I always thought sharing armor was BS, and people used to tell me I was stupid for it. Now, sharing aggro, getting the enemy's attention? That's good, a step in the right direction. But it still isn't where folks need to be. What you should be sharing is firepower. Against the opfor team. With prejudice.
If this was a game with regenerating shields/armor, or where armor made you impervious to certain kinds of damage, playing the wait'n'see game would make some sense. But if you've got an entire team with heat gauges at zero and you're camped behind cover, you have a problem. Because while you're sitting there doing nothing the other team is probably getting ready to rush in and eat you. If they aren't, well, both teams are doing something wrong. If your "strategy" is reliant upon the other team making mistakes than what you have is a bad strategy. If your team isn't setting the tempo and making the plays, then all you're doing is waiting for the opfor to do so. And they are going to set things up to work for themselves, not for you.
So, back to snipers. I've seen snipers do work. Usually, however, they don't. Because the majority of snipers I've witnessed just passively wait for a target to bumble along. What usually happens is the sniper leaves his 11 teammates to face the enemy team of 12, and if things go the way they often do the result is 7 to 9 enemy mechs hunting for the sniper and the last 1 or 2 fast movers on his team that got away from the killing floor. By the end of the match the sniper gets maybe 3 alphas worth of damage out, and maybe vultures a kill... A sniper that does work, that looks for targets and hammers them when he can, can be a great asset. Most of the time, in my experience, that's not what happens.
TL; DR version - If you're going to do it, be active about it. Aggression wins games.
Edited by Escef, 22 October 2021 - 04:46 PM.