Talk:Mamba's Boy/@comment-9117764-20130512091013

I felt that Mamba's boy had been nerfed down to a point where it wasn't even good anymore. The reason why I am saying this was because MB used to be able to kill so many people in 1v1 with relative ease. However, after the recent updates, the ammo had been nerfed down to 4 shots, and stackings were no longer allowed. Both of the changes (especially ammo nerf) tremendously decreased the effectiveness of MB. This was the reason why, normal players usually miss one to two hits when attacking a target with MB due to the relative long locktime which demanded players to equip ammo +2 instead of any equipments that buffed damage. Not that I am suggesting everyone had to get ammo equipment, but if one chose to use damage +2 instead of ammo +2 you would deal 27.5 damage per shots but with the first few shots missing the opponent which left the players dealing significantly less damage than ammo +2 equipment. Also, most players would equip with speed +2 on MB snipers because MB itself had a -10% stat modifier and snipers would like to always have fast mobility so that when enemies turn across the corner, they could catch up.

So with both of these equipments demands, this left most snipers using ammo +2 and speed +2, thus, it was the reason why they were so commonly seen in battlefields. Now, if these two equipments were essential to play sniper with Mamba's Boy, then there would be almost no room for new builds, and unfortunately, the specials that MB snipers had to use were also quite limited, flawless desguise, cloaking and probearganda (I personally believed that this special is great on MB sniper as it allowed snipers to deal just enough damage to use 4 shots to kill soldiers) were common picks. Caffiene injection and turkish SW boots were also acceptable, but not really great. Combined with whatever specials you chose, now let's do a test whether this build was good or not, with any special (except probearganda) you must shoot at least five shots to kill soldier or bears that had lower health than soldier, but with the max ammo of only 6 with this build, in any critical situation where the enemy such as chub scout, heavy or soldier or even gamma ray engineer was attacking you, you could almost never kill your opponent as one or two of your bullets would be wasted in the combat either because of the lock or your opponent started jumping, leaving you dealing insufficient damage which was less than a soldier's health (100). Because Mamba's Boy's long locktime, it is never a good idea to stand really far back and aim as you could almost never get a kill against anyone (unless they stand there and shoot you or that guy is a noob). This meant that MB snipers are actually midrange not longrange.

So finally, MB sniper's only choice to compensate the damage was with a special: Probearganda. This improved MB's damage for a little but was critical as you now could only need to shoot four shots onto a soldier to kill with this special being in effect. With probearganda, ammo+2, speed+2 build, it barely passed my criteria of being a good MB sniper. My criteria of a good mamba's boy build had to diminish its disadvantages with bonus ammo and were had enough damage to be able to take down agile bears such as soldiers, huggs in less than 5 shots because if MB snipers need to take five shots or more to kill, it will be far too long, you could be killed by so many weapons Scifi HASAR, provolowned, doomstick etc.

This build was probably in my opinion the best MB snipers build in the current version (1.4.3). But there were still some problem such as survivability, mobility and stealthiness with this build. Many people chose to use flawless desguise instead of probearganda,  I liked to use FD before because you can lock in the box, however, after 1.4.3, I felt that it was not that useful anymore because players got it just to survive in fights with it and the build can't deal enough damage. Thanks for reading this, and if you had any comment or critism to make, feel free to reply.