Fans of Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa have been posting concers about the game's Sniper class, and the folks at NCsoft have responded to those concerns in a recent post on the Tabula Rasa community site.

I actively read the forums and often find great information there. I have seen the posts over and over about how ineffective Snipers have become… But then I log in to my live Sniper (I play the game as an ordinary player and have many T4 characters including a sniper) and when I play it, I have no issues with sniping or close quarters combat. Granted the Torqueshell Rifle (TSR) doesn’t work well in close quarters, but that is the con to the TSR and I do have other tools available to both help me survive and effectively kill my opponents. I know the Shredder Ammo-Chaingun combination is overpowered on Live right now allowing me to target and destroy armies of Bane with little to no risk.

Called Shot 5 (CS5) was unbalanced since the game went live. It was supposed to give 50% bonus, but was instead giving 150% bonus. Snipers invested 15 skill points into this and used it as their bread and butter skill. It was never intended to be used that way. One shot kills were supposed to be attained through maxing out the TSR skill and Target Painting (TP). CS5 was supposed to deliver that added oomph when it was needed. I mean, 50% damage that stacks with Rage is nothing to sneeze at. I remember when it was on Live watching Snipers walk up to a target 5m away, debuff them with CS5 and then annihilate the target. It was pretty funny to watch, but not very ‘Sniper’ like ;-).

Anyway… I think that if given the ability to respec and experiment with builds, Snipers would find that their class has many great templates to work from. We have already made some opportunities for respecs available to the player, and I hope they become easier to attain with the new prestige system. It might also help if I gave you some tips and tricks that could help Snipers adjust to the dramatic skill changes they have endured over the past few patches.

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