There are tons of exciting viable builds in Cyberpunk 2077. From a katana-wielding cyber samurai to a guns-blazing New American patriot, you can build your character however you want. If you prefer to avoid close-quarters combat in favor of having a long-distance relationship with your foes, then the Sniper build is for you.
Snipers in Cyberpunk are usually slow, and thus are avoided by many players wanting to embrace the game’s high-octane action. Even so, there are ways to make snipers equally as effective, if not better, than melee or close-range builds. Chopping heads off with a sword is fun and all, but a well-placed sniper headshot has its own charm that’s hard to replicate.
Best Sniper Attributes in Cyberpunk 2077
First thing’s first: Attributes. These little guys are the necessary cogs in your cyborg body and are vital to any build, and snipers are no exception. Depending on which sniper rifle you’re using, you’ll want to focus on critical strike chance and damage. Reflexes and Cool are the primary attributes to boost these stats, so getting them to 20 is your best bet.
At maximum levels, Reflexes and Cool provide you with +10 percent critical strike chance and +25 percent critical strike damage. If you want to diverge your build for a while, do so at the expense of Reflexes, as you can also rack up critical strike chance through other means. Crit damage, however, should not be avoided, as it boosts your damage output significantly.
Sniper Build Perks in Cyberpunk 2077
As for the perks, most of what you should focus on can be found in the Cool attribute category. The leftmost perk tree focuses on increasing your headshot damage, reducing stamina cost per shot, and eventually grants you the impressive Deadeye ability. Deadeye, when active, drastically boosts your headshot and weakspot damage. Nerves of Tungsten-Steel is the crown jewel of this perk tree, enhancing Deadeye by granting you guaranteed critical strikes.
Grabbing the All Things Cyber perk and related buffs in the Technical Ability category is also recommended. It will amplify all of your equipped cyberware, which we’ll get to later. Having a lot of good cyberware can significantly improve your damage output, so prioritize buffing them in every way possible. The Pain to Gain perk tree in Body is also an important choice, as you’ll be defensively weak as a sniper.
Best Sniper Cyberware in Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberware is perhaps the most crucial component of your build. It enhances your offensive and defensive capabilities with a wide variety of implants. It either gives passive bonuses or outright additional abilities that you can utilize to the fullest. For snipers, you’ll want to focus on increasing your defenses, since you’ll be highly vulnerable to enemy swarms.
The Rangeguard is a tremendous defensive tool that provides you with bonus armor if enemies are at least 6m away from you. Additionally, it gives passive bonuses to your explosive damage, stealth damage, headshot and weakspot damage, and RAM recovery. It’s arguably the best cyberware for snipers, but there are others that should be paired with it for maximum efficiency.
The Mechatronic Core and Dense Marrow are great upgradable cyberware that grant a lot of armor, extra damage against robotic enemies, critical strike chance scaling with Reflexes, extra stealth damage, and explosion damage. That’s a mouthful of passives, but that’s the charm of cyberware builds: Many incremental bonuses pile up for a massive effect.
Best Sniper in Cyberpunk 2077
Explosive Sniper Rifle
Your choice of sniper will vary depending on your preferred playstyle. If you want to do a lot of explosive AoE damage and set enemies on fire, think of no other gun than the O’Five. This is an iconic sniper rifle you can obtain by completing the Beat on the Brat questline.
It has massive damage and can absolutely wreck enemies at all levels with its incendiary bullets. It also has an immense 50 percent boost to critical strike damage, a stat that can work wonders with the perks and attributes mentioned above.
The O’Five is probably the best sniper rifle in the game, but there are other options if that’s not to your liking.
Smart Sniper Rifle
Smart sniper rifles in Cyberpunk 2077 basically do the job for you. Like other smart weapons, they lock on automatically and remove the need for your direct input. All you have to do is shoot, and that’s about it. Ashura is perhaps the best smart sniper rifle you can get. You can find this weapon as loot around Night City, or if it shows up at a weapon vendor’s shop.
It has a solid headshot damage multiplier and locks on quite quickly, and is the perfect weapon for those who want to use snipers but cannot actually aim.
Power Sniper Rifle
Power sniper rifles are the more traditional offering, and they resemble classic sniper rifles the most. They utilize regular bullets and you’ll have to do everything yourself, including landing that juicy head-splitting shot. Power sniper rifles usually have massive headshot damage multipliers, and one that particularly stands out is the SPT32 GRAD. The O’Five sniper rifle is basically a GRAD on steroids, casting off usual shots for huge explosives.
The SPT32 GRAD has an insane 300% headshot damage multiplier, which, when paired with the rest of the build we’ve outlined earlier, is a killer combination. In the mid and late-game, you’ll be able to one-shot nearly every non-boss enemy. Headshots will deal thousands of damage, and you’ll slaughter all of Night City easily, but there’s a catch. The GRAD is embarrassingly slow, as is the O’Five. It takes an age to reload and slows your movement speed significantly.
But, you were probably planning to stay in one place when you picked up a sniper in Cyberpunk 2077.
