Any character with stealth (although it would make more sense with Gadgets)should have this ability. Activate "Sniper" power on (and ONLY in) your stealth loadout, and you become rooted and switch to crosshair view, and auto-aim becomes disabled. You have to manually center the crosshair on your target, and take the shot, for high damage, with an escalation matrix for WHERE you hit them (obviously a head-shot would do more.) Throw in a burst-fire upgrade at the cost of another skill point, for more damage. Final touch would be the long cooldown (so sniping a boss to death is patently impossible), being pulled out of stealth for taking a second shot from the same place or using the burst fire, and damage would rely SOLELY on the BASE Precision stat, and no buffs would apply. Coolest power-addition ever. Any thoughts?
Two things - A.) This is too convoluted and too ... specific, in this form. You'd basically be insisting on a 'ranged weapon only' character, arguably a Bow or Rifle for the range requirement involved, including the extra coding and the ... somewhat fast pace and shorter range base of most combat and it seems like it would (in the form you're describing above) be too complicated for it to be functionally useful... that statement aside... B.) The underlying concept : a purchasable (or maybe even just innate) Stealth-specific attack ability unique to each weapon would be an interesting addition, as well as providing people with a reason to use Stealth abilities (and right now, unless you're Gadgets there really isn't much of one - as a Mental player with two years under my belt with this as my Primary DPS ability, Invisibility has *NEVER* made it into my character's primary loadout in EITHER Role)... Obviously the question of how powerful or useful you could make it comes to mind since only 2-3 power sets even have a stealth ability... but a single, high-damage weapon-specific 'cheap shot' or 'death blow' type ability with a long cool-down period seems like the sort of thing that would be interesting, useful enough to merit having and restricted enough to keep it from posing an issue to game balance.
Perhaps you are rooted and vulnerable but you stay in normal view, lock on (meaning an animation here) and then fire. I imagine this may be a move a player would ideally use when not under fire and unnoticed. That is part of sniping, being hidden and unnoticed. If a sniper is disturbed then they are likely to lose the shot. Note: the locking on animation could be have a sound being played with it (I prefer sci-fi tech sound). A targeting reticule (bigger than normal) would be placed on the player, like the FOS snipers. The player being locked on would see the reticule on their character. In order to stop the shot the "sniper" would need to be interrupted (lunged, stunned etc). Maybe even just touched slightly depending on how" powerful" this move would be.
I use invisibility after popping a shield, so i don't get immediately knocked visible, to get 6 more power slots to use additional PI's. And the extra attacks in the invisibility 'role' can deal some decent damage as well.
as far as sniping goes, this games combat is very fast paced and too close quartered for that detailed of an aim & root concept. There will probably be some kinda move(s) like that in munitions when it comes out next year, though i doubt it'll have an intricate aim ability. This is a 3rd person action mmorpg not a 1st person shooter with squad level tactics and strategy. In the description of stealth & root, you'd be knocked outta stealth by an AoE b4 you get to aim.
for obvious reasons you would be rooted and 'scoped-in' until the shot was made (regardless of hit or miss), upon which you return to normal movement, and have a certain amount of time to move while still in stealth mode to a different location, or risk losing your stealth. And it would NOT be a range only type. The snipe would be restricted solely to stealth loadout tray, and activated as a power. To take another shot, you would have to wait for the cooldown, and activate the loadout icon again. As stated, taking a shot from the same location would result in automatic loss of stealth. The cooldown and the need to maintain stealth to fire more than once would make using this as a dedicated skillset for the whole duration of any instance highly impractical. It would be best used in critical stages of boss fights (held by tank, or debuffed by troll), when players are dumping orbitals onto the boss for about as much damage as a snipe shot would be expected to do, anyway.
Yeah, I know with Mental's ability (Invisibility) there are two more Abilities specific to the Invisibility loadout, in addition to an automatic damage bonus that results from using basic attacks in Invisibility, in addition to the aforementioned 'six extra loadout spaces'. I haven't played with it much in my current Mental DPS setup but it already recommends some potential usefulness based on those factors alone. I have considered using it more in Controller because of the potential for an addition 6 slots of CC abilities in a loadout (plus I'm interested in how effective Sleep is as a CC maneuver, even though it's single target I'd figure at 2K+ Dominance it would work rather well...
Hrmm, after reconsidering the issue in the light of currently existing 'in-game' mechanisms, I still have the following considerations - I think limiting it to a single-shot sniper style tray ability is a cute potential addition to Gadgets (or a Munitions / Serums loadout *AHEM DEVS*) as an ability, but it doesn't really fit in with the theme or concept of Mental - and I really like the idea of multiple, weapon-specific Stealth / Invisibility 'deathblow' style attacks. After reconsidering mechanism, a lot of the mechanics of a Sniper ability could be stolen from the Ballista daily mission in the Gotham Wastelands; it might need some stripping down to make a smooth transition in the PS3 platform, but 'possible', I could see it. An argument for another super-strong Gadgets-specific DPS ability is hard to make right now, but the 'amusement value' points alone at least make the concept an interesting exercise in potential, if nothing else.
It would seem difficult to perform using a game-controller. As a person would have to aim using one or the other analog sticks, then quickly do a button-combination which enables the power. Unless the game-controller configuration changes during this sniper-mode. Even then, it seems like a lot of effort with a massive amount of risk just to have a temporary first-person shooter. On the Dev-side, they would have to create hit-boxes with the "escalation matrix" for every enemy just for one power for two power-sets. On the player-side, the un-buffed precision-based damage would have to be above the best rotation+combo to even consider using because of the negatives: disabled movement, the change of view, being forced out of stealth, long cooldown, and the risk of missing the target.
Well the Snipe itself being added to the loadout tray could still port over to the Mental Stealth, by making it inherent not to the power-type, but to the Rifle Weapon itself, specifically; available once Mastery is unlocked. It would be cool if all weapons had that little something extra special, for specific power, once Mastery is unlocked, not just "oh, do this combo and toss a power for more damage" For example, Snipe would be only for Mental and Gadgets. For Munitions, the extra weapon-inherent power of rifle would be...let say RPG. Then, back to gadgets and mental. Using Single-handed, that extra something-special would be (again, in stealth mode) "Backstab", or something along those lines... The WHOLE idea being to make any given weapon more interesting by adding just a little more depth to the purpose of each weapon-type's capabilities. Adding ONE thing that: though difficult to pull off, would yield worthy results when successful. Sniping would be an awesome way to introduce a concept like this into the game. Start with the one, and see how players like it. Add more as needed/requested.
Ehhhh, you can't give people just one is the problem there, but that's a different sort of issue. Still, having it be weapon and ability dependent for a conditional attack, that's debatable but it does add spice.
