PosChengband: Sniper mechanics

[Fnord]

I'm curious what point I'm missing about the concentration mechanic.

To me, it appears that (for Slays etc) I spend, for example, 4 turns concentrating to do ~3* damage (for Slay evil). This makes sense as an opener on sleeping monsters, of course, but once they're awake it seems I'd be doing more damage per turn just shooting normaly. So, what's the point?

[Red Sky Grishka]

When you concentrate, u can use better abilities. Also, concentrating (2 or more concentration) allows you to see invisible (like smeagol) and you have more crit chance. The point of the sniper is not to shoot 10000000 times, but to 1-shot an enemy. so you concentrate to the max, use the strongest ability (cuz each ability requires a certain amount of concentration to use) and 1-shot a dungeon guardian, for example, before it summons more allies. Hope this helps!

[Fnord]

Right, I get the idea. However, it doesn't work (at least for me right now - though I have a hard time imagining that becoming easier later on!). For instance, the dungeon guardian I'm facing right now has 1600 hitpoints. My maximum damage (full concentration of 5, best shot type for him) against him is something like 400.

[HugoVirtuoso]

What kind of Shooter and Ammo are you using?

[Fnord]

That was a light xbow (+10,+10) with steel bolts (+10, +10).

I've upgraded since, and I defeated the guardian, but just through normal shooting after getting a lucky string of him not casting.

I've now upgraded to a lxbow(+25,+15), and the damage for 5x concentration for slay evil has now gone up to 650 per shot. But that's compared to 193 per shot plain. To justify using 5 concentration + 1 for shooting I'd need 6*193>1k damage per shot, except for the starting situation. And I'm still not going to 1-shot any relevant uniques.

[GenericPseudonym]

Well if you have corners to phase door around, tree creation, or any other way to break LOS, (has anyone played an ent sniper? I guess it's a lot worse now with racial shooting skill affecting your shots per round) you can concentrate in safety while waiting for your enemy to come into view again. It's a lot more work than shooting normally and still takes more turns overall than just spamming f1f1f1, but it's also a lot safer in terms of the number of chances the enemy gets to do nasty things to you before you kill it. I think Chris used this tactic to kill the serpent really easily and them promptly nerfed Sniper a version or two ago. When you're not facing high level or out-of-depth uniques it's probably not worth the effort though.

With no extra-shot bonuses it can still be a DPS increase to use the fire/cold shots against non-resistant monsters, but anything that takes more concentration than that is only really useful as an opener or as part of the above-described strategy.

[Aszazin]

I am currently playing a sniper in Poschengband 7.1.1.

Can someone explain what the "Disarming shot" does?

Does it disarm traps with a bolt? Or does it disarm enemies? I cannot find any clear explanation anywhere...

[Sideways]

I am currently playing a sniper in Poschengband 7.1.1.

Can someone explain what the "Disarming shot" does?

Does it disarm traps with a bolt? Or does it disarm enemies? I cannot find any clear explanation anywhere...

If it's the same as in Frog (and I'd presume it is), it destroys all traps in its path.