What is the best sniper rifle and why is it the .308 combat rifle?

[Coolidge]

?

[Knight Siegfried]

You have a desktop. Mods for the win my friend. Vanilla weapons suck bad. Go look up Nexus modding Community for Fallout 4.

[Expectorate]

I'd argue it's the fully upgraded gauss rifle that's the best, but since I'm currently playing survival mode, and the high level mods are hard to come by and I need those perks for other things, I've got a .308 combat sniper as my main rifle anyway.

[JaxMacFL]

Build you a two shot .50 for the best.

[Gold♥Shield]

.50 Reba II has the highest damage output for ballistic rifle if you don't count legendary modifiers like Two-Shot.

Gauss Rifle with the right perks can easily one-shot any enemy in the game.

[Knight Siegfried]

The laser musket fully upgraded with right perks sneaking is actally the best you could use

[Doombringer]

Nah, gauss is better than laser musket.
The way energy weapons interact with armor puts them at a disadvantage, you can't silence them (big problem for sniper builds), and the rate of fire for the musket is terrible.

[Nite69]

a 2 shot combat rifle with the .308 ammo change and a Scope added is the best sniper in my opinion

[Coolidge]

Hahaha, did someone actually report my posts and have them deleted?

[Knight Siegfried]

Oh wow, you're right. I thought you were going to report me? what happened? Scared?

[Coolidge]

Originally posted by HHC247:

Oh wow, you're right. I thought you were going to report me? what happened? Scared?

I was joking around, thought that was obvious.

I gues someone didn't like muh jokes.

[Xyzzy]

.45 combat sniper rifle 40 ammo.

[timer]

splattercannon is the best

[Lyre]

I've found the best rifle for sniping is a .308 combat rifle with suppressor if you want to silently kill your enemy. The gauss rifle does a lot more damage, but even with the suppressor it makes quite a bit of noise, and it does splash damage as well (in a fairly small area), so it'll alert anyone close to your target. A .50 hunting rifle also does more damage, but the slow rate of fire makes it less useful. A Radium rifle is another good sniper, since it does rad damage as well as ballistic, but it's lack of a suppressor makes it another sub-par weapon for stealth builds.

In terms of Legendaries, it depends on your playstyle and enemies you need to use it on.

Irradiated is a great Legendary for a sniper, since the only things that it's not good on are Ghouls (which don't have a ton of health to begin with) and Robots (which aside from Sentries that are better taken out with a Gauss rifle from long range, I find an explosive shotgun is much better). Twin is great on a gauss rifle (better than Irradiated).

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Lyre:

I've found the best rifle for sniping is a .308 combat rifle with suppressor if you want to silently kill your enemy. The gauss rifle does a lot more damage, but even with the suppressor it makes quite a bit of noise, and it does splash damage as well (in a fairly small area), so it'll alert anyone close to your target. A .50 hunting rifle also does more damage, but the slow rate of fire makes it less useful. A Radium rifle is another good sniper, since it does rad damage as well as ballistic, but it's lack of a suppressor makes it another sub-par weapon for stealth builds.

I don't usually find the slower fire rate of the hunting rifle to be any problem when sniping. I also usually leave it with a calibrated powerful receiver in order to make better critical shots when necessary.

Originally posted by Lyre:

In terms of Legendaries, it depends on your playstyle and enemies you need to use it on.

Irradiated is a great Legendary for a sniper, since the only things that it's not good on are Ghouls (which don't have a ton of health to begin with) and Robots (which aside from Sentries that are better taken out with a Gauss rifle from long range, I find an explosive shotgun is much better). Twin is great on a gauss rifle (better than Irradiated).

It's hard for anything to match up to Instigating when you're sniping. When you already want a weapon with heavy damge on individual shots, the amount you get from even Irradiated pales in comparison to delivering a double-damage hit, and since you're generally opening combat with your sniping, the enemies are almost always uninjured.

[ColMustard]

I've found .50 cal snipers do the most damage. I don't look for fire speed since headshots only require one bullet.