So you are saying that the vandal made long range engagements effortless for you while remaining profitable? I think that the vandal just works well with the playstyle and positioning you were using. I agree that the vandal is powerful as an sasr. The ads movement speed and damage is over scaled because the gun has 15 shots in the clip. The es sasr rifles have 10 shots in the clip. Why the NS weapon has the TR trait of more daka when the tr version doesn't have that I don't know, but its why the weapon is so good by comparison to other sasr rifles.
Iridar, you of all people should know what happens to the thought of long rage combat once you annoy a LA that knows what their doing.
Unless he's suiciding, there's no option for him to get to me. I'm surrounded by people, walls and 50m motion spotter. Heck, motion spotter alone is enough to hard counter LA.
On the other hand, Sensor shield is a hard-ish counter to motion spotter. When you approach the location where you expect the infiltrator to be, stop using jetpack and stop sprinting just in case there's a motion spotter. If he didn't see you approach thus far, he's done meat.
Think if you were the enemy. How would you get rid of that infil . True, heavy isn't a real class. It's only a beef'd up self-controlling decoy grenade. If you don't care about your team, you should still care about score per hour $_$ certs.
Sensor shield just doesn't work for LA. If you can't use Jet Pack, then you might as well be any other class. Sure, there might be situations where LA can use Jet Pack to get into position 50m+ away, and THEN try to just walk in there, but that's not a universal solution. And even then, again, walls and other people. Sure LA can pick off a single sniper on a hill, motion spotter or no, but when that infil is among other people, and perhaps in cover / building? Nope. I'd try to snipe him with a BASR, that's pretty much the only option, though it's made harder just by strafing all the time, which of course results in worse accuracy and less kills. However, if I didn't piss off anyone in particular, I think snipers will have better targets to go for, unless they're specifically trying to counter infiltrators, and I have to admit I enjoy doing that myself, and I imagine so do many other infils. I haven't played with this enough to compare how many kills I get from this and from simply playing LA, but I felt like it was pretty much the same.
You could say the same about sniping from the spawn room. Whether you're surrounded by shields or allies, you're not really at risk.
Here's what I think ADADsing is genrally a good way to make it harder to hit you, however it never makes it impossible and a good sniper will hit you nevertheless (not necessarily headshot, though). This requires a lot of practice but can be done and I can actually pull it off quite frequently When an enemy is ADADsing you have to measure the time between changing directions. If it's longer than the bullet travel time +0.2 sec reaction time( ~0.5 s at normal sniping ranges using the 650m/s sniper rifle) then you have to wait for him to change the direction he moves. If he moves left and you know he's ADADsing just put your crosshair on the right, adjust for his movement speed and bullet drop and take the shot once he changes directions and vice versa.You can even attempt aiming for the head although I don't advice doing so. If it's significantly shorter than the bullet travel time + reaction time (enemy basically spams ADAD as fast as he can) then just aim in the middle and you have a great chance of hitting, just don't aim for the head. If it's a bit shorter than the reaction time you're better off not shooting unless you really have to. And finaly it's much easier to hit someone ADADsing with a long range auto/burst fire weapon like the gauss saw
Sure, but at the same time, Motion Spotter isn't just a counter to LA; it's a counter to the surprise factor of any enemy regardless of class. Infiltrators are countered perhaps even more so than LA's, but that's besides the point. A skilled Infiltrator can use MS to considerable advantage against any class, but you can use Sensor Shield to negate MS pretty effectively as any class, which means MS isn't a hard counter, more of a soft counter. It wouldn't even be a hard counter to LA without Sensor Shield: it's not like MS makes you unable to use jetpack. You can knowingly take the risk of using the jetpack even when your location is known, and still turn that into an advantage; in fact, you already do that frequently against enemies who have spotted you. Three examples: 1. You can gain height advantaged position where it will be easier for you to pick a fight and retreat to cover if needed. 2. You can attack from a position where the infiltrator has no escape and you'll force him to take a fight that's unfavorable to him. 3. You can quickly cut the distance short and deny the infiltrator's escape, works best with CQC weaponry. Of course, he could expect that, but he could also expect you to be cautious because of the Motion Spotter. The point with these examples is that mobility remains a useful tool against infiltrators even if they have spotted you; all other classes would always have to take the obvious route, make the obvious decisions and remain in a disadvantaged position. Of course, all this assumes that the infiltrator is not surrounded by many more enemies. In such a case, counter sniping is usually the best option, but terrain and base design can sometimes allow for flanking that group from a longer distance with a mid-long range carbine and/or grenades.
Vandal is an outlier. .....we saw this in it's first week of release when we were all watching those stats like hawks.
All weapons have their sweet spots. "Effortless" in videogames is subjective. Ever since the map hac.. I mean motion sensor was added I maxxed that out and haven't put down my SMG since. At the end of the night, you move the mouse around a little bit and click down with your finger. When sniping you do press your finger down less often, so I guess its considerably less effort. Itt just do it if you enjoy it.
I'm not at all surprised you felt it was effortless. You had four big things going for you. 1.) Construction sites are one of the most favorable bases for marksmen: You're high up on a big platform where two of your most common and deadly enemies in the surrounding area (snipers and ground vehicles) can't see or attack you. Your enemies are all attacking from one direction - the other end of the platform, almost the entirety of which is within range of your weapon. The platform itself makes it very difficult for enemies to reach you from any direction but in front of you, so you're at very little risk of getting flanked and surprised by a CQC LA or infil from behind. The spawn area is raised higher than the rest of the platform and has a balcony overlooking the platform in front of it, further decrease the chance of a surprise attack. There's a long, narrow balcony running the whole length of the base on each side, both of which become giant bottlenecks to funnel potential targets/threats into a narrow space. The cap point is one huge room with a balcony on either side that are great perches and are far enough away from their opposite entrance to make it difficult for enemies w/ CQC weapons to fire back at you. 2.) You're playing Infil, which is the best class for a marksman due to your cloak. It let's you flank, get into position, and line up shots while remaining essentially unseen. And if you're spotted you can just cloak and reposition or leave. 3.) You're using the Vandal, arguably the best mid-range marksman rifle in the game. Them main thing that sets it apart from the others is the .75x ADS movement, which makes it tough for your greatest threat (enemy snipers) to kill you. But it has other things going for it as well: 2-headshot kills at any range, maintains good accuracy on the move, good hipfire CoF and fast TTK for CQC work should you need it (TTK is between the Orion and VX6-7 w/in 15m). Its only downside is that it's been stuck w/ the crappy TR sights/scopes. But that will be remedied in the next patch the week. 4.) You were in a 96+ vs 96+ fight, which means there are plenty of other targets for the enemy to shoot at that are closer to them and thus a higher priority to most, and that can't cloak. People don't expect to be attacked at marksman ranges by someone that's not a sniper, and snipers are usually up in the surrounding hills and trees, and not right behind the troops that are attacking them. Anonymity is one of the marksman's biggest tools, and you put yourself in one of the better places to be ignored by the enemy. Take away any one of the above advantages and it can become much, much more difficult - and dangerous - to be a marksman.
Good breakdown, Erendil, and you're right. I still want to eventually try the same playstyle in other venues, though.
Certainly, and by all means. The marksman is by far my favorite role in PS2. But there are far too few of us and I encourage anyone who wants to try it out do to so. Even if it is as an Oppressive Fascist. I generally stick to HA or Engie (because Eidolon+ unlimited ammo, or Eidolon+Lancer) but have had a huge amount of fun going infil/Nyx as well (soon to be infil/Vandal now that the new NS scopes and crosshair fixes are coming out).The sense of freedom and security that comes with being able to cloak lets you operate in many scenarios that would be difficult and/or somewhat limited in scope for an HA or Engie, and the extra mobility the cloak allows makes that setup quite addicting. Most of my deaths as an Engie/HA marksman have come while I was moving between cover, getting into position, or partly exposed while scanning for targets. None of that is really an issue for cloakers. When going Infil/Nyx, usually the only issue I ran into was running out of ammo.
