The Effective Sniper: Introduction

Do you find yourself gravitating to the sniper kit, regardless of the situation? Wow, and now you've found every sneaky spot to pull down 20:1 KDRs? So, you think you're 1337 sauce, and just to advertise it, you've [not so] cleverly added it to your call sign? I'm doubting your usefulness.

Chances are, you're serving as little more than an annoyance to your team as you pick off the newbs and non-factors around the fray, or sneakily worm your way to the nearest enemy spawn point for freebies.

No? Let me guess then, you sit so far behind the battle, you never lay eyes on the objectives until after your teammates have cleared to the next stage. Thats IF your team doesn't have 2 or 3 more just like you, resulting in your team getting raped in your deployment.

Worthless base camping snipers.

You define the useless sniper: the player who only exists to pad their stats, while costing the rest of their team the game.

For those of you who want to contribute to the game, while enjoying the benefits of the sniping kit, or perhaps those of you described above who'd like to stop sucking, read on.

In the past, I'd first recommend the player to become acquainted with all the kits, because sniping can be almost completely ineffective in certain circumstances. However, in modern Battlefield games, you can diversify and access guns and weapons making you a great asset in any situation without switching roles.

Before we get into the details of those situations and weapons, lets focus on proper mindset of an effective sniper.

The Sniper Suppressor:

Snipers are obviously very powerful at range, and in the right circumstance, can basically destroy an entire team if left unchecked. The easiest way to neutralize a sniper is with a sniper. The best way you can help your team as they advance, is to keep snipers from collecting easy kills on team mates moving across open ground.

The Advancing Sniper:

Wait, don't get your pillow out. Now's the time to move up and continue to push the snipers back into ineffective positions, as well as help kill enemies defending the objectives. Whether you switch to an automatic, or continue to attack from range, make sure you are close enough to the point of conflict to actually be helping your team. In BF3 especially, its necessary to move up to provide a better mobile spawn point for your squad.

Objective Defense:

From the defensive aspect, bear in mind the same things. The objectives win or lose the game for your team. If an objective isn't in sight, or the enemy isn't stuck in their own deployment area, you need to reevaluate the usefulness of your tactics. They probably have something to do with your fear of dying more than once per round.

With these simple tactics in mind, you're on your way to winning.

Keep your eye out for further posts as we cover these sniper tactics in detail, and much MUCH more!