Although the topic is derailing a bit here I can't resist to leave some comments, from Engineer PoV only that is.
While I agree with Karast on the (general) physical damage based ranged classes' problem of having to mitigate more and more armor with gear progression, and not having access to armor bypasses like melee dps, this is still due to less stacking of resists, which is by design not viable if you ask me.
BUT those complaints about critting with Snipe and about its damage are neither appropriate nor reasonable imho.
It comes down to target picking, and although we have access to Armor-Piercing Rounds, we are still not build to single-target down a heavy-armored enemy. You need to outsustain them - which can be tough with less kite potential than other classes - with Corporeal damage.
Stacking WS is debatable, even in our Sniper Squads we don't have a consensus about it, and personally I'm usually stacking only BS and achieve better results in both RvR and SCs.
Actually I would be really disapppointed if I wouldn't reach 2,x crits on Snipe on a regular basis, I guess Lesti wouldn't accept us for Sniper Squad if we didn't reach those numbers, lol.
Now to topic: I can follow OP's argument, but as Peter mentioned already it's on a position in a Mastery that's mostly used for Magnet specs, that usually don't need crit anyway. Combined with Rifleman - and only there - it gets most viable.