Fargen Icehole wrote:I'll be the first to say, I'm a decent sniper... but by NO means would I call myself a good sniper. That said, I can tell you from my personal experience, and from a buddy who does snipe a lot (and is a good one) that mobility is necessary, quite often.
I've never found this to be the case, and can make a few points about why it's not correct to say that moving around a lot is better than being stationary:
First, when you move you expose yourself to enemy snipers. If they can aim you'll potentially get killed. At best you'll simply expose your location and let enemy snipers line you up for when you start trying to snipe too.
Second, nano hives are limited and you can't pick them up. Leaving nano hives lying around would be a bit of a waste and require you to find a depot fairly often to reload your fit and get more ammo/hives to keep sniping. This plays into the first point, as people often die at depots to enemy snipers, and also plays into the third point. Which is...
When you're moving, you aren't sniping. The more time you spend running around like a goofball, the less you're sniping. There are allies being killed and points being captured you could have done something about if you weren't wandering around the map. You can't be an effective sniper if you spend more time moving than you do sniping.
In the end, the best strategy really is to find an effective vantage point and snipe until the battle moves elsewhere, or it becomes too dangerous to keep sniping there, or whatever. If you get a good location, you will be safe, you'll have a clear view of a high-traffic area and ideally at least one objective, and you'll be able to lay down a hive and keep sniping all game. If your position is good, you won't need to move to avoid enemy snipers, because they won't be able to engage you, and enemy infantry won't be able to reach you, either, because they'd have to run through your entire team and all your side's snipers to get in range of you.
Some snipers like to run around. That's cool, knock yourself out if you find it more enjoyable than camping. But, at least in my experience, I've never done anything like as well running around as I have being stationary. I am not kidding when I write that being a sniper in Dust is the safest, most powerful, and least demanding way of playing the game.