his only counter is himselfThe Spy , Chip Damage from literally any class Rockets also counter this class you know . Chipping the Sniper down prevents him from having reliable aim because flinch is a thing , rockets are a fire and forget thing that force the Sniper to move away to avoid taking 60 damage and Spies are a thing in this game . If something was put into a game where its own counter was purely itself it would be a poorly developed thing . cough cough Donger Shield coughI ' m with uNilmesimara on this . Solution No . 1 is the only really reasonable thing to apply . Slower reload and Scoping times would impact the weapon enough to make it so that less people complain about Sniper existing . Well at least the slower scope speed would . The reload can actually be bypassed by switching away and immediately back to the rifle . It fires a fraction faster as a result . Sniper isn ' t as broken as people make him out to be . Assuming nobody is buffed Which most players would or should be he has the ability to kill 5 out of 9 classes with one quick shot to the head Which makes sense and requires a charged shot for the rest to die immediately . Which also makes sense The Sniper is meant to be strong at a long range . That ' s literally the role of a Sniper . Lowering quickscope damage would severly damage the Snipers reliability to get picks in majority of scenarios . That ' s a definite nogo . Adding a small delay between scoping and firing could swing either way . However it would again affect reliability in faster more intense scenarios and clash a little with how the charge mechanic works . It would effectively make its version of a quickscope stronger and able to kill more classes . Which would most likely make people madder . Now for the big one . Damage falloff . Straight up this is my response NoSniper is designed for long range . Adding something that makes his desired function immediately weaker is counter intuitive . HOWEVER ! If say reverse falloff was applied your 33 % Less Damage idea applied at a close range to say 200300 HU maybe . That ' s approx slightly less to a 14 of Sentry Range That would make his close ranged weakness more prevalent and exploitable , which is balanced . To loosely quote Nilmesimara His intended weakness at close range doesn ' t exist if a sniper is good enough . Your scenario shows more problems with the map than it does with Sniper . I do believe Sniper needs a nerf to his closerange ability , but quickscope headshots at long range are balanced enough .