This guide is part of a much larger guide, "Aqua Bot Metal Force Colon Player's Guide for Steam".

Please direct all ratings and recommendations for this guide to the parent guide:

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=173527318

In the team composition section,

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=174097474

we learned that Sniper is a class that excels at damaging bots (not tanks) and eliminating Uber Medics pre-pop.

Loadout choices should be made which will maximize effectiveness for completing those objectives.

The Bargain has no intrinsic positive attributes. However, its additional attributes allow it to build a head count which raises the charge rate of the rifle to 200% from its original 80%, which was especially ridiculous before the nerf that reduced it from 300%. Even so, this is also the highest charge rate possible by far.

The ease of collecting and keeping heads makes the negative attribute moot and the obtainable bonus of the Bargain exceeds to worth of other rifles. Unlike the Heatmaker's focus, the Bargain's charge rate can be made use of at no cost of its fuel (heads). This allows charged shots for giants approaching corners or avoiding popping Medic bots to be done with greater efficiency with seamless transition to and from the usual headshot spam, making the Bargain more effective in exceptional situations rather than less like the Heatmaker is.

I cleared every mission with this rifle before it was nerfed and then proceeded to clear a couple of Expert missions with it with only 4 players on the team (including myself) after the nerf, so it is still very much the bane of Expert mode.

Positive attributes:

• Each scoped headshot decreases the weapon's charge time (up to a +100% bonus).

Negative attributes:

• A scoped body shot or miss reduces the bonus.

The real positive attribute of the Heatmaker is the undocumented (not here, obviously, but on the item card) 33% bonus to the fire rate of the rifle...while in Focus.

However, the "no unscoping" and "activates on Fire" attributes are actually negative attributes which will interfere with proper use of the rifle. The Heatmaker will activate Focus when you don't want it to or you will be forced to hold your fire until the appropriate time to make use of it. Once you are in Focus, you will stay zoomed in between each shot, losing the natural manoeuvrability of rescoping between shots that would save your life when you are inevitably the primary target of the bots.

The negative attribute is of course negligible, but the issues with the attributes incorrectly marked "positive" place this rifle below the Bargain, which it would otherwise perform better than without contest. It should be noted that making full use of Focus means firing more rounds per second with less damage per bullet, which leads to an ammunition supply issue as well. This is almost as terrible in practice as the no unscoping problem. In short, the Heatmaker looks good on paper but performs inadequately in the field compared to the Bargain - especially in those common sections in which you need Focus, don't have it built and have no way for it to be without holding your fire for dangerously extended durations prior.

Positive attributes:

• Gain Focus on kills and assists
  
• In Focus: +33% faster fire rate
  
• In Focus: +25% faster charge rate

Negative attributes:

• Focus activates on Fire when Focus meter is full
  
• In Focus: no unscoping

The Machina's positive attributes are a direct upgrade from the stock rifle. They are not situational and they do not require you to maintain a head count or Focus level. Similarly, the greater negative attribute of The Machina is a direct downgrade, because not being able to fire without zooming in is a problem even in Mann vs. Machine. Your fire rate and mobility are higher when you are not zoomed in and thus you will have reason to fire unscoped shots at tanks, fast targets and dangerous targets. Indeed, a Crit canteen and rapid unscoped shots while running at full speed is often the smarter way of dealing with Giant Rapid Fire Soldiers.

The positive attributes of the Machina are dwarfed by the Bargain. The 15% damage bonus is only available on full charge, and with the Bargain's much greater charge rate, the Bargain will have a greater DPS than the Machina if fully charged shots are being used. There are no targets where the extra 15% damage is crucial to avoid popping a Medic bot because even Giant Medics have a threshold of as little as 75 HP before popping. Therefore, the extra DPS of the Bargain's charge speed supersedes the Machina's damage bonus in importance.

The built in penetration is nice, but because it only works on full charge and is rarely used, it is more worth choosing a better rifle and simply purchasing the Penetration upgrade. The tracers shown by the Machina are of course not a concern.

Positive attributes:

• Full Charge: +15% damage per shot
  
• Full Charge: Projectiles penetrate players

Negative attributes:

• Cannot fire unless zoomed

The stock rifle has the ability to acquire Explosive Headshots, making it undoubtedly better than the Huntsman along with every other rifle. It also deals critical damage on headshot, which will ultimately be of far greater utility than the extra charge speed of the Sleeper.

Positive attributes:

• [None]

Negative attributes:

• [None]

Please do not use this rifle. You will need the triple damage of scoring headshots to be of real use to your team. The extra +25% charge speed of the Sleeper will obviously not make up for a +200% damage bonus of landing a headshot. Oddly enough, despite that the Sleeper cannot deal critical headshot damage, shots that hit enemy heads will cause Explosive Headshots if the upgrade is purchased. For this reason, the Sleeper is still better than the Huntsman.

The automatic application of Jarate is made obsolete by the fact that a Sniper can be much more beneficial by using the actual Jarate item. They will maximize damage and utility to the team with a less redundant rifle more focused on damage than support.

Positive attributes:

• +25% charge rate
  
• On Hit: Jarate applied to target for 8 seconds

Negative attributes:

• No headshots

This weapon has the option to buy Bleed on Hit instead of Explosive Headshots. Enemies move in a more clustered fashion than linear and will not be able to hit for as much damage with a line of Bleed inducing arrows than by a wall of Explosive Headshots. This weapon is worth less than all of the rifles for this reason alone. The reduced damage of charging this weapon is offset by its faster charge rate, which is mostly negligible considering the charge speed cap of the Bargain and the infeasible arc Huntsman shots travel in.

Using the Huntsman will immediately alert anyone on your team who notices you that you are not playing to win and insist on having all of the work done for you.

Positive attributes:

• Faster charge rate
  
• Can cause Bleed

Negative attributes:

• Can not cause Explosive Headshots

Jarate can put out enemies on fire, slow down enemy movement and coat a whole group in the Jarate condition which causes all damage taken by them to count as mini-crits or better. No secondary item for the Sniper is nearly as destructive or restrictive to the enemy bots.

Positive attributes:

• Can cause Jarate status
  
• Can slow enemies
  
• Can extinguish allies
  
• Can mark cloaked Spies

Negative attributes:

• Does not do direct damage

The Cozy Camper reduces flinching, making counter sniping more viable and allowing better use of the Sniper's primary weapon. The primary weapon for a Sniper should have the most money invested in it of what's available and will thus be the most effective solution to any given problem - enhancing its value takes priority. Jarate does this better than the Cozy Camper, however. While the Cozy Camper makes it easier to use the Sniper's primary weapon directly, Jarate does so indirectly by accomplishing damage and other objectives passively during sniping with much better results.

The Cozy Camper also increases damage received, which is terrible for a class that is already "the squishiest".

Positive attributes:

• +1 health regenerated per second on wearer
  
• No flinching when aiming
  
• Knockback reduced by 20% when aiming

Negative attributes:

• Does not do direct damage
  
• 20% damage vulnerability on wearer

Spies like to come at the worst possible time. The Razorback can buy some time to get in those last few important shots before you turn to deal with them so your team isn't left with all sorts of Medics and other enemies alive that they need you to kill.

For the most part, though,the Razorback is just a just a great way to tell your team mates that you have no situational awareness and would rather be selfish and useless.

Positive attributes:

• Blocks a single backstab attempt

Negative attributes:

• Complete waste of a slot
  
• Does not do direct damage

If you're going to be rude, bad at the game and ultimately useless, use an SMG that gives crits on kill at least.

Positive attributes:

• Can shoot stuff
  
• On Kill: 3 seconds of 100% critical chance

Negative attributes:

• Exponentially worse than using a rifle or Jarate in terms of damage
  
• -20% clip size
  
• 35% slower firing speed
  
• No random critical hits

Positive attributes:

• Can shoot stuff

Negative attributes:

• Exponentially worse than using a rifle or Jarate in terms of damage

Positive attributes:

• +25 max health on wearer
  
• +15% bullet damage resistance on wearer

Negative attributes:

• Complete waste of a slot
  
• Does not do direct damage
  
• 20% explosive damage vulnerability on wearer

The Bushwacka's ability to crit when it would normally mini-crit gives it a huge damage boost when a Soldier with an active Buff Banner on your team is near you. This is only really important for tanks, but the Bushwacka also gives much better damage against slow enemies marked for mini-crits. When slowed by and coated with Jarate, Giant Scouts will easily fall to a few hits from the Bushwacka. The much greater damage can also be a life saver in situations in which whether a melee strike will kill determines survivability, such as when dealing with Spies or other bots that get behind you.

A Sniper should almost never be in a position in which using melee attacks is more beneficial, but if they ever are they will be far better suited with the Bushwacka than any other melee weapon. Just be sure to completely avoid Pyros, because they're bad enough to deal with even without the 20% increase in received fire damage.

Positive attributes:

• Crits whenever it would normally mini-crit

Negative attributes:

• 20% fire damage vulnerability on wearer

The Shiv's infliction of the Bleed status gives it some value, but not enough to compete with the Bushwacka. It certainly puts it above the other kukri weapons, however.

Positive attributes:

• On Hit: Bleed for 6 seconds

Negative attributes:

• -50% damage penalty

Positive attributes:

• [None]

Negative attributes:

• [None]

The Shahanshah is a downgrade until your HP is lowered.

You do not want your HP less than full for any longer than it takes to grab health.

Positive attributes:

• [None]

Negative attributes:

• -25% decrease in damage when health >50% of max
  
• 25% increase in damage when health <50% of max

Yes, this argument warrants its own section. Unlike other questionably optimal loadout choices, this one is the closest contest.

First, a review, and then some numbers.

Small bots have low enough HP that spamming Explosive Headshots with the Heatmaker using nearby Giants is not much more effective than doing so with the Bargain. Where the Heatmaker excels is trashing a group of Giants that are huddled together by causing nasty explosions at a rapid rate that have higher DPS than the headshots themselves.

However, after blasting one Giant that was right next to another in a typical game of Bigrock, the remaining Giant didn't appear to be much worse off than it would normally be after being near a Bargain's blast. To make matters worse, there are many times Giants are huddled as such with no small bots around to build focus off of, leaving the Heatmaker useless by comparison.

It seems that charged shots causing more damage also causes more hits from an explosion, which seems otherwise random.

Explosions seem to do 135 damage on average (apparently it's 150 before randomization and fall off are applied). Sometimes the explosions go off twice and hit for 135 2 (sometimes more, perhaps?) times, which as was noted appears to be more likely when, if not entirely dependent upon, hitting with a higher damage shot, as in the case of a charged shot. The odds of the damage hitting hard enough to kill nearby Medics rather than simply popping them also seems to be related to charging.

In either case, applying Jarate first will slow the targets down and mark them for team mates, as well as cause the explosions to mini-crit, guaranteeing instant kills of nearby Uber Medics and giving a solid 35% damage boost to the explosions. In this case the Heatmaker has another advantage because it capitalizes on Explosive Headshots better, but again, this is painfully situational.

Versus a Giant Demoknight with 30% move speed (default is 40%) and 90000 HP.
Map was mvm_coaltown_event; we fought it until it capped. Human error and differences in skill have altered the scores.
As there were no other bots, Focus was not relevant. Head count started at 0. Both rifles were fully charged for the first shot (which they would probably normally be anyway). Note that these numbers were obtained using the old 300% charge rate Bargain.

23185 Bargain
11622 Heatmaker

Despite all of the errors introduced, it should be pretty clear that the Bargain wins when there's only one Giant to fire at. Multiple natural runs of Wave 666 have already demonstrated that rifles that aren't the Heatmaker or Bargain just don't hold a candle to them and that the Huntsman is particularly bad.

Here's some more testing done using 3 uber canteens for timing and a wall of cow cut-outs to corral the giants. sm_freeze was also used to ensure accuracy. Timing ended when the third uber canteen was started, not when it was ended, since it's easier to listen for the canteen to start than look for its effects wearing off when sniping.

Note that no shots were missed during these tests. In the rare case I missed a headshot, I restarted the entire test. Human error has been almost completely removed.


Max Bargain (except Charge Rate), full charge 0 heads start
4662

NERFED Max Bargain (except Charge Rate), full charge 0 heads start
4500

Max Heatmaker (except Charge Rate), full charge start, no focus
4500

Max Heatmaker (except Charge Rate), full charge start, permanent focus
6000


Bargain
8411

NERFED Bargain

6956

• 7 head start made no difference using rapid quick scopes

Full charging for each shot with full charge start and 7 heads yielded
7805

NERFED Bargain: Full charging for each shot, full charge start, 6 heads start

6553

• Surprisingly not much different.

Heatmaker, focus
11250

• Unsurprisingly not much better, until the Bargain was nerfed.

The Focus gave a rather poor boost considering how situational it is. The boost is much more noticeable now that the Bargain is weaker. The Heatmaker is still not going to help with Giant Medics and more importantly, for the same reason the Bargain is better for Giant Medics, the Bargain is also better for long streaks of giants that have no small bots to build Focus off of nearby and those inevitable situations when you just can't have Focus when you want it.

The Heatmaker is also an ammo sink and pretty much requires you to be an ammo hog. For Bigrock, however, the tightly huddled Giant Demomen may warrant use of the Heatmaker. This is especially exaggerated by the Bargain nerf. You will have a harder time with the Giant Medics, but you should have a Spy on your team anyway.