Talk:Sniper Rifle

=maybe i just can't find it?...= wiki covers the prefix, title and material code for snipers, but what do the numbers like 470, 40, 550, 450 mean? they go between the body type and material code, like "PPZ40 detonating cobra" or "GGN450/V3 fearsome surkov" they arn't always there, but must mean something? I also have a feeling that differant types of guna won't share the same numbers, so certain numbers are for pistols, and another lot for snipers, etc, although i am making this statement just by looking at my inventory so it could be a coincidence.

GGN450/V3 Fearsome Surkov --Nagamarky 08:20, April 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * GGN = body
 * 4 or 50 (I forget which) = grip
 * /V3 = material grade
 * Fearsome = material grades do nothing, since the enhancement comes from the material itself; some prefixes have enhancements; those that don't increase the chance of generating the relevant part or apply the same logic as material grades - the relevant parts produce the prefix.

ok, so in the case of that gun, what does the other number mean: the 4, or the 50, and has anyone complied a list of grips and their effects, because i'm having trouble finding one on this wiki?

For normal weapons, each of the grips belongs to one of the manufacturers that make that weapon type. Legendaries may be different (e.g. the Patton grip adds 35% damage), but modifiers are rare on grips in either case. --Nagamarky 23:10, April 8, 2010 (UTC)

=Accuracy/Range Issue= Is there a pre-determined limit to how far sniper bullets can travel? If not, does accuracy (or lack thereof) mean the bullet may not land where the crosshairs are?

The reason I ask is that I've had several experiences where I can see the target, and it's not moving, and I put the crosshairs on the head, chest, doesn't matter, the crosshairs stop moving, and when I pull the trigger, nothing happens. I mean, a shot fires, and the enemy notices me, but no damage was done. There are only two explanations I can think of that would cause this:
 * There is a limit to the range of the bullets I fire. So, while I may have had the enemy in my sights, the target was too far away and so the bullet failed to hit. I'm skeptical about this because the enemy can hit me from the same range (though I wouldn't put it past a dev to put this in as a cheat for the AI).
 * Accuracy, or at least anything less than 100% accuracy, means that even if the target isn't moving, and the crosshairs are at rest over the target (not weaving back and forth), that there is still a chance the bullet would not land. Of course, this means that bullets do not always fly where the crosshairs lie.

I know it's not a case of me missing as I've said that I've experimented several times with targets that aren't moving, nor are the crosshairs, and the crosshairs are smack in the middle of a target's chest. If it's the first option above, I curse myself for not having gotten the game on PC where I could have modded that silliness out. If it's the second option, it would be nice to have a little circle around the crosshairs showing the actual cone of fire based on the weapon's accuracy.

What do you all think? Servius 04:35, November 21, 2009 (UTC)


 * It's the second one and yes, there is an indication of the cone, although it's only a vague representation. If you compare a low accuracy shotgun with a high accuracy shotgun, you'll see a marked difference in the size of the reticule. -- WarBlade 08:41, November 21, 2009 (UTC)


 * It's just you. There most definitely is no limit to the distance that any projectiles can travel, as far as I know.
 * I've used the Maliwan Volcano sniper to fire at targets at extreme distances, so far away that it takes 2 or 3 seconds for the bullet to reach. I now the bullet hit because you can see the explosion caused by the Pele demands a sacrifice effect.
 * So, your problem is just accuracy.


 * Well, since I'm sure it's not me, WarBlade says the accuracy system means the round won't always fly where the crosshairs are, and Critz says he's sure there's no range limit on the bullets, then it seems it's #2. I know that the shotgun's sight shows you how big the cone of fire is, but not all sniper rifles do. I remember one rifle that had a scope with a crosshair, but then a red dot in the center of the crosshair, and then a light blue circle around the red dot. I always wondered if the light blue circle was telling me how bit the cone of fire was, but not all rifle scopes had that, so I wasn't sure if it was showing the COF or was just a visual flourish. I may go on the main boards and suggest that sniper rifle scopes should show the COF and not just the crosshairs. Servius 15:08, November 21, 2009 (UTC)
 * I've done most of my 'sniping' with combat rifles, but in my experience there's always a circle or something that represents the cone. Sometimes it's just vanishingly tiny, which is good. --Raisins 15:52, November 21, 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sure i'm notating this wrong, so if someone who knows wiki-speak properly wants to clean up my post, go for it, but i thought I might want to note that I've had this problem before as well. I was actually using one of the Maliwan Volcano rifles (easily my favorite kind). Sometimes the shot seems to go THROUGH them. I dont think the range is the issue and i dont think the accuracy was either; i've had the experience of targeting someone fairly closeby's chest, firing several times and simply not hitting them when there's no explanation for why. (I play on PS3). Every time it happens if i let go of my scope and zoom back in it stops. See if that helps, OP!

Page Location
Under the menu item Weapons appears a category Sniper Rifle. Unlike the Weapons category, the Sniper Rifle category page currently contains no article of substance, just links to the specific kinds of sniper rifles.

This current Sniper Rifle page is listed as a sub-page of sniper rifles, so that the navigation menu is Weapons->Sniper Rifles->Sniper Rifles, which is a bit redundant. It seems like the best place for this page would be Weapons->Sniper Rifles. AngleWyrm 20:15, November 23, 2009 (UTC)
 * Indeed, we should be funneling users into articles -- not categories. This is a significant part of what causes problems on this wiki with people producing Category pages when they should be working in the Main namespace. Perhaps we might nominate changing the Sidebar to a sysop. 22:16, November 23, 2009 (UTC)
 * I just read The wiki page Help:Moving_pages, where it states that category pages should not contain content. Ok, there's probably sound logic in that. Clicking on Weapons opens Weapons; can we make clicking on Sniper rifles open Sniper Rifles? AngleWyrm 04:19, November 24, 2009 (UTC)

Penetrator
It isn't Orange, but it is supposed to be. There are 49 randomly generated red text weapons, exactly one each for every valid brand-weapon combination. They are all Orange with four exceptions: If we count the three 'pearlescents' as legendray, then I say we have to count the Penetrator. --Raisins 04:17, December 8, 2009 (UTC)

found one last night at the armoury, purple, with red text in french? ill play with it and get back.98.210.83.88 16:32, March 23, 2010 (UTC)

My experience with sniper rifles
Hello, I think some of the advice in the strategy section is a tad inaccurate, having got a character to lvl 50 who specializes in sniping, and having spent most of my 2nd playthrough using exclusively sniper rifles for all combat, I have found several useful strategies. Cover is extremely useful, I found that turrets are frankly best dealt with by sniper rifles from cover, as you can presight from behind cover the step out shoot and back behind almost without taking damage, and with 100% chance to bypass shields, the turret will go down quick. I find snipers with high fire rates (e.g. 2.4-2.7) are very useful against enemies like spiderants and alpha skags as they can readily take advantage of crit opportunities as well as deal lots of damage quickly, I also found that having at least one sniper rifle with over 97% accuracy is desirable for sharp shooting very far away targets (I've kill someone with a headshot first try on the platforms from where you collect the 4 components for the Combat Rifle scavenge from the near side of piss-wash gully.) Corrosive and Incendiary Snipers with high fire rates are also very useful for building up elemental effects on target like alpha skags (which are a specialist sniper's worst enemy by a fair margin). I've noticed that shooting a skag in the face even with their mouth closed with an Explosive Sniper tended to deal a lot of damage (not as much as a crit, but about double what hits to their flank would do) (My character currents runs with 4 equipped sniper rifles btw) lastly I found snipers very effective against all type of bandits, a good strategy is to attack from cover. Try to be at least 75ft away if possible and wait for your target to stop for a second (pick targets so as to minimize your exposure to the enemies) 69.54.137.171 08:33, January 8, 2010 (UTC)

Old concern is old, but warrants delayed, well-considered response anyway.

When I (mostly) wrote the General Strat section I specifically took pains to exclude players like you from the gaming experience. That is to say, I don't care about what high level Hunters do with sniper rifles, and I don't think anyone else should either. By the time you're level 25 or so, you'll probably have solved all your strategy problems on your own and have found a groove that works best for you. Any information you might find here, on another wiki, or in the horribly put together official strat guide will have been rendered moot.

I asked myself a simple question when the wrote these sections, "What did I wish I knew when I first played?" I won't lie to you, I'm good at this game. Like, freakishly good, I cut down enemies three-to-five levels my superior like they are nothing. I'm dorky-tough guy enough to admit that I also laugh maniacly while I do it, too, but that's not important. What is important is the fact that I wasn't that great to begin with. Oh, sure, I was alright, I came into the game with a good understanding of cover and how ot move backwards without getting caught on obstacles while returning fire but I had no idea about the various weapons Borderlands had to offer. It was through trial and error I managed to make each and every single one work' flawlessly for me.

Then I discovered this wiki, and thought, "Hey, there's not a whole lot of useful info here for newbies. I better fix that."

I like to think I did. TrollofReason 22:52, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

beginning parts of sniper names
i know that allot of the names are covered in this guide, but none of the titles before the names are listed, for egsample. liquid, fearsome...

i think these, much like the other part of the name(such as lance, gamble...) can effect the potencial of the gun. i have think that liquid has an increased rate of fire, long has a better scope, and hard is just for lols :D but a table of these name parts and effects would be good to see Roboticsuperman 22:14, January 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * Yeah i noticed the same thing, someone should add those to the page. liquid is increased rate of fire, but long doesnt have an enhanced scope as far as i can tell. 71.163.69.145 00:09, January 28, 2010 (UTC)matched player


 * Rolling/Liquid improves fire rate, Long/Distant improves accuracy, Hard improves damage (not sure about Heavy, might be recoil reduction), Fearsome improves overall weapon quality. --Nagamarky 03:55, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

A unwanted, unfounded observation...
Perhaps it's me, maybe I'm just sensitive to it. Iunno, but I've noticed that out of all the weapon pages Sniper Rifle is the one most hit with vandalism. What's more, it's not even clever or absurdist vandalism. I mean: you don't see someone going through the time and effort to replace every other word with a few passages from a Harlequin romance novel (something I've done elsewhere under a different moniker). No, it's always stupid, mean, but mostly stupid.

Now, I'm not saying that people who like to play Modecai are, by their very nature, douchebags... but-. TrollofReason 04:37, February 17, 2010 (UTC)

Request: Screenshots of the various scope types (from the PC crowd)
This article has some great info already (the bit about checking the unwritten "stability" factor of a new sniper rifle has been a great help).

Another factor about sniper rifles (and scoped weapons in general) beyond just the zoom factor is the graphical appearance of the scopes. I've seen a few types of circular ones (the best type IMO), to the scratchy green TV effect (which I find terrible, especially at night, and can turn me off to all but the best rifles that have it), and the vertical oval one (that I've seen just in videos, but looks terrible too).

Also, does anyone know if the type of scope a rifle has can be determined by the appearance of the thumbnail image of it in the shop? This would definately factor into my buying decisions and would be great if we had a table of what thumbnail picture translates into which scope type in this article.

I'd attempt this myself, but I play on PS3 so I lack the ability to take decent screenshots. Also I imagine a PC gamer into modding could quickly produce modded weapons all the scope types, wherease I'd be stuck to just what I find from random pickups/buys.206.193.230.30 19:17, March 16, 2010 (UTC)Creeper


 * Edit: some searching on the weapons mainpage led me to this image http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/File:Sniper_Rifle.jpg. Just from looking at the sights, I'm thinking that 2 and 3 might be TV screen/Oval type that I detest. 1 looks like it might be round, but maybe it's the ones that are only 1.0x zoom. 4 and 5 look like they might be the better, best round and longer range varieties. Is someone with more playtime and rifles under their belt able to confirm this? 206.193.230.30 20:12, March 16, 2010 (UTC)Creeper
 * Yes, correct. sight1 is 1.0x, sight2 is 1.5x, sight3 is 1.8x, sight4 is 2.4x (but 3.2x for Reaver's Edge), sight5 is 2.7x (but 5.2x for the Atlas Cyclops).--Nagamarky 03:48, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

Semi-automatic pearlescent sniper rifle
So as I was looking at the information on other weapon type's pearlescent models I noticed that when there are two different types of firing (i.e.- burst-fire or fully automatic) there are generally two different pearls that use each different fire types. Has anyone encountered a semi-auto pearl sniper yet, or does anyone know if they exist?74.5.0.226 04:08, May 16, 2010 (UTC) Sandal-Hat

Just an observation...
I noticed that the ammo pick-ups for the sniper were very similiar to the en-bloc clips of the M1 Garand. The only difference I can see is that the clips have six shots instead of eight. I thought maybe that was interesting enough to go under the trivia or notes sections. Just give me the go ahead and I'll put the info.

M-1 Garand clips are single tiered, 5 round clips, whereas the sniper rifle clips are a double-tierd, offset pattern.GT: ConceitedJarrad XBOX360 04:56, June 14, 2010 (UTC)

This is the original guy, sorry but you have your clips mixed up. While most of the clips for the rifles of WW2 were single tiered, 5-shot "stripper" clips, the en-bloc clip of the M1 Garand was an eight shot double tiered clip. If you do a google image search or go on wikipedia you will see. P.S. make sure you sure you search en-bloc clip, if you don't you better have a strong stomach.

I must have been thinking of the springfield 30-06 clips; I'll take your word for it. By all means..GT: ConceitedJarrad XBOX360 05:44, June 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * -Thanks mate

Accuracy, why's it gotta be so damn complicated?
Well, basically this applies to all weapon types, but I figure I'd mention this here. Is there a page of this wiki dedicated to the accuracy statistic? Because there should be, see accuracy is WAY mor complex than most people even close to realize, with the biggest misconception of people thinking that the accuracy rating on the guncard having any relevant relationship to the size of the crosshairs when hip firing.

In truth the accuracy rating shown on the guncard has absolutely NOTHING to do with the reticle size, and accuracy is far to complex to simply be added as a small not on each page, and basically I don't know squat about anything more basic than making changes to wikis and whatnot. If anyone would be willing to help me out with getting a page together with all the nuts and bolts information about how accuracy really works I'd be very gratefull. Bobtm 16:38, June 26, 2010 (UTC)