Should I fully charge my sniper shot?

Is it prudent to fully charge my sniper rifle in most cases? If an enemy gets up close, am I better off trying to scope-n-shoot, no-scope, or try some other weapon?

Solution 1:

It depends on the particular target you are going for.

For a Heavy, often times you need to charge up, even if you are going for a head-shot.

If, however, you are going for a faster enemy (e.g. a scout or medic), your best bet is to go for one uncharged headshot, or two quick body shots.

And finally, charging up when you don't have an enemy in sight is usually a good strategy, because you can usually one-shot any non-uber'd enemy with a full-charged head-shot.

Solution 2:

This info from the TF2 Wiki seems pretty relevant to your question.

The only classes that you can't kill with a zero charged headshot with the sniper rife are Solider, Pyro, Demoman and Heavy, with each of these requiring 17%, 9%, 9%, and 50% charge for a one shot (headshot) kill.

Also worth noting that you can oneshot kill (bodyshot) a Scout, Engineer, Medic, Sniper and Spy with a 100% charge if you think it's a better bet than the head.

All of this goes out the window if a medic is charging, but the above link has info on that too.

Solution 3:

Personally I no-scope when they are really close or it's a scout. Otherwise I try to scope them with a headshot. I'd say I get fairly decent results, but not great.

I'd love to see some other sniper responses here, as I'm not totally confident that's the best method.

Solution 4:

It is for this reason that I personally prefer to use the Huntsman. It has a faster charge up, but smaller zoom.

Solution 5:

I would say do a quick scope uncharged headshot if the scout is going to get close to you, I would go for that than regular body shot.