Pavonis Interactive Forums

Is there a reason to use sharpshooters now?

From my very brief experience with them in LW2 they seem to be hit very hard with the new cover system combined with the new penalty sniper rifles seem to have at medium-close range. Unless a severe height advantage can negate the cover benefits it doesn't seem worth the risk to use one over something like an assault or shinobi that can just as easily guarantee the kill (or more at high ranks).

Am I wrong on this? Or is there a new meta for sharpshooters with LW2?

Sharp shooter's have a holo targeter now
and seem to be there to offer supporting fire and holo targeting for the rest of the troops

I mean that's what it seems like to me right now i could be wrong

They get really good aim and can do devastating damage to enemies whose cover has been removed with a Rocket or Sapper Grenade. Serial (when they get it) is still fantastic for mopup.

Or... you can build them with the holotarget path (which is what I do when I get one with low aim from NCE). A high rank holo sharpshooter is basically a bard - they can buff aim/crit/damage for the squad, stay concealed with phantom, and heal/command (if an officer) troops when they're not holo-ing... all without breaking stealth. It's a fun build.

The trick is not to treat them as enemy deletion machines until they hit max rank, unless you get some great rolls, because high cover (which the AI loves) is a pretty significant defensive bonus.

I find there's two ideal roles for early snipers - ambush starters (pick off a critical target, e.g. sectoid, drone, officer, whatever) or as a tag-team with a sapper grenadier/rocket technical.

Once they're at max rank with AWC perks and have all those levelling bonuses topped off by a custom-tuned gun, all bets are off and most targets are fair game regardless of how much they hide from you.

The second biggest recommendation I can give is to invest at least some resources into a spider/skeleton/whatever-it's-called-now suit. Moving via grappling hook was a free action in vanilla, and you can go a pretty good distance. Extremely useful for getting to vantage points. I don't know if the cost was changed in LW2, but even if it was it's still a nice mobility option to have.

Grapple has a higher cooldown and the Spider is more expensive than the other two armor, but the actual ability works the same - free action. It's really, really good in all sorts of situations.

I've had some success (albeit early in campaign) with higher-mobility sharpshooters with the snap shot perk. Take off a couple of small items, and now they can become fairly potent flanking machines, and able to keep up on faster-paced missions. Even if their initial aim is a little lower (which is more likely with higher mobility -- in my case it was 17 mobility), being able to flank and remove the cover bonus more than makes up for it.

I have found that getting a sharpshooter set up for long range, is really freaking powerful, set them up on a tall building and give them AP rounds, a good scope and other aim increasers and just pick off anything that so much as looks at your soldiers wrong.

The problem with this though is getting them out of dodge when you need to evac, as setting up a sharpshooter as a sniper means evac is almost always farther for them then anyone else which can delay their return.


Also I would recomend the stealth mods from musashi for none snap shot snipers, cause it while it may seem OP it makes the snipers feel more like having an actual sniper.

The problem with this though is getting them out of dodge when you need to evac, as setting up a sharpshooter as a sniper means evac is almost always farther for them then anyone else which can delay their return.

At least they have +2 mobility than vanilla if you only give them one utility item (ammo, you don't need armor since you're too far to get shot at and you don't need grenades since you won't be able to hit anything with them anyways).

Why Sharpshooters don`t have Kill Zone anymore? That most core perk of Sharpshooters is Kill Zone. That perk work very well at kepp teammate safe & killing enemy in distance. However, Gunner, Ranger & Specialist which don`t have Squad Sight get Kill Zone. These class without Squad Sight can`t use Kill Zone well. What is the reasons of removing Kill Zone from SharpShooters? Is it too OP or work too similarity with Serial?

rifleman wrote:Why Sharpshooters don`t have Kill Zone anymore? That most core perk of Sharpshooters is Kill Zone. That perk work very well at kepp teammate safe & killing enemy in distance. However, Gunner, Ranger & Specialist which don`t have Squad Sight get Kill Zone. These class without Squad Sight can`t use Kill Zone well. What is the reasons of removing Kill Zone from SharpShooters? Is it too OP or work too similarity with Serial?

My best guess is they just didn't feel it worked with sniper's as well as gunner's

Though i'd argue Face-off is better than kill zone But that is just opinion based

Sharpshooters seem to play a much different role in LW2, where they excel at a few different areas versus vanilla.

In vanilla, I found myself building mostly gunslingers. In LW2, I feel the sharpshooter is very good with the "assassinate VIP" missions, officers, as well as a haven advisers, and don't really get good until you have higher level weapons and perks.

Area Suppress work very well on crowd control. Although it need 3 ammo to activate，but Gunner could do it every turn without CD. Gunner have both Area Suppress and Killzone, Sharpshooter have neither. What a pity.

Arcalane wrote:The trick is not to treat them as enemy deletion machines until they hit max rank, unless you get some great rolls, because high cover (which the AI loves) is a pretty significant defensive bonus.

I give mine ap rounds and a pistol and leave the third slot empty. Then they work just fine up close to the action. They excel at popping drones through armor, and mecs too. Squad sight plus a pistol means they can always shoot across the battle line or just run and flank. If the enemy is in too much cover then holotarget and help someone else get the kill.

GavinRuneblade wrote:They excel at popping drones through armor, and mecs too.

This is often what I use mine for as well to be honest. Drones are always high-priority targets (any enemy that has control effects should be!) and MECs just love to stand out in the open.

The other thing I sometimes use them for is ADVENT VIP assassination. I'll use a shinobi with Phantom as the spotter, and have my sniper boop the VIP from half the map away. Sniper drops flare, Shinobi bugs out, everyone goes home. It feels like actual wetwork and not this "well we said kill but we really wanted them alive, so you only get partial credit" frowning bullshit from Bradford.

The other thing I sometimes use them for is ADVENT VIP assassination. I'll use a shinobi with Phantom as the spotter, and have my sniper boop the VIP from half the map away. Sniper drops flare, Shinobi bugs out, everyone goes home. It feels like actual wetwork and not this "well we said kill but we really wanted them alive, so you only get partial credit" frowning bullshit from Bradford.

I haven't tested - is there a benefit to capturing vs killing? I always just capture out of habit but if I can just kill the target and get away with the same result then what's up I'll do that instead.