I was wondering why every patrol always seemed to patrol straight into my concealed squad.
Has anyone found an actual use for sharpshooters yet? The pistol changes and reliance on timed missions seem to have rendered them basically worthless.
Some get good AWS perks. The Pistol perks being from AWS actually make them much better, since you can run them with snapshot &c. to make a mid-ranged skirmishing sniper (and then transition some to long-range snipers once they're decently good with the perk respec). Same deal with being able to manufacture items reliably, you can give them tracer rounds almost right from the start and AP rounds not too much later if you like. The holo-targeting (especially the free one from the perk) is pretty damn good for shooting things out of cover, which is important now that grenades are less reliable until you get Sapper Grenadiers.
They're also quite good as rebel advisors since the Faceless intercept missions have no timers and many expendable grunts to spot.
Granted, not many reasons for taking them instead of literally anyone else, but you get them and troops are scarce, and a high-rank one can be deadly.
e: Good fucking god, LW 1.1 is adding the frost bomb as a candidate for Rapid Deployment. Might actually take that perk now.