Here are my personal thoughts on the changes to the sniper rifle.
The LR, in its current state on the live servers, is OP. It's quite easy to use as it's point and shoot and does up to 53% damage on an OR. The issue for most cappers was that there was no feasible way to dodge the LR. Now I still believe that cappers need to stop flying in perfect arcs (seriously, even a slight juke to the left or right will throw off a sniper's aim). Nevertheless, the damage output on the LR was too much and you could basically two hit most cappers.
The current changes include a charge up, decreased damage output, and a visible beam. While I feel that everyone (including me) needs to get used to the charge up, all of the changes coupled with boost, shield, dodge, and warp core will make it exceedingly difficult to stop great cappers. One of the reasons such a nerf was required was to prevent duel sniping from being OP. I suggested this before in PT, but no one really commented on it there, so I'll suggest it again.
I honestly think that the current hitscan mechanic simply requires a damage nerf, a longer reload time, and some changes to how the range works on the sniper. Here is the proposed change. If you were to graph damage output over range, it would look sort of like y=-x^2, except the vertex of this parabola would be more of a plateau. Essentially, from very close and very far range, the sniper rifle would do limited damage. Only past 120M or so would it actually do decent damage (and the normal falloff range would still exist). Cappers would still be forced to dodge (there should be some skill in that) but they would not be utterly slaughtered like they are now. They would be able to usevarious cores and stay alive much longer than they have in the past.
These are just my two cents - I would love to hear some rational critique of them.