SangoProduction
2022-06-02, 09:47 PM
Preamble: I have to admit, I kind of did the Sniper sphere a bit dirty back when I first reviewed it. I saw it as the obligatory opposite to Barrage sphere's bonus attacks and damage. After all, by my reckoning, martials absolutely relied on either taking something to the absurd extreme, or having a bunch of attacks in order to compete with damage. With my greater knowledge and experience with Spheres of Might, I now see that I am more than a little wrong about that. There are plenty of ways to add damage. Weapon enhancements scale with attacks performed, but most sphere effects only have an effect on an attack *action.* And Spheres of Might is really good at adding extra damage, if you want it to. And if you pour a bunch of investment into it. I actually find it kinda droll, because so little... anyway, onto the review!
Post Review Analysis: Wow. I do really feel like I've grown in knowledge and experience after having done these reviews, and am now more capable of properly evaluating them. It's nice. Sniper sphere is perhaps my favorite martial sphere.
Flex Talents: Covering Fire: Extremely narrow corridors where you expect AoOs will be easily accessed, when you have Combat Reflexes.
Shield Shot: Vs tower shields, and shield specialists. Exclusively.
Steady Shot: vs concealment and cover
Weapon Shot / Disarming Trap: vs humanoids ( / any creature reliant on weapons to fight, that have no backups).
Full or Partial BAB: Full BAB progresses the damage (if you spend MF on Deadly Shot). But if you're using touch attacks, you probably don't care, and will likely hit every turn one way or the other. No snipe talents scale with BAB. (Save for Bouncing Shot which just sucks, and Thread the Needle for its blind.)
(1) Superb: You always want this if it's relevant to you. And it probably is.
(1.5) Really Good: Particularly useful bits of kit, but aren't quite must-haves. (Kept it decimal, because spreading out Good so far from Superb felt unrepresentative. But I needed a step between)
(2) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds. Among your first picks.
(3) Mediocre: Doesn't hurt to have. Wouldn't go out of your way for it.
(4) No: It technically has a use, but the cost to take simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
(5) Never: There’s no non-trivial reason to pick it up, from its mechanics.
(6+) Harmful: Taking/using this is actively detrimental to your character.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
[Square brackets] indicate a reliance on the group (players or DM) or campaign you’re playing in, and how well it does in those select groups.
Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(?) Unrated: I choose not to rate it. Often because it is just so far out of my wheelhouse, or it’s far too ambiguous.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
(D) D***bag: Used for when your character wants to be a D***bag.
Precise Shot [1]: If your DM rolls with the "shooting into melee" penalties, and you have melee in your team, and the enemy tend to be melee, then this is a must-have.
Deadly Shot (3): Special Attack Action, which prevents you from stacking it with the other SAAs, like Barrage's Barrage or Brutal Strike (which is a melee-exclusive). And that's basically it. Almost everything else either simply works on attack actions, or aren't attacks at all.
But... you gain next to nothing from using the Deadly shot action on its own. Martial focus (worth 1 hp burn / lvl) in order to deal +5.5 damage + 5.5/4 BAB is just... disappointing. By comparison, Brutal strike exchanges MF for 2*BAB, rather than 1.4*BAB, with no reduction for touch attacks. And I am still not even convinced by Brutal Strike, even though people have been claiming its brilliance. (I tried it, I just... eh. Not my thing.)
But the damage isn't the main draw. It's the (snipe) talents. Which means that you are kind of forced into investing at least 2 talents here.
Sniper Shot (1): Raises the action cost to a full-round action, but lets you apply 2 snipe talents. Snipe talents are pretty good. Assuming you can reliably hit them. Touch attacks are really good for this. It also doesn't say they have to be different (snipe) talents. But it's probably going to be contentious if you attempt to do that. Also you need to be careful not to select (snipe) talents that can be removed by removing the projectile.
Lethal Precision [1]: Assuming that you take the Deadly Assassin, Unchained Rogue archetype, this gives you access to your full SA bonus and Fencing sphere from range, and a swift action Sniping action rather than move action. But rogues are straight up better as melee in almost every situation. It's less fiddly, and less reliant on making a check every single round you attack.
Perfect Shot (1.5): Roll miss chance from concealment with advantage. And you don't auto-miss on a roll of 1, which is notable for touch attacks. Gets bumped down for the fact that Steady Shot, though it's a (snipe) talent completely ignores concealment *and* cover. But I think it's a fair trade off, since (snipe) slots are valuable. (But, do note that this applies to literally all attacks, rather than only deadly shots.
Retaliating Fire [2]: If you regularly face off against ranged foes (which for some reason, is very rare for me - DMs just love their brutes), then this can get you an extra few attacks a round, if you're lucky and have Combat Reflexes.
Covering Fire (2): Hypothetically, it could make sense, and your stats probably already lend you towards Combat Reflexes. Can be useful if you're holding off a narrow pass or dungeon hallway from a horde of monsters, and someone on your team can force AoOs for you. I think the comments have a better description than I could give. You really need to make a build around it and wait a fair few levels.
Focusing Reload (4): A typical move action for a reliable MF refresh. The only additional thing you get out of it though is the ability to reload while getting the MF. The good weapons already reload faster. There are much better move action focusers.
Targeted Assault (4): A very small amount of situationally increased damage. But it applies for any ranged attack action. Not just Deadly Shot. Still not great.
Unblockable (4): Even more situational ability to not be impeded by deflecting magics and abilities.
Breaking Blast (F): Almost never noteworthy. But if you want to be that guy who just shoots a door handle as your method of lockpicking, go for it.
Pinning Shot (1+): Grappled condition is insane. -4 Dex and -2 to hit. And they can't use two-handed actions, and they must make concentration checks to cast, and can't move. Granted, it's exceedingly easy to break free, with a CM roll against your CMD-4 as a move action. But it's not 100% guaranteed, unlike Hindering Projectiles (while still providing the same penalties and more). It's really odd that a Ring of Protection and Dodge feat helps your Pinning Shot stay in.
Thread the Needle (1): Dazzle for 1d4 rounds. That sucks. Oh, but wait. If they are already dazzled (by any source!) they are instead blinded for a minute. If they don't have healing, then this is absolutely crippling, and can't be easily removed. Even with healing avvailable, most of the time it's at least a standard action to remove the blind. Granted, it probably cost you(r team) a total of 2 standard actions before level 10.
Tangling Shot (1): Entangled, with standard action to remove. The penalties are much less insane than grappled, although the numerical penalties are the same, and stack, and it's potentially better at stopping casters at low levels. However, it is only removed on a standard action, which makes the penalty incredibly sticky compared to the other talents here. No mention that destroying the projectile will also get rid of it, but it will probably be made to have happen without some clever descriptions of the entanglement.
Hindering Projectiles [1.5]: -2 to attk, AC, and CMD. But it can be removed for a single move action, meaning that SoM enemies don't give a ship. And the penalty doesn't scale, except with the number of times you've applied it. But still, a very healthy penalty that can last an indefinite amount of time. It's nice.
Weapon Shot <1.5>: As Push Shot, but disarm is better, needs no supporting talents, and cripples martial humanoids.
Push Shot (2): Exclusively useful against non-monstrous enemies, but assuming you are targeting humanoids, and are full BAB, then you will probably hit their CMD if you hit their AC, with no need (or ability) to invest specifically into Bull Rush. But also not much point in this if you don't at least take Break Defenses and Dominos from the Brute sphere.
Trip Shot (2): As Push Shot, but better, with less need for supporting talents.
Shield Shot <2>: If you happen by a tower shield and/or shield specialist, you can be quite a pain for them, as you can shut down that part of their build unless they give up their standard action to remove it. Then you do it again.
Steady Shot (2): Totally ignore anything less than total cover and concealment.
Piercing Shot (3): Assuming you've got a touch attack, and enough enemies to reliably have some of them in a line relative to you, then have fun. Basically a really bad cleave that takes up your (snipe) slot. But if you've got a bunch of attack-action rider effects, like those mentioned here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?646139-A-list-of-SoM-attack-rider-effects), then this likely applies to all of them.
Bouncing Shot (5): Literally no point in this, given that its bounce always applies at least -2 to hit. Guess what cover does? +2 to AC. Now, maybe they have total cover, and you can somehow see them... why not just move such that you can attack them as well? Well, you could be a cheesy 5 mile archer build, so that might be impractical. But in almost every single situation where this... your Creation sphere ally might have made a clear wall to block enemy attacks and basically give you targets that can't fire back... No. No. No.... That's way too specific. And you're giving up your (snipe) in order to get some protection while plinking the enemy, in addition to applying penalties to hit. It's not good.
But if you take non-standard weapons like Alchemy sphere concoctions or Destruction sphere's thrown gems... OK, anyway. This is staying here until someone gives me a good, coherent argument on the matter.
Head Shot (5): Fort save or kill anything you deal more than half their health in damage to. I mean, suffice it to say that if you're doing that, then they are going to go down anyway. Let your allies have some joy of hitting them. You also probably overinvested in damage.
Shattering Shot (6): Ranged sunder. Not even in addition to the attack - in place of it. So yay for going after the loot to the exclusion of ending the encounter.
Tactile Shot / Trap Technician (F): Next to no mechanical use. But if you like to show off. Or maybe your DM is a particularly trap-heavy sadist, then you could have some fun. There are definitely more efficient and effective ways of dealing with traps, but this is fun at least.
The Trap sphere talent, Trap Launcher, lets you lay snares, which activate immediately, at your foes' feet as a (snipe).
Tricky Traps (1+, C): Save, or suffer blind, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened... for one round, removable as a move action. 1d4 rounds, standard action, if invested. Not particularly greater than a particularly good (snipe) talent, which don't require saves, and don't have a timer on them. Well, if you have Cut and Run from Scoundrel, you can move your full movement speed, while spending a full round action to get two of these off (each needing a standard action to remove). And since this is movement, you then get to make a part-of-the-movement hide check, without suffering the Sniping penalty. Granted, only on a failed save, but you can also give them -5 to perception checks on top of that, and you're still not yet using your (trick) slot. There *a lot* that you can do here. Granted, a reasonable DM is still probably going to tell you to only use one instance of a (snipe) talent per full-round snipe, even here. But that's the potential.
Flash Trap (1): Cheese tier. Even if your DM is still smacking your nose if you try to one-turn your Thread the Needle... they are still blinded (on a failed save, granted) on the first turn, and that reliably sets up your minute-long blind next turn after level 2. Granted, is the 1/4 chance of rolling 1 round with Thread the Needle really more likely than them succeeding the save? No. Not typically. So does it really deserve to stay in C tier? Probably not. But also it's truly a save or actually lose. But Thread the Needle is 75% chance of no save and just lose. Why isn't Thread the Needle C tier if this is? Fine. Fine. It's just really good. And it's AoE.
Disarming Traps <1>: So, on a failed save, you get to apply an additional (disarm) and (bleed) slot, in exchange for your (snipe) slot. Bleed isn't that notable, but it is just yet another addon. This is... better than Weapon Shot, in every possible way. Except that you actually may have less reliability with actually have a lower chance of disarming them, since you tend to need to disarm specifically humanoids, who tend to have poor CMD. EXCEPT! That the trap being placed is not contingent on you hitting them. So I take that back entirely - especially if you use a touch attack weapon. Most notable thing you can do? Disarm them, and then catch their weapon, from upwards of 220 ft away with a Distance longbow. I'd say they're not exactly getting that back any time soon.
Skunk Smoke (1.5): A Fog effect that also sickened on a failed save. As a rider effect. That's really good.
Brutal Traps (2): Trades your (snipe) slot for both a knock back, and a (manhandle) slot. Normally you can't get (manhandle) as a rider effect, due to them being free actions. And it's a reflex save, rather than CM check, so you can even use it against monsters, and need no further investment. (Granted, you took Trap sphere and this talent, at minimum, and possibly a drawback that gave you Trap Launcher. So that's a fair bit of investment already. But that definitely evens out with its improved applicability vs more monsters, compared to Push Shot.) So, are (manhandle) talents good? Actually, they are really quite neat. Dazed and Confused gets stagger, and then you can Pinning Shot, and they literally cannot approach you that turn. You can just keep using your full action sniping without any fear of being in danger (from one enemy at a time). No, I lie. They can still 5ft step after being pushed back, and the stagger is hidden behind failing 2 consecutive saves. So it's not absurdly broken. Just potentially so. Also, I'm not even considering the massive damage just pinning them to a wall and ramming their face in with an arrow. Because this is a pretty huge paragraph for just one talent.
Scratching Post (2): Will save, or suffer -2 to attack - strictly worse than Hindering Projectile. Except that it's AoE. And it's not removed with just a move action. It takes at least an attack.
Bamboozling Trap (3): Ranged Feint is otherwise relatively obtuse to obtain, and this requires literally 0 other investment, as it's just a straight reflex save... By comparison, Sniping is much more involved (especially when race locked)... My god, am I actually going to rate this highly? Know what? If you really need to be Fencing and Sneak Attack... like... you are giving up one (snipe) slot for an (exploit) slot, and bonus damage, and an easier time hitting them. And sense you clearly have the Fencing sphere you can invest in letting this give you swift action regain martial focus, netting even more damage, and for it to last . Yeah. OK, I've talked myself... wait. Does this go off before or after the attack? If it's after, then this whole rant is pointless. Even if it does go before also trades a known good (snipe), which requires no save, for a save in order to apply an exploit, and the other stuff.
OK, I'll cut the difference and rate it as mediocre.
Noose (5): Aside from getting you investigated by the FBI, it really does about all of nothing, except against a subset of casters who need vocal components.
Bear Trap (6): Revised after seeing Disarming Trap... which is a disarm. Which applies the additional (bleed) like this would. But also disarms. This wasn't even good in the context of being against anything that can't be disarmed anyway. But still, that makes this a joke.
Foam Spray (6): Save or entangle until they make an escape artist as a move action. Vs no save, just entangle, until they simply make a move action. Less dice rolling around. And this is just straight up worse. Granted, it is potentially AoE, starting at level 5.
Net (6): Worse than Foam Spray in every way.
Terrain Trap (6): You get to deploy some area denial. Neat... except it's literally worse than Skunk Smoke in nearly every way. I mean... if you really wanted to make damned sure to deny an area, you could stack them up, making it marginally harder to simply pass through the stinky area. Someone might stub a toe on their way through. Oh no. Poor thing.
Alarm (F): I mean... you could probably just yell, honestly. But I do imagine that a city guard might have reasonable use for this. Most players aren't (active) city guards.
Magic / Techno Trigger (?): Literally no way to properly rate this. Way too many variables. Overall, the potential is stupid. Just the most straightforward, "Activate Fireball to devastate a 30ft radius as a rider to my attack" is still relatively potent. But, yeah. Too many variables.
Not only that, but you can also explicitly apply (poison)s to your traps before launching them, in addition to your normal shot, in addition to the option to just straight up rig inhaled AoE (poison) to go off as a trap, in and of itself. But I'm literally so exhausted that I'm seeing double. And I'm not sure my ratings would change for literally any of the poison talents already reviewed. Most of them are already 3-hit kills. And you could probably do it better with Barrage anyway.
Post Review Analysis: Wow. I do really feel like I've grown in knowledge and experience after having done these reviews, and am now more capable of properly evaluating them. It's nice. Sniper sphere is perhaps my favorite martial sphere.
Flex Talents: Covering Fire: Extremely narrow corridors where you expect AoOs will be easily accessed, when you have Combat Reflexes.
Shield Shot: Vs tower shields, and shield specialists. Exclusively.
Steady Shot: vs concealment and cover
Weapon Shot / Disarming Trap: vs humanoids ( / any creature reliant on weapons to fight, that have no backups).
Full or Partial BAB: Full BAB progresses the damage (if you spend MF on Deadly Shot). But if you're using touch attacks, you probably don't care, and will likely hit every turn one way or the other. No snipe talents scale with BAB. (Save for Bouncing Shot which just sucks, and Thread the Needle for its blind.)
(1) Superb: You always want this if it's relevant to you. And it probably is.
(1.5) Really Good: Particularly useful bits of kit, but aren't quite must-haves. (Kept it decimal, because spreading out Good so far from Superb felt unrepresentative. But I needed a step between)
(2) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds. Among your first picks.
(3) Mediocre: Doesn't hurt to have. Wouldn't go out of your way for it.
(4) No: It technically has a use, but the cost to take simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
(5) Never: There’s no non-trivial reason to pick it up, from its mechanics.
(6+) Harmful: Taking/using this is actively detrimental to your character.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
[Square brackets] indicate a reliance on the group (players or DM) or campaign you’re playing in, and how well it does in those select groups.
Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(?) Unrated: I choose not to rate it. Often because it is just so far out of my wheelhouse, or it’s far too ambiguous.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
(D) D***bag: Used for when your character wants to be a D***bag.
Precise Shot [1]: If your DM rolls with the "shooting into melee" penalties, and you have melee in your team, and the enemy tend to be melee, then this is a must-have.
Deadly Shot (3): Special Attack Action, which prevents you from stacking it with the other SAAs, like Barrage's Barrage or Brutal Strike (which is a melee-exclusive). And that's basically it. Almost everything else either simply works on attack actions, or aren't attacks at all.
But... you gain next to nothing from using the Deadly shot action on its own. Martial focus (worth 1 hp burn / lvl) in order to deal +5.5 damage + 5.5/4 BAB is just... disappointing. By comparison, Brutal strike exchanges MF for 2*BAB, rather than 1.4*BAB, with no reduction for touch attacks. And I am still not even convinced by Brutal Strike, even though people have been claiming its brilliance. (I tried it, I just... eh. Not my thing.)
But the damage isn't the main draw. It's the (snipe) talents. Which means that you are kind of forced into investing at least 2 talents here.
Sniper Shot (1): Raises the action cost to a full-round action, but lets you apply 2 snipe talents. Snipe talents are pretty good. Assuming you can reliably hit them. Touch attacks are really good for this. It also doesn't say they have to be different (snipe) talents. But it's probably going to be contentious if you attempt to do that. Also you need to be careful not to select (snipe) talents that can be removed by removing the projectile.
Lethal Precision [1]: Assuming that you take the Deadly Assassin, Unchained Rogue archetype, this gives you access to your full SA bonus and Fencing sphere from range, and a swift action Sniping action rather than move action. But rogues are straight up better as melee in almost every situation. It's less fiddly, and less reliant on making a check every single round you attack.
Perfect Shot (1.5): Roll miss chance from concealment with advantage. And you don't auto-miss on a roll of 1, which is notable for touch attacks. Gets bumped down for the fact that Steady Shot, though it's a (snipe) talent completely ignores concealment *and* cover. But I think it's a fair trade off, since (snipe) slots are valuable. (But, do note that this applies to literally all attacks, rather than only deadly shots.
Retaliating Fire [2]: If you regularly face off against ranged foes (which for some reason, is very rare for me - DMs just love their brutes), then this can get you an extra few attacks a round, if you're lucky and have Combat Reflexes.
Covering Fire (2): Hypothetically, it could make sense, and your stats probably already lend you towards Combat Reflexes. Can be useful if you're holding off a narrow pass or dungeon hallway from a horde of monsters, and someone on your team can force AoOs for you. I think the comments have a better description than I could give. You really need to make a build around it and wait a fair few levels.
Focusing Reload (4): A typical move action for a reliable MF refresh. The only additional thing you get out of it though is the ability to reload while getting the MF. The good weapons already reload faster. There are much better move action focusers.
Targeted Assault (4): A very small amount of situationally increased damage. But it applies for any ranged attack action. Not just Deadly Shot. Still not great.
Unblockable (4): Even more situational ability to not be impeded by deflecting magics and abilities.
Breaking Blast (F): Almost never noteworthy. But if you want to be that guy who just shoots a door handle as your method of lockpicking, go for it.
Pinning Shot (1+): Grappled condition is insane. -4 Dex and -2 to hit. And they can't use two-handed actions, and they must make concentration checks to cast, and can't move. Granted, it's exceedingly easy to break free, with a CM roll against your CMD-4 as a move action. But it's not 100% guaranteed, unlike Hindering Projectiles (while still providing the same penalties and more). It's really odd that a Ring of Protection and Dodge feat helps your Pinning Shot stay in.
Thread the Needle (1): Dazzle for 1d4 rounds. That sucks. Oh, but wait. If they are already dazzled (by any source!) they are instead blinded for a minute. If they don't have healing, then this is absolutely crippling, and can't be easily removed. Even with healing avvailable, most of the time it's at least a standard action to remove the blind. Granted, it probably cost you(r team) a total of 2 standard actions before level 10.
Tangling Shot (1): Entangled, with standard action to remove. The penalties are much less insane than grappled, although the numerical penalties are the same, and stack, and it's potentially better at stopping casters at low levels. However, it is only removed on a standard action, which makes the penalty incredibly sticky compared to the other talents here. No mention that destroying the projectile will also get rid of it, but it will probably be made to have happen without some clever descriptions of the entanglement.
Hindering Projectiles [1.5]: -2 to attk, AC, and CMD. But it can be removed for a single move action, meaning that SoM enemies don't give a ship. And the penalty doesn't scale, except with the number of times you've applied it. But still, a very healthy penalty that can last an indefinite amount of time. It's nice.
Weapon Shot <1.5>: As Push Shot, but disarm is better, needs no supporting talents, and cripples martial humanoids.
Push Shot (2): Exclusively useful against non-monstrous enemies, but assuming you are targeting humanoids, and are full BAB, then you will probably hit their CMD if you hit their AC, with no need (or ability) to invest specifically into Bull Rush. But also not much point in this if you don't at least take Break Defenses and Dominos from the Brute sphere.
Trip Shot (2): As Push Shot, but better, with less need for supporting talents.
Shield Shot <2>: If you happen by a tower shield and/or shield specialist, you can be quite a pain for them, as you can shut down that part of their build unless they give up their standard action to remove it. Then you do it again.
Steady Shot (2): Totally ignore anything less than total cover and concealment.
Piercing Shot (3): Assuming you've got a touch attack, and enough enemies to reliably have some of them in a line relative to you, then have fun. Basically a really bad cleave that takes up your (snipe) slot. But if you've got a bunch of attack-action rider effects, like those mentioned here (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?646139-A-list-of-SoM-attack-rider-effects), then this likely applies to all of them.
Bouncing Shot (5): Literally no point in this, given that its bounce always applies at least -2 to hit. Guess what cover does? +2 to AC. Now, maybe they have total cover, and you can somehow see them... why not just move such that you can attack them as well? Well, you could be a cheesy 5 mile archer build, so that might be impractical. But in almost every single situation where this... your Creation sphere ally might have made a clear wall to block enemy attacks and basically give you targets that can't fire back... No. No. No.... That's way too specific. And you're giving up your (snipe) in order to get some protection while plinking the enemy, in addition to applying penalties to hit. It's not good.
But if you take non-standard weapons like Alchemy sphere concoctions or Destruction sphere's thrown gems... OK, anyway. This is staying here until someone gives me a good, coherent argument on the matter.
Head Shot (5): Fort save or kill anything you deal more than half their health in damage to. I mean, suffice it to say that if you're doing that, then they are going to go down anyway. Let your allies have some joy of hitting them. You also probably overinvested in damage.
Shattering Shot (6): Ranged sunder. Not even in addition to the attack - in place of it. So yay for going after the loot to the exclusion of ending the encounter.
Tactile Shot / Trap Technician (F): Next to no mechanical use. But if you like to show off. Or maybe your DM is a particularly trap-heavy sadist, then you could have some fun. There are definitely more efficient and effective ways of dealing with traps, but this is fun at least.
The Trap sphere talent, Trap Launcher, lets you lay snares, which activate immediately, at your foes' feet as a (snipe).
Tricky Traps (1+, C): Save, or suffer blind, deafened, entangled, shaken, or sickened... for one round, removable as a move action. 1d4 rounds, standard action, if invested. Not particularly greater than a particularly good (snipe) talent, which don't require saves, and don't have a timer on them. Well, if you have Cut and Run from Scoundrel, you can move your full movement speed, while spending a full round action to get two of these off (each needing a standard action to remove). And since this is movement, you then get to make a part-of-the-movement hide check, without suffering the Sniping penalty. Granted, only on a failed save, but you can also give them -5 to perception checks on top of that, and you're still not yet using your (trick) slot. There *a lot* that you can do here. Granted, a reasonable DM is still probably going to tell you to only use one instance of a (snipe) talent per full-round snipe, even here. But that's the potential.
Flash Trap (1): Cheese tier. Even if your DM is still smacking your nose if you try to one-turn your Thread the Needle... they are still blinded (on a failed save, granted) on the first turn, and that reliably sets up your minute-long blind next turn after level 2. Granted, is the 1/4 chance of rolling 1 round with Thread the Needle really more likely than them succeeding the save? No. Not typically. So does it really deserve to stay in C tier? Probably not. But also it's truly a save or actually lose. But Thread the Needle is 75% chance of no save and just lose. Why isn't Thread the Needle C tier if this is? Fine. Fine. It's just really good. And it's AoE.
Disarming Traps <1>: So, on a failed save, you get to apply an additional (disarm) and (bleed) slot, in exchange for your (snipe) slot. Bleed isn't that notable, but it is just yet another addon. This is... better than Weapon Shot, in every possible way. Except that you actually may have less reliability with actually have a lower chance of disarming them, since you tend to need to disarm specifically humanoids, who tend to have poor CMD. EXCEPT! That the trap being placed is not contingent on you hitting them. So I take that back entirely - especially if you use a touch attack weapon. Most notable thing you can do? Disarm them, and then catch their weapon, from upwards of 220 ft away with a Distance longbow. I'd say they're not exactly getting that back any time soon.
Skunk Smoke (1.5): A Fog effect that also sickened on a failed save. As a rider effect. That's really good.
Brutal Traps (2): Trades your (snipe) slot for both a knock back, and a (manhandle) slot. Normally you can't get (manhandle) as a rider effect, due to them being free actions. And it's a reflex save, rather than CM check, so you can even use it against monsters, and need no further investment. (Granted, you took Trap sphere and this talent, at minimum, and possibly a drawback that gave you Trap Launcher. So that's a fair bit of investment already. But that definitely evens out with its improved applicability vs more monsters, compared to Push Shot.) So, are (manhandle) talents good? Actually, they are really quite neat. Dazed and Confused gets stagger, and then you can Pinning Shot, and they literally cannot approach you that turn. You can just keep using your full action sniping without any fear of being in danger (from one enemy at a time). No, I lie. They can still 5ft step after being pushed back, and the stagger is hidden behind failing 2 consecutive saves. So it's not absurdly broken. Just potentially so. Also, I'm not even considering the massive damage just pinning them to a wall and ramming their face in with an arrow. Because this is a pretty huge paragraph for just one talent.
Scratching Post (2): Will save, or suffer -2 to attack - strictly worse than Hindering Projectile. Except that it's AoE. And it's not removed with just a move action. It takes at least an attack.
Bamboozling Trap (3): Ranged Feint is otherwise relatively obtuse to obtain, and this requires literally 0 other investment, as it's just a straight reflex save... By comparison, Sniping is much more involved (especially when race locked)... My god, am I actually going to rate this highly? Know what? If you really need to be Fencing and Sneak Attack... like... you are giving up one (snipe) slot for an (exploit) slot, and bonus damage, and an easier time hitting them. And sense you clearly have the Fencing sphere you can invest in letting this give you swift action regain martial focus, netting even more damage, and for it to last . Yeah. OK, I've talked myself... wait. Does this go off before or after the attack? If it's after, then this whole rant is pointless. Even if it does go before also trades a known good (snipe), which requires no save, for a save in order to apply an exploit, and the other stuff.
OK, I'll cut the difference and rate it as mediocre.
Noose (5): Aside from getting you investigated by the FBI, it really does about all of nothing, except against a subset of casters who need vocal components.
Bear Trap (6): Revised after seeing Disarming Trap... which is a disarm. Which applies the additional (bleed) like this would. But also disarms. This wasn't even good in the context of being against anything that can't be disarmed anyway. But still, that makes this a joke.
Foam Spray (6): Save or entangle until they make an escape artist as a move action. Vs no save, just entangle, until they simply make a move action. Less dice rolling around. And this is just straight up worse. Granted, it is potentially AoE, starting at level 5.
Net (6): Worse than Foam Spray in every way.
Terrain Trap (6): You get to deploy some area denial. Neat... except it's literally worse than Skunk Smoke in nearly every way. I mean... if you really wanted to make damned sure to deny an area, you could stack them up, making it marginally harder to simply pass through the stinky area. Someone might stub a toe on their way through. Oh no. Poor thing.
Alarm (F): I mean... you could probably just yell, honestly. But I do imagine that a city guard might have reasonable use for this. Most players aren't (active) city guards.
Magic / Techno Trigger (?): Literally no way to properly rate this. Way too many variables. Overall, the potential is stupid. Just the most straightforward, "Activate Fireball to devastate a 30ft radius as a rider to my attack" is still relatively potent. But, yeah. Too many variables.
Not only that, but you can also explicitly apply (poison)s to your traps before launching them, in addition to your normal shot, in addition to the option to just straight up rig inhaled AoE (poison) to go off as a trap, in and of itself. But I'm literally so exhausted that I'm seeing double. And I'm not sure my ratings would change for literally any of the poison talents already reviewed. Most of them are already 3-hit kills. And you could probably do it better with Barrage anyway.