trying to hit some corpse’s head you only killed with a bodyshot before the medic is reviving, is often quite some… thing.
But I really think, that’s some point to distinguish the snipers, after they know where to go with the let’s say “maximum power” for a specific weapon-class, like the whole smg-stuff they are doing atm, without making them all the same.
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Rotating corpses was mostly removed a few patches ago. Where have you been? 
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Is the insta-gib on the MOA so good that if we removed that insta-gib ALL the pros would use the FEL-IX isntead? I kind of assumed that if the MOA’s insta-gib was removed then it would be an equal trade off between the two rifles, in both competitive and public gameplay.[/quote]
If insta-gibs were removed entirely the FEL IX would be in the same position it is now…a crappy version of the Moa. Leaving insta-gibs but making it the heavy hitter would make people have legit reasons for using it right now compared to the Moa while also not making it just the replacement for the Moa on competitive levels. And after thinking about it I really like the idea of buffing the FEL-IX’s headshot damage to let it kill Rhino and Thunder’s to further differentiate it AND offset the other minor nerfs. I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t even gib a Rhino or Thunder but did put them down while gibbing the rest.[/quote]
Did you think that I was suggesting that the insta-gib abilities were removed from BOTH bolt actions? Because I didn’t - I said MOA only.