I think D1 had too many sniping raids but I've come to miss them in D2. Feels like every D2 boss is sword, slug shotgun, or xenophage. Kalli is sword. Shuro chi is sword. Morgeth is sword. Riven is sword. Insurrection prime is sniper. Gahlran is slug shotgun. Consecrated mind is xenophage. Sol inherent or whatever is xenophage. Atraks is sword. Taniks is slug shotgun. I mainly feel like powercreep is to blame. You aren't SUPPOSED to be able to get close enough to sword the bosses. This isn't how they were designed, except maybe atraks. But we have two unfathomably strong swords out right now so using anything else is just a hard throw. And if you have an encounter that is forced long range, xenophage outdpses all snipers even izanagi with divinity. We have so many strong guns that we have changed the raid encounters from what they were intended to be. Did you know you are supposed to two phase morgeth by stunning him with the super from the eye of riven? I didn't until recently. Why would I? He has been an easy one phase since day 2, from whisper to trench barrel shotguns to swords. Then of course the riven cheese, where the entirity of such a well designed fight is completely invalidated by killing the boss outright in what is supposed to be one of many DPS opportunities. Shuro chi also has the stun mechanic from morgeth, allowing you to extend the DPS phases, but I have never used it. The consecrated mind enrages after 3 dps phases but competent teams kill it in 2 or even 1. Sol inherent same thing. Atraks is a guaranteed 1 phase if everyone has lament even though she enrages after FOUR(4). Taniks is also pretty much a guaranteed 1 phase with a good team and the right guns.

The final boss fight of Scourge was pretty heavy on long range combat, as was a good portion of Shattered Throne. The return of the Omnigul strike brought back some long range fighting as well, which is nice. At least PvE gets some, whereas PvP is practically all mid-range, with some CQC thrown in... :(

I like this idea. While there are some areas in the dungeons where having a sniper is a very viable and practical option, I’d like to see this implemented in more areas of the game. Now, Izanagi’s Burden and 140 rpm snipers see a lot of use in high level activities like master and Grandmaster nightfalls and obviously some of the raids because they can deliver high amounts of damage over a short period of time (Izanagi struggles a bit with sustained dps because you can’t reduce it’s reload speed and your dps drops SIGNIFICANTLY if you miss even 1 shot). Using a sniper for dps isn’t all too easy either because the flinch in pve is absolutely atrocious (I’m also a bad player :). I’d honestly like to see some activities/bosses that force you to use something other than a shotgun or sword (Bungie, do NOT press that STUPID BOSS STOMP button!!!!!!). I’m talking about a real, LONG RANGE SNIPER BATTLE. I think there’s a lot of potential here.

Wait how did we transfer from Destiny to Lord of the Rings???

Mordor and mount doom? Wtf you talking about! I do agree with snipers need a place in the game!