Ranged DPR is Terrible

[MaxWilson]

While this is kinda true, most cover is soft: trees, creatures, rocks, (A) basically nothing short of actual walls or hills offers total cover. Which restricts the terrains where this might matter. Prone is true but if the enemy goes prone while under fire and has no way to return fire, it's just writing its own death sentence in making approaching at least twice as slow. Prone is good for when you are within your own effective range.

This is true but (B) unlike Sharpshooter, Eldritch Spearing caster doesn't get to ignore all the other forms of cover and thus the battlefield shows up in a much more nuanced way where you have to find clear shots or deal with the extra AC from whatever obstacles you're trying to shoot through. At extreme ranges in particular, getting to make clean attacks (except for aerial combat) should be a rarity.

(A) may be a matter of interpretation. The way I see it, going prone behind a 2' high log clearly does give you total cover from the other side of the log, if you're anything close to human-sized and -shaped. And while someone could interpret it the other way around and rule for simplicity that being prone doesn't reduce your effective height, if you're trying to keep ranged combat interesting, why would you adopt an interpretation that makes ranged combat stronger than it needs to be?

(B) To what are you referring please? Spell Sniper and Sharpshooter have the exact same effects w/rt partial cover: you get to ignore it.

Maybe it's my Battletech background talking where even giant robots routinely find half- or total cover from certain angles behind geological formations etc., but I just can't relate to whatever assumptions others are using that make total cover seem rare to them. Realistically, total cover opportunities from certain angles are ubiquitous for human-sized creatures in most terrains, even when you're only around trees, creatures, rocks, etc. (And tool-using monsters are more than capable of digging simple entrenchments for their own use.)

Indoors in a dungeon crawl it's even easier to find total cover: hide behind doors (including open doors, near the hinge), under tables, behind oak chests, in another room, etc. The Sharpshooter can certainly move to a new angle from which you won't have total cover, but voila! that's interactivity, and it gives you a chance to maybe get close enough to rip the Sharpshooter's face off if you Hide successfully and they pick the wrong position.

Warlocks don't have to risk flushing out their own prey this way--warlocks can be both anvil (with Eldritch Blast) and hammer (via summoned demons or elementals), which again is why Sharpshooter isn't overpowered relative to the opportunity cost, just highly visible.