So I hear you wanna learn how to use the sniper rifle in xenoblade x. You’ve come to the right place.
Sniper offers a small amount of support. Namely with Eagle Eye which is AWESOME for soul voices. This is especially useful if you have Lao (or someone with the invincibility sprinter soul voice) sprinting. The effect goes to anyone who receives the buff. Only downside is that it's not immediate reuse so use it wisely. Eagle Eye grants ranged attack up and accuracy up if you didn’t already know.
You could use Hawkeye for crit power but, I personally don’t always do that (it depends on my melee weapon) since there is Ghost Sniper, which gives crit chance up AND boosts TP with crits, it also boosts ranged accuracy. You can stack, whichGhost Sniper really is only for TP building so it's really useful early game.
Sidewinder is a must. That debuff res down is invaluable. ESPECIALLY if you're taking a psycorruptor or Blast Fencer. You probably know why. Plus it does pretty decent damage.
First down is pretty useless for the main game, but post game it’s not that bad, but if you’re still in the early game keep it until you can replace it. It has instant reuse but the cooldown is absurd, being 36 seconds at max level. If you’re still figuring out overdrive, then don’t use it, even with decreased recast time, it still takes a decent amount of time. It’s got pretty good hit scaling at 700% max, but its debuff is so situational that I’d avoid using it until you can level it up.
Intercept is the only pure debuff art for the sniper. It's a decently short cooldown at 24 seconds with immediate reuse, so if you have a weapon with arts TP gain, USE IT. It doesn't hit hard but it inflicts stun which can be nice for soul voices (stunner) and as a purple art, it restores TP (counter times 10).
Depending on your potential, drop Intercept for Afterburner. If you do take Afterburner, always precede it with Sidewinder to get that knockback.
Shrapnel and Afterburner are your main damagers with your sniper. Afterburner has 5 or so hits at 900% hit scaling at max power. In overdrive use that to your benefit. Shrapnel does extra damage to appendages. So if you're targeting one, BONUS DAMAGE! Pair that with an appendage crusher and you've got yourself some really good damage there. Both have 18 second Cooldowns so they're pretty quick to use again.
Appendage crusher lowers the softness tier of an appendage by 1, so more damage.
Quick tip for early game player: If you go down the AC line first, KEEP OVERWHELM, IT TRIGGERS SOUL PROMPTS EASILY SO A SMALL BURST HEAL.
If you pick up Slayonet, which I don't recommend picking up until you're at least 10 levels above the recommended level for Bozé's AQ (it was a traumatic experience for me), just combo it. Shield wall or any kind of defensive Melee weapon preceding is nice since Slayonet had a bit of a long animation despite only being 3 hits. It's okay in the ways of doing damage at 700% hit scaling, but always combo it or else it'll fall behind due to you probably getting hit/killed/launched/knocked back/toppled/staggered/stunned/flinched in the middle of it.
Due to the Sniper's somewhat longer cooldowns, you have to rely on your melee weapon’s arts and/or the sniper's high auto attack damage output and balance between them carefully. I learned this the hard way in "A Friend in Need". Personally, the Javelin’s Speed Demon is best for this, although you’re gonna want some Untouchable Dash Augments if you’re not careful.
However, despite this issue of long cooldowns, you get the ranged weapon with the highest base damage output, with the longest base range in the game. Which, if you have a team built for aggroing and tanking surrounding you, actually lets you take advantage of that awesome extra range and ACTUALLY BE A SNIPER. If you’re crazy like me, you can stick on a bunch of Firing Range Up augments, and fire from an additional 100m.
The sniper is probably the hardest weapon to master as its combos and strats are pretty convoluted and situational. It covers both a small amount of support and high damage, but longer cooldowns means you have to really watch it with balancing what you’re doing. Sure you have the Ray gun but even that is pretty easy to figure out. Debuff, aura then beam attack. Sniper actually makes you think carefully and strategize with timing.
The Astral Crusader line is the complete opposite of the Full Metal Jaguar line. While the FMJ line (and the blossom dance set) is built for damage per second, the AC line is built for setting up, and having careful precise attacks for maximum damage in a single shot.
Weapon TP gain, Ammo, Attributes, and Reload Times:
Oh why am I trying to get in on the kids AU? I'm not a well known artist and I'm actually such an awful artist compared to the people in the AU/they're friends with the artists so I can't get anyone to draw my Cross, so I have to put up with my own art (which I hate almost a day after I finish because why the fuck is everyone so good), not to mention I am too shy to even get attention as an artist, I don't post art anywhere but here or my Twitter and even then… yeah, I don't post often. I'm not an art major, I'm going to be a bioinformatics major so I'm so far out of my league I'm kinda tempted not to bother. I'm just gonna go into a corner and probably back the fuck out of this and let the people who are actually good at art handle this…
