I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it or not, but I’m planning on playing an Imperial Agent, and taking the Sniper Advanced Class. There are many reasons I’m choosing this path, but I’ll save that for another post. I mention it today, because yesterday there were a couple of dev. posts acknowledging the very existence of the Imperial Agent. Yes, just when you thought we were forgotten, Georg Zoeller decided to blow our cover. Oh and his comments also apply to you, “then we’ll do it real quiet-like”, step on a twig, Gunslinger, Smuggler types.
The first thing he talked about was our maximum range.
Snipers (and Gunslingers) have a range of 35 meters for most of their abilities, which is the longest range class for player abilities available. Troopers for examples have a maximum range of 30 meters on their long range abilities.”
Okay, I’m all about the pumping out the massive quantities of sustained ranged dps, so being able to shoot things from a distance is great. When you factor in companions tanking and healing for us the Sniper will be quite effective in PvE, and a lot of fun. If you’re planning on doing Operations, remember to be mindful of your range and make sure your healers can reach you at all times.
One thing I couldn’t help but notice is the other ranged classes will have a maximum range of 30 yards. Well at least the trooper will, and I assume the others as well. Five meters doesn’t seem like a big advantage for Snipers given that most of our abilities require us to be in cover. Speaking of cover Georg also had some comments about that.
Correct. Cover protects from Force Leap, being pulled via grapple, etc. Using Entrench (An ability increasing the effectiveness of cover temporarily) will also make the Agent immune to any other kind of control (CC),. They become an unmovable object that cannot be charged, pushed, lifted, frozen, Force choked or in any other way incapacitated.”
On the surface this sounds great. Cover in and of itself will protect the Sniper from abilities meant to pull us out of cover. Pop Entrench and we become an unmovable object, and an unstoppable force of dps. What Georg doesn’t tell us is what the cooldown is on the Entrench ability. I suspect that it’s probably has a long-term cooldown of 1-2 minutes, meaning when it’s available the Sniper is in good shape, and when it’s on cooldown we could be in some trouble.
The big concern with Snipers in PvP is the cover ability. PvP is all about keeping on the move and being able to use your abilities while moving. A lot of the Sniper’s abilities are reliant on cover, which in turn, requires us to be stationary. If the Entrench ability isn’t going to be available to us most of the time, then Snipers could really suffer in PvP.
My focus will mostly be Operations, but I will do some PvP from time to time, and it would be nice to think that the Sniper will be competitive with the other classes.
Finally he had this to say about Keeper.
…. and the Keeper has a long memory
I shall take that last quote as hint that we may see and Imperial Agent Friday Feature soon.
For now, this is Agent Darkbrew signing off.
