George Moros wrote:The headshot argument is ridiculous.
You can only get headshots on a distant moving target by sheer chance. Even if it's a heavy suit, you're usually talking about a 1 pixel margin of error in order to get a hit. The only reliable headshots a sniper can get are noobs (you won't find those in PC) and other snipers (which usually don't need a headshot to take down anyway).
The problem is that sniper rifle damage doesn't scale proportionally with dropsuit tank as you move up through tiers/meta levels. That's the reason you can get 30-40 kills per match in some fights and maybe 2-3 kills and a couple of assists in others. Taking down a skilled proto assault player is next to impossible with a single clip of ammo, assuming the proto guy is at full health and not sleeping/answering the phone.
And if you need to be fully specced in snipers, use a freakin' officer weapon and a full stack of complex damage mods to be somewhat effective sniper in top-level matches, it is a clear indication that something is wrong with game balance.
Long post incoming as I fell there's several points to address. Also Tal-Rakken's post just below yours have some really great points in it as well.
Headshots to hard:Well, I don't know really, maybe you're just not good enough? I don't mean to offend you, but of course some players are better than others, and it doesn't really seem like the best snipers in this game have the same problems as you.
If you can't hit them from the redline (as it sounds like you're just sitting in the redline), maybe move up a little?
Proto suits need too many shots to kill:The Ishukone does about 350 damage and about 600 headshot damage, which means that you can kill any non-heavy in 3 bodyshots no matter how many extenders and plates they have. Add in some headshots in that equation and you can kill them in 2 shots. Is that too many shots needed? Personally I don't think so, especially not with the way the maps are set up. Snipers can cover a lot of areas at the same time, so they should absolutely not be able to almost instant kill anyone (except for scouts to some degree).
The snipers don't scale enough between the tiers:This part I can actually understand your concerns. It's not a problem for snipers only, but for weapons like the shotgun as well. The militia/standard shotgun is not that much worse than the proto one, so in a lot of cases you don't really have to use the proto one.
However all weapons (except for only the laser rifle as far as I know) increases by 5% damage between each tier. Back in the closed beta they increased by 10%. This is something that I do find a little odd. It might be perfectly balanced for some weapons, but for weapons like the sniper and shotgun I can see it might be a problem. The militia/standard sniper is just fine, but I can see that the advanced and proto might could use a very slight buff.
For them to get that CCP needs to go away from all weapons getting the same damage increase between the tiers.
Need to be fully specced into snipers and use damage mods to be useful as sniper:I don't know why this would be a problem to be honest. Do you want to give the snipers a damage buff, so that when you DO have proficiency 5 and use a Thale's with five damage mods you do 1000 damage for bodyshots?
It's exactly set up so that it's balanced when you're at the top level as well. Why would a sniper not use as many damage mods as possible (also by previous numbers the fourth and fifth damage mod don't add an insane amount of damage, so you can still just use three damage mods)?