While trying out a new sniper build I was thinking about usable uniques and forgo crafting mostly. From what I can see, the only two categories with at least one decent enough unique are imho firearms and melee has even multiple decent weapons, the other categories seem to be a bit lackluster.
As someone who plays Sniper builds a lot I must say that I find the unique sniper rifles disturbingly lackluster.
Dragunov: It has no benefits over a Spearhead apart from it being available without crafting. For some reason, it cannot beat a basic rapid variant at anything. The damage really is nothing special, it has no precision bonus, even though it has a scope on the small icon and no crit bonus whatsoever and the penalties after moving and close combat are not better than that of the Spearhead plus it still costs more AP to fire, granted only 1 but still. If I remember correctly the weapon was introduced before Spearheads appeared, so I guess not giving it at least one edge over Spearheads was an oversight.
I guess the only really positive thing I can say about it that it is available early and basically can be picked up right along the way of a quest.
At the very least one can say that even a real life Dragunov comes with a scope, which makes the lack of precision bonus really confounding.
AFW: Again a complete lack of precision bonus, which is baffling. The crit bonus is worse than a standard anatomically aware scope, the 5% extra crit over standard is not worth a lot considering that you use Snipe and Aimed Shot most of the time on a Sniper build. The base damage is nothing to fawn over either. You also have to go out of your way and sneak into the Beasts lair to acquire, a minor hassle but still a hassle. Funny enough the weapon icon shows a scope AND a bipod, making the complete lack of precision mind-boggling.
Black Arrow: Actually good base damage and 20% precision makes this a decent weapon, but I have to wonder why it got penalized thrice. First it sports a 15% lower crit chance for what reason exactly? If anything this cannon should be just as brutal on Aimed Shots. Second it is the only snipe rifle which requires 6 strength. Lastly it is found in DC only which makes it super late game and you are forced to rely on Dragunov or AFW since most normal Snipers you find or shop are, disturbingly, even worse.
I won't go into other uniques much since with this short overview one can see that at the very least the sniper category is woefully lacking and from what I can see assault rifles and SMGs are hardly any better, firearms really only have Wyatts Wastehawk as an outstanding one, the rest is ok or outright mediocre.
I am fine with crafted weapons being better than uniques. I am not fine with so many uniques not really having at least something over crafted ones, like the Dragunov for example.
