Sniper Secondaries

Cleaner's Carbine

The Cleaner's Carbine in base TF2 is probably one of the least-picked Sniper secondaries. While it does have a unique mechanic of on-demand mini-crits after being charged via damage, it tends to be a very underwhelming weapon with them and extremely underwhelming without them.

At an initial glance with and half the clip and a faster reload time, it might seem similar to the SMG; but what sets it apart is, the mini-crit mechanic allowing Snipers to increase their knockback at close distances due to the increased damage. Combining all its attributes interestingly maintains the same uptime-downtime ratio of the SMG at 2.142 and even the same sustained DPS of around ~170. Players worried about DPS can easily swap between the two without much worry.

Currently with a 0.2 multiplier to the charge rate; it'll require at least more than one clip's worth of firing to fully build up, rather than just a few shots under most circumstances. The mini-crit duration of ~9 seconds allows Snipers to empty at least two full clips before it runs out. As a final note, this weapon does also feature a -25% bullet spread penalty, which can help support pushing back or stalling a wider area of zombies over the SMG.

SMG

With an extremely large clip size, you can find yourself shooting at zombies for a long time with the SMG. However, its biggest downside is the longer reload speed, making Snipers strong during its uptime but very vulnerable during its downtime. With the fast paced nature of ZE, longer reloads might prove fatal if you get caught too close to a zombie.

Compared to the Sniper's modified sniper rifles, this can act as a tool for consistent high damage in both sustained DPS and BPS (Bullets Per Second) for boss fights. It already has a fairly accurate spread of 80:1, so players who can aim well can benefit from this weapon without having to go through the hassle that sniper rifles may pose. This would come at the cost of maximum potential DPS in some cases, but it can be worth it if charging shots poses too much of a risk for the situation at hand.

Jarate is the type of item you toss at zombies both with and without care just because you can, but does reward aiming it into larger herds of them. Having several zombies coated in it allows your team to push back slightly more due to mini-crits. This could help in areas where you can knock zombies off platforms into kill/teleport triggers or when they're starting to push a bit too hard and the collective effort of the team will make more of an impact than you alone with an smg. The minicrits, however, are not as impactful as they are in vanilla TF2. The cooldown time is quite long enough to make you want to make you want to pick when to use it selectively, such as aiming it for Zombie Teleports that you know of. The slow time will falter stuff like Heavy Enzymes pretty significantly too, or allow you to get in some more headshots in while they are slowed.

The Cozy Camper is specifically for healing from zombie mutation damage without having to rely on a healing source. Given how plentiful healing is and that you're a backline specialist, this almost never comes into play - though sniper primaries are at least damaging enough to make them work in place of an SMG.

The afterburn from Pyro Mutations is not much of a threat considering how plentiful healing is. If your team has no healing, shouldn't you be running Jarate to save yourself and your team anyway? Or you know, an actual class that can heal?

A backstab from a Zombie Spy does not even count as a backstab as it does 300 damage on hit instead. So, yes, the weapon stats you'll see in-game is a lie. Truly the only weapon that has zero upside and actively hurts you for having it equipped. The only reason worth using it is if you're playing as a Zombie Sniper, as then it does function proper.