What if stalkers had sniper attacks?

Just theorizing here... please hold your meltdowns for later! Just speaking from my experience.

Stalkers currently have an extremely narrow role in PvE. There is little reason to take a Stalker onto your team (or SG) instead of a Scrapper or Brute, when they produce less overall damage and are more squishy, and can Placate an angry monster onto the team's defender. Increasing Stalkers' combat stats even more is not an answer, because then they'll just be Scrappers who have free Hide and AS. So there must be some other way of making Stalkers a distinctive AT, right?

Enter sniper attacks. After all, what is the class symbol of Stalkers? A set of crosshairs! And think of the PPD Ghost making sniper stealth strikes. Why can't the Stalker be a special forces type of character who can use multiple tools to take down a target? And not just one attack from an epic pool either at level 41+. There is no reason why a sniper rifle can't be a core part of an assassin's arsenal. (I mean, come on... DEADPOOL! Who doesn't want to be DEADPOOL! )

Solution: Make 2-4 sniper attacks available for training, at the stalker's option. The "sniper set" may depend on the stalker's primary, or may be selectable as a separate pool. (The epic ATs have shown that it's ok to have more than 9 powers per powerset without the world ending.) Either way, group the sniper attacks in their own separate box. If the player chooses to take sniper powers, then great. If not, then absolutely nothing is changed with his character whatsoever. The powers could be available at levels 8, 12 and 26, as an example.

Stalkers who open with a snipe attack from hiding get a Stealth Strike crit. Such an attack might not even break Hide... although this would obviously have to be carefully balanced, especially for PvP... An initial sniper barrage would be a great advantage for the team. Trying to maintain an attack cycle with sniper attacks would be inefficient compared to a pure ranged class, but would certainly give the Stalker options not enjoyed by his bigger cousin, the Scrapper.

Finally, this would create a market for Sniper powers and IOs that doesn't really exist right now. Stalkers would truly have their own niche as Assassin/Ghost/Splinter Cell agents who can kill at range and at melee, while still being nice and squishy compared to Scrappers and Brutes.

Example sets:

SNIPER RIFLE: This non-magic set uses only the assassin's hardware and keen eye to make the kill, rather than supernatural powers.
1. Body Shot: Works like the generic "Sniper Rifle" power from AR. Lethal damage. Knocks the victim back.
2. Leg Shot: Less damage, but snares the victim.
3. Head Shot: Increased damage; stun secondary effect; longer interrupt time; worse accuracy.

DARK LANCES: Use the power of the Netherworld to eliminate your foes from range.
1. Moonbeam: like the Dark Blast attack. -ToHit.
2. Nightbeam: Inflicts less damage, but gives -Perception as well as -ToHit.
3. Dreadbeam: Inflicts massive damage over time. No secondary effect.

Thanks for reading this!

Stalkers do have Sniper attacks, in the patron pools.

As others have said, Stalkers can get this already. The stats on what they can get are fairly atrocious because of the extremely long cast time. However, even if they were given cast times in line with the sniper blasts found in other non-pool powersets, and even if they were given in those powersets, I do not think they would be very popular, because sniper blasts have such low popularity even on ATs like Blasters. Again, this has to do with the amount of damage these attacks deliver compared to their activation times and the fact that they can be interrupted. Essentially, you can only consistently use a sniper blast at the opening of a fight. In the time it takes to activate one, you usually could have done more damage with a brief chain of other attacks.

Having sniper attacks with other debuffs attached is probably seems interesting, but there are other ATs that can do that much better on many more foes at once.

LOL I was going to create a thread about how sucky Stalker's Snipes are. It takes almost 8s to cast/interruption!!!! And the damage isn't even that good after critical. It is just terrible IMO.

Snipe in general is just poorly designed. You don't need a snipe to pull. Most range attacks can pull well as long as the attacks don't knockback because once it knockbacks, the whole mob is alerted (which makes Energy and Assault Rifle snipe one of the worst to pull).

I wish they could just get rid of interrupt or shorten casting time.

To OP, if your stalker wants range attack, Dark Blast is way superior.

You are more than welcome to try snipe on Stalker. I guarantee you that you will want to respec out. :P

I thought snipe with critical could do very impressive damage.. oh my, was I wrong. I think Stalker's Range damage modifier is pretty low? I think build up + critical impale does more damage than snipe? It's been at least 2 years since the last time I tried Stalker's snipe.

I use sniper attacks all the time, and I'm quite aware that I'm unusual. In general because the animation time of a sniper attack is so long, most people consider them inferior because they cannot be used in a sustained attack chain without lowering DPS.

It's the old burst damage vs sustained damage argument. Unfortunately, in 9 cases out of 10, the sustained damage will win.

The only reason Assassin Strike itself is considered acceptable is that it has 1 second less interrupt time, and thus has a DPS which is comparable to other attacks, even when preceeded by a Placate.

Did the discussion shift to the usefulness of snipes? Really, the people that don't like snipes won't like them no matter how you change them unless you just make them normal attacks that do big damage. No amount of utility will justify it for them.

For me, I take snipes if they're decent and I have space for them. This includes Mace Beam on my Spines/DA stalker. They're handy in the situations of killing off a target and running. There's certain situations where there are several annoying mobs in a group (Rouge PPD?) where 1-shotting them and turning a corner to get away might be useful....but it's very situational.

Personally, I don't have a problem with snipes and I feel more people would take them if 1 change was made to them: Make them look amazingly cool. I already take snipes occasionally, but if they looked super cool too, I'd probably go out of my way to use it more often.

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Originally Posted by MayorOfAngrytown I like this idea conceptually, would be interesting as an option for a melee set based on attacking pressure points, joints, weak areas of the body. Plenty of martial art styles that include or are centered on such tactics. I don't see it as too unbalancing for the AT, it's just giving them a primary with a choice of mitigation based on conditions. Maybe if it were added to all stalker primarys, that might be overboard - but basing a stalked unique set off it the idea, that sounds pretty sweet. Besides, since all of those debuffs are going to be much weaker than ones from support ATs, how out of balance could it get?

The idea was for the toggles to be inherent. So any Stalker could aim at specific points on the body. The balance would probably come set by set. You could make certain sets particularly good with either A: body or A: legs (I could imagine aiming legs for Spines would be good since the spines set is already built to snare) or you can use the aims to balance the sets better, evening out their utility by doling out the extras more knowingly.

I've always rather liked snipes. You can generally one-shot troublesome minions (SAPPERS!) and two-shot LT's (or even some bosses) which is handy on a blaster, where you're working on small marigins.

It's less useful for a stalker though, since they already have excessively powerful alpha-striek capability.

The rare Sniper IO sets are also fairly good.

My Empathy/Psi Defender, White-Swan uses her snipe most of all. Psi Lance is pretty good. I love it so much I actually maxed it, and put in a sniper set which was cheap to purchase.

I find that I use it a ton. Sure it's slow, but when you have a tank and a few others taking aggro, it's a solid power. And with Empathy I appreciate the damage it brings.

I think the concern though, and I could be wrong about the sniper attacks for stalkers would be in early game PVP. I think that is where it might be the main issue. Plus the damage would have to be slightly less than the Assassins srtike type of attacks. Otherwise it would detract from using those types of attacks. With the Stalker being squishy no one would take the melee attacks, because they are actually or feel just as long as snipes.