How to be godly with a sniper... tutorial

[dm.mossberg590a1]

I used to hate sniper guns very much, usually because they were unwieldy at close range. However, I have figured out a lot of the "tricks" that make snipers godly.

1. Zoom your scope to the specific situation using /scopezoom. In close combat maps like douze, /scopezoom 1 usually does the trick. In farther away maps, you might want /scopezoom 400 (maximum scope). /scopezoom 1 is godly at close range because there is no zoom it is just like looking through iron sights.

EDIT: You can now zoom using the mouse wheel, but /scopezoom sets the default scope zoom so I personally prefer the 1x scope due to the fact that you can zoom so easily now.

2. Do not use the default scope! That scope actually has black in it to limit your peripheral vision! Download a paint editor that supports transparency like Paint.NET or GIMP and remove the black part. Here is my scope....



Anyway, you see that with my scope there is very little loss of peripheral vision making it godly at close range. It basically turns the Barrett into almost a shotgun shooting one hit kill slugs.

3. At close range, you can just crouch and spam bullets hip fire. This works well for both the M21 and the Barrett (Barrett is good with 2-3 round bursts hip fire). It does take a while to scope so its better to quickly put down the enemy.

4. Perks: Hands and Steady for both Barrett and M21, Time for Cheytac. Barrett practically needs Hands/Steady for fast followup shots. Same with M21.

5. Use the Barrett jump to quickly move between maps, go over huge cliffs, scale wall, etc... The Barrett jump is one of the most useful things in the game it allows you to exploit special hiding spots in maps like Hotel.

I personally like the Barrett because with Hands/Steady it is almost just as fast for followup shots as the M21 and it one hit kill and it can do the Barrett jump.

EDIT: I found more things to add to this tutorial.

1. Release 2.5.9 changed a few things: now you can easily zoom using the mouse scroll wheel. Also you can have the option of a red dot sight, and the red dot sight works in scopes too. The M21 also has a larger capacity so you don't have to reload so much.

2. You can snipe people from across an incredibly long sniper map with 1x scope. How is that possible? Look closely at my scope picture. I have a black pistol sight, a white circle, and a red dot. The white circle is the sniper scope sight picture, and the red dot is the red dot sight. When you use any one of the white sniper scopes when you are aiming perfectly at the target, it glows red. So you don't even have to zoom if you fire exactly when the scope picture (in my case the circle) glows red. This is good when you don't have time to zoom, or don't want to because other enemies are close by. This doesn't work in hardcore, but it is a useful technique in normal deathmatches (which are 90% of the types of gameplay you will run into).

An unlucky bot is about to be fragged by my Cheytac. Why do I know? Because the circle (my scope picture) is red.


3. There is no penalty for moving or jumping while scoping so do that often. If an enemy is moving in a certain direction, you can move in the opposite direction as the enemy while turning in the same direction as the enemy. That way you can keep your scope ahead of the enemy but slowly bring it towards the enemy while moving at the same velocity as the enemy. I found that moving in the same direction as the enemy makes it so your scope will be too far ahead of the enemy all the time. You end up moving the scope in the opposite direction of the enemy but that is unintuitive. It is better to move oppositely but turn in the same direction.

4. Adjust your scope based on your situation. If you are going in large and open terrain, then magnify the scope until it feels comfortable. If you are going into a close combat area, then don't forget to zoom your scope back to 1x. Remember you can always take long shots in normal deathmatches with a 1x scope if you have to, but using a highly magnified scope in a close combat situation is not a good idea.

5. Don't hardscope for long periods of time! You are actually usually more accurate at close range by not scoping right away! Its usually better to get the target centered in your hipfire crosshairs (and if the target is moving, move the crosshairs along with the target), and then scope. Then the scope will go straight to the enemy and you can fire. Otherwise you will have to deal with moving around a slow scope picture and trying to hit a moving target. Basically, hardscoping for long periods of time can actually be detrimental to accuracy.

6. Don't knock the Cheytac. It looks like a terrible gun (and it is in certain situations) but once you start stretching out the range, the Cheytac not only delivers more accurate hits (I don't actually know why) and packs more punch than the Barrett. At really long range expect 2 shot kills with the Barrett, mainly because of accuracy, but also because its damage was decreased in 2.5.9. Whereas the Cheytac usually gives one shot kills at a surprisingly long range.

I actually don't know why I'm more accurate with the Cheytac, is it the fact that I unconsciously try to compensate for the Barrett's recoil and throw off accuracy or is it because the Barrett is inherently less accurate? I'm not sure...

7. Set the amount of fog in the map. Usually this creates more lag and stuff but in big sniper maps you might want to actually see the enemy instead of blindly guessing. You can set it with /fog N where N is the distance. BEWARE! Don't set it too high! The default is 180. I set mine to 240 or something and that works pretty well, but that's my computer...

These are just things I personally think make me better at playing the game, not rules that you must follow. If you think there are things that I did wrong, please post it on this thread. I actually am not that good of a sniper, so it is a learning process for me...

[{KE}bluwarguy]

scopezoom 400 is actually very useful for quickscoping at short ranges. my theory for this is that when you zoom in 400x while the target is within your crosshair, it zooms in very closely onto their body, therefore getting rid of all possibility of missing.

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it works too

[Nightmare]

Very good.

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/sticky

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You should also mention that bullets ricochet, so you can always aim on the ground infront of your target if needed. If the target is in a room, you can try and ricochet off the walls inside the room to kill them.

[DeltaStrikeOp]

This is an awesome tip! I'll look up some scopes to replace the black peripheral vision blocks

@Victor, can you implement instead a blur gradient for the scope?



Also, can ACR ever implement mousewheel zoom so that we don't need to type it out?

[Victor]

ACR can't do any kind of blurring.

[{KE}bluwarguy]

it could do 'fake' blurring, possibly from an opaque, smudged part around the scope (png with transparency of course)

[ruler501]

That isn't really blurring... Maybe you could do it with a blurred transparetn and black, but it won't look as good.

You can write mousewheel zoom in a script and use that. we don't neccesarily need to include that with the game by default

[DeltaStrikeOp]

@ruler501, I feel that with mousewheel zoom in default gameplay, it would make sniping much more enjoyable rather than having to type out a code altering scope settings.

[rXn]

Completely right. making the zoom changable by default makes using a sniper much easier and that because more new players might try it. Anyway, as it is implemented in a script, people who do not like it can turn it off easily.

[{KE}bluwarguy]

this could be a good scope: http://r24.imgfast.net/users/2414/22/92/...fc_310.png also, does ACR have bullet drop?