Headshots and Charging

I don't regulary play sniper, but sometimes I just play it to have some fun, or if my team needs one. I'm quite decent at aiming so I regulary get headshots. The problem is that these often don't kill. Especialy on heavies and soldiers.
Since I usually just run around and when I see someone I just scope and aim fast and shoot, so it isn't fully charged.
Then I get a headshot but it doesn't kill, just to get ripped apart a second later.

This whole charging concept just promotes camping? Just sitting on a spot scoped so you're charged? So you can actually kill something? Honestly I think a sniper headshot should just kill anyone, everyone, always. Except when ubered ofcourse.

/Discuss

Well if a sniper could kill absolutely with the head shot, that'd mean that he could essentially stop an attacking force single handedly. By putting in the charging, this means the sniper has to choose his targets.

I mean, imagine if you had a team of people charging on 2Fort. A medic, a heavy, two soldiers, and a demo, just for good measure. And the Sniper was sitting in the doorway (not the battlements). Considering how fast it takes to prepare a second shot, if the sniper is good, he could kill them all in seven or so seconds if all headshots were instakill. Of course this is assuming the people are mentally retarded and don't see the sniper for some reason, but still everyone is dead on the ground in the course of a few seconds and a single person has stopped an enemy rush all by his lonesome.

With the charging though, the sniper has to take more time killing everyone, therefore increasing the chances of the force actually reaching the base. If the sniper does so quickly, he'll kill the demo and the medic, and then he needs to focus his attempts and wait to take out the stronger soldiers and heavy. However, taking out the medic is pretty good and benefits his team a lot, and the same with the demo. If the medic was a good medic, he'd have everyone in the group buffed kinda, so you might not even kill the demo, but the medic is dead and if you pass headshots evenly, everyone has lost a good portion of there health and they have no medic to help them regain it.

What I'm trying to say here is that headshot instakills would be way to overpowered, while incorporating the charging gives the game a nice balance.

Just wait a few seconds, even a half charge will kill a heavy in a headshot. Charging prevents noscoping and thus prevents snipers from walking out infront of a heavy or pyro at point blank range and still kill them. Headshots when zoomed in should deal tremendous damage, and they do (~150).

Snipers are ment to sit back out of the action and deal damage from behind. Its class-based action, if you dont like the way the sniper plays out now then pick a different class.

quick scopes do 150 dmg. if headshots and fully charged do 450...


So you can take out a good deal of the classes with quick scopes unless they have a med.

The charging makes it MUCH harder

Wait, so to clarify...

A sniper scoping in and firing an enemy in the head immediately only does exactly 150 damage?  And is that a critical hit?  Doesn't that mean you can't kill enemies with a headshot if they have more than 150 health and you have to wait no matter how skilled you are at getting headshots?

No. If you spend less than 1 second inscope than you will do 150 damage. The longer you wait inscope for the charge to build, the more damage you do.

Basically, the sniper rifle works like this.

Unscoped Damage: 50
------charging time-----
Fully-Charged Damage: 150

Headshots do 3x damage. If I wait 4 seconds (1/2 way to full charge) my shot will do 100 damage, 300 if its a headshot.

Charging actually hurts your DPS, so I wouldn't charge after the first shot except for medic boosted enemies (better to take them out all at once obviously). For example, for a lone heavy if my charge isn't up, I'll usually just fire 2 shots since it takes 8 seconds to fully charge.

Quote:

Is it not 3 seconds to charge.  I dont think dps really matters in this game.  If you can only get in one good shot, i would advise charging a little more, especially if you want to take out a demo or a solly.

I want charged shots to have penetration. Like if you headshot a guy and another guy is standing behind him, it can hit the other guy too. Maybe penetrate thin walls too.