Obscured View

Playing through Borderlands for a second time, one thing becomes painfully clear:  Sniper rifles don’t scale appropriately to other weapons found in the game.

My wife is playing a siren that puts out hundreds of damage per second with a L18 flame SMG (L18! And she’s L43 now!) and her Siren’s abilities tweaked to assist that. My Hunter with maxxed sniper skills and a 500+ damage L40+ rifle? Not even close. Even with damage bonuses and such, the time it takes to aim at a target, get a headshot lined and fire completely invalidates the usefulness of that shot’s damage.  The loss of instant, constant DPS from a pistol / SMG can never be equalized by a sniper headshot… unless the headshot was always instantly fatal, and even then I have my doubts.

For the hunter, the pistol tree is infinitely more playable the second time around.  You get both pistols and magnums to play with, and if you find one with ammo regeneration, you’re made of epic win.  You don’t even need a scope at that point.

It’s a shame, really.  The game is still fun, but not having any way to make that tree enjoyable is disappointing.  Sniping is fun, but slows you down tremendously when things get harder.

I’m hoping the DLC will bring some game balance tweaks as well, since the weapon balance appears way skewed to fast-firing constant damage weapons.  Even the skills available to the classes push you in that direction.  I’m also curious how the DLC will scale level-wise.

I guess the title really says it all.  Take the vending machine’s advice.  Go for fast shooting weapons!