[Guide] How to Avoid Death by BASR and Other Sniper Avoidance Tips

Seeing as many people have started to complain about Infiltrators using Sniper rifle weapons, allow me to give you some tips and strategies for avoiding the magical OHK.

1) NEVER stop moving. If you stop, you become another easy kill for any sniper with a BASR. If you have to stop moving (eg. engineers on a turret or medics reviving) try to find areas that provide some cover from the top and sides. Engineers can place their turrets in doorways (farther in making it hard to hit them) or on corners (therefore sniper fire either comes from one side or your back (Headshots through the shield are incredibly hard). If any other non-MAX class stops, its your own fault for getting killed as you are meant to keep moving and have little to no reason to stop.

EDIT: KAHR-Alpha pointed out this does not work in head to head where the sniper is facing the direction you are running. Just "snake" or flank around the sides.

2) If you are either an Engineer or a Medic, you are a target. The minute I see that medic tool or repair gun come out, I stop harassing some poor light assault and shoot for you. Medics come as a priority as they can resurrect an entire platoon if they wanted to. Engineers are the main staple of the Sniper's diet as they are often forced to stand still in those silly turrets. If you get killed by a sniper whilst as an engineer, don't immediately set up another turret, wait for the sniper to fire again (they kinda have to with all of the targets to take out) and then use the turret to harass them (it has an amazing range and accuracy if you burst fire it).

3) Tracers. BASRs have incredibly noticable tracers capable of making any infiltrator cringe. Its not too hard to follow a tracer back to the source, especially if they fire again.

4) Infiltrators have absolutely no anti-vehicle weapons (yet...). If you are tired of being plunked out of your turret, take a lightning with C75 or HE rounds and pummel the crap out of the area you see those miracle tracers come from. Thermal vision is your friend as it can see through the cloak and reveal the infiltrator. Rocketpod them to death or spam them with all sorts of explosive crap that vehicles have. Proximity radar is your friend here as it can detect not only C4 fairies, but also cloaked infiltrators. Thermal/Kobalt harassers can do this with amazing killing power and range (anything with splash was nerfed long ago but you could also try that)

5) Counter-sniping only kinda works if you can do one of two things. If you can pick up a BASR and use it well, then you can counter-snipe. If you can't (don't worry, not everybody can) then ask a friendly infiltrator to go and ruin that sniper's day for you. Be VERY specific so that they can hit the target quickly and effectively. Many snipers enjoy these types of duels as they are very enjoyable.

Snipers are mortals like you and are the premiere anti-infantry specialist (the other is the HA). This all comes from a sniper, and a target (I am on both ends of the spectrum). The number one thing to do is to never stop moving. Snipers that can hit moving targets consistently are few and far between. And remember, Snipers CANNOT do any significant damage to vehicles. If this is well received (or not) I will try and come up with a guide to combat the mighty SMG infiltrator. Have fun ladies and gentleman!

I'm getting tired of the "keep moving" argument as it completely ignores apparent velocities. Headshots on people that mainly move towards or away from you are not that hard.

W+ADADADAD

Yes, I probably should have brought that up. I might be able to edit the OP to include that information. Until then, snaking is a fairly effective tactic for dodging vehicles and Snipers.

All good points, but I think they may have opened a serious can of worms with 300m headshot 1 shot kills.

4- Thermal doesn't see through cloak

Awesome, now Medics and Engineers have an excuse to never stop to revive, repair, or drop ammo for anyone, ever again.

"Sorry, I'm not supposed to stop moving"

Seems like the only way to be sure you're safe from a 300m headshot is to cloak whenever you're going to be exposed. Good thing Infiltrators already have SMGs for CQC.

TL;DR VERSION.

MOVE *****, GET OUT THE WAY!

Are you in the open? Move.

No sniper will ever kill you.

How about you just abandon infantry combat altogether and get back into flaying?

Possibly, but it is not that much better than the AV engineers firing from 300m+. Which, I would say, is arguably more frustrating for more people even though snipers are more common. Is the OHK kinda cheesy? Yes, but mainly in short range where latency prevents reaction to OHK weapons.

I never said they had to not stop moving, only cease stopping (meditool and repair tool do not require you to stand still whilst in use)

Keep moving is not that easy in a tower or big battle, especially with vehicle everywhere, you can eat a explosive round from tanks as soon as you get out of cover so sniper on the other side just rock everything if your side have no air support...

AV turrets are stationary, cant cloak and the missiles leave a trail that point directly back at you... if they keep 300mts OHK rifles, regardless of nanowave, and cap AV turret´s range, then AV turrets will be as popular as flashlights.

This appears to me to be a troll comment, so I will ignore a meaningful retort.

Yes, it is a problem in a tower or big battle, instead I would recommend staying in cover. Also, the tower fight you are describing is the tower-farm, second only to the Bio-farm. In this type of combat, all standard rules of engagement go out the window. This guide is built around common combat in small bases, tech plants, and out in the open. Sadly, many good fights turn to farms because of base design (poor or not is up to you).

So basically to summarize - your methods for dealing with snipers is basically "Run away".

Sounds about right too. Unless you have a skilled counter-sniper there is really nothing your average infantryman can do against a sniper. Thermal scopes no longer detect cloakers so they have no counter so snipers can slip away with ease.

I will assume you mean the vehicle thermal vision. In which case, I was unaware of that. Thank you for the information.

Yep, most infantry weapons are limited to 100m at the very farthest of ranges in use. That is why vehicles or counter snipers are the counters to Infiltrators.

and what do you do with tanks sniping infantry with AP? stand your ground and pull out your AV lockon? No, you zigzag the **** out of there with as much randomness as possible.

My protip: hold W, bump your mouse left/right every 1-2 seconds for anything between 0-45deg. What you want is a total lack of predictability from any possible angle. Sniper looking at you running tries to guesstimate your pattern before taking a shot and if there is none it's all up to luck. Good one will blow your head off even if you ADADADAD if you do it in steady intervals, it's not rocket science to wait with the crosshair pointed at the extremum where the head is going to be in 1s.

You can always switch empires and do some actual infiltrating/reconnaissance to find where they are.

Or for serious, go inside near an objective or where you are adding utility to your team. Long range snipers are highly allergic to either of those things.

I really wish they would have found some way to given Infiltrators the ability to ohk snipe on the condition that they couldn't also use cloak to hide their position.

300m ohk + silencer + cloak, just seems a bit excessive.

I'd like to comment on this specific point too. Everything in this game requires you to slow down if not stop. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.

Interacting with terminals, getting into vehicles, aiming down sights... even hipfiring requires you to slow down a bit