Hi guys, this is a quick sniper rifle guide that was created based on experimenting with the in-game sniper rifles. Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer
None of this data is guaranteed to be accurate or objectively correct in all situations, as it represents a moderate amount of testing done without access to actual variable lists. Modern Warfare 2 seems uncrackable (unlike in CoD4, which was crackable) in a sense, because the variables for the gun data are stored in an encrypted file that nobody seems to have a good converter for. While the author has made every attempt to ensure accuracy, there is always a chance that some data is wrong and you are strongly urged to point these facts out immediately. Thanks for taking the time to read this guide, and have fun.
Note
There are conflicting theories for how silencers interact with sniper rifles; on one side people propose that silenced sniper rifles have a base damage of 50 instead of 70. On the other side, people suggest that sniper rifles have different hit-location modifiers over range and a silencer cuts that range significantly. From testing both silenced and unsilenced rifles I cannot confirm exactly which theory is correct, if either. In any case if you have additional information please post it. I will assume the former theory, for convenience. Non-default scopes have not been tested to see if they affect the information.
The data
As in CoD4, all sniper rifles do the same base damage, but each sniper rifle has unique hit-location modifiers that allow it to one-shot kill by hitting certain areas of the body. Some of the old balancing issues have been fixed, but the same basic formula remains the same.
Weapon (CoD4 counterpart): Head/Neck/Chest/Stomach/Limbs
Unsilenced base: 70
Silenced base: 50
Intervention (M40A3): 1.5/1.5/1.5/1.1/1.0
Barret (Barret): 1.5/1.5/1.5/1.1/1.0
WA2000 (Dragunov): 1.5/1.5/1.5/1.0/1.0
M21 EBR (M21): 1.5/1.5/1.1/1.0/1.0
Analysis
1.5: Will kill in one shot unsilenced, or silenced with stopping power
1.1: Will kill in one shot unsilenced with stopping power
1.0: Will not kill in one shot
In a nutshell, the major competitors for 'most powerful sniper rifles' are the Intervention and the Barret. Both seem to suffer from low fire rates, although the Intervention has less delay between scoped shots and the Barret can be hip-fired better. The Intervention also has a lower ammo capacity, but it has a much better reload-cancel.
The 'best silenced sniper rifles' go to the WA2000 and M21. If you were to silence all the sniper rifles (and, IMPORTANT, have Stopping Power on), the Intervention and Barret would kill in the exact way as the WA2000, with the WA2000 having the faster fire rate and lower recoil. The M21 can fire even faster and with even less recoil, but you stop being able to kill in the chest in one shot. It's a tough choice.
Unsilenced, the WA2000 is still a legitimate sniper considering you could opt out of using stopping power and still get a fairly powerful sniper that's better than an Intervention or a Barret without stopping power. I suggest hardline or cold-blooded.
And, yet again, the M21 is the best choice for Hardcore, because all sniper rifles kill the exact same way and thus the M21, with the lowest recoil and fastest fire rate, is the best one. If you want cold-blooded and a silencer the M21 is also your best bet, considering it has such a fast rate of fire and low recoil, but keep in mind you'll always need to take two shots (as with any silenced sniper without stopping power)
Conclusion
Thanks a lot for reading this guide, and I hope you jump in with any extra information. Please sticky if you think this stuff is important.
And later, on a SnD match, I downed this guys Pavelow too. It looks so bad ass watching that thing go up in the air, and then striking the target. 
), and despite my connection being significantly faster (9mbps vs 2.5), he was always getting a minimum of two bars - and thus was managing 10+kill games. The best I've had was 7-0-8, and that was when I got lucky with two bars.
