Hello. I'm planning to build a character that's using assault rifles/pistols and snipers. Since Fallout 4 completely changed the skill distribution I wanna know which stats are crucial for a build like that. I've heard that Luck means now more than ever. I was thinking to go with

Strength - 2 ( 3 with bobblehead later on)

Endurance - 1

Perception - 3 ( 4 with bobblehead later)

charisma - 4 ( planning to get to 6 at some point)

intelligence - 5 ( 6 with bobblehead for science perk)

agility - 7 ( and go up eventually)

luck - 6 ( and go up eventually but I was told it's really a crucial stat now due to crits)

Can anybody make some improvements/suggestions? What is the best "dump stat" in a build like that? Ty

Personally I like my Charisma at 3 just for lone wanderer because companions ruin stealth but to each his own.

Hmm. I don't know if I'd go with a setup like that, because it's already at a disadvantage for your sniper option.

You'll need STR 3 for the armorer perk because you can mod (arm) armor to reduce sniper sway or PER 6 for the sniper perk to do the same. Though you have high AGL, you'll be using most of it to hold breath unless you're that good. I don't know what it's like on PC, but on console, this option svcks because we have to click the same button we move with.

It's clear you intend to use VATS with such a high AGL, but at a significant hit to END, which will affect your health. Since your STR is so low, you'll be stuck with crap armor until you get the Bobblehead, and that fight is not easy! Don't forget who runs the place!

LCK affects critical hits and refill speed. If you intend to use crits often, this is definitely worthwhile to at least compensate for your other low stats.

If it were me:

S 3 (for armor perk - sniper sway reduction at level)

P 3

E 1

C 3

I 5

A 7

L 5

Then, when you exit the vault and return home, grab the You're SPECIAL book and add +1 to L for the 6.

Just be sure to cook all the meat you find. With such a low END, you're going to spend a good deal of carry weight in food since stimpaks won't help much. Shoot Brahmin and does. Easy to kill and exceptional HP restore.

Enjoy!

You've been sold wrong that luck is crucial in any way.

It is strong for VATS-crit builds, but that isn't really going to mesh particularly well with rifles and especially snipers and there are plenty of 'builds' that are viable.

Just in case you don't know, sneak crits have been replaced by sneak attacks and are unaffected by the mechanics and perks of normal, luck based crits, they have their own separate perks in agility called sandman and ninja.

That's a good point. Since AGL is 7, he can easily take advantage of the Ninja perk for sneak damage.

I just assumed he wanted LCK high for the crit banking and GR Sprint for AP replenishment given he's more about damage produced than damage taken.

I didn't even bother with Luck. Left it as a 1 on both of my sniper-y characters and still ended up massively overpowered once you've gotten the relevant perks and weapons.

For instance, I Legendary Farmed until I got an Instigating Hunting Rifle and then modded it to the maximum. (2x damage if the enemy is at full health, suppressed.) Max out Rifleman, Sneak, Ninja, and maybe one or two others that aren't coming to mind right now. Get Deacon's companion Perk. (+20% Sneak damage.)

There is very little that can survive a single sneak shot from me, and even if something can, whatever body part I hit is going to be crippled. Add in MacCready's bugged perk for some truly absurd sniper headshot kills if you want.

Just in case you don't know (as IMO it's never made clear) you can improve SPECIAL stats like any other perk when you go up in levels. So I think that the better play is to go for more generalized setup from the start for survivability and increase the others as you progress. I like to give everything a baseline of 3, then distribute the remaining 7(8 with the book) points to give a starting direction. Ninja is cool, but you don't need it in the beginning because you should be spending those beginning perks on Sneak instead (Ninja doesn't work unless you're successfully sneaking, after all.) The idea being that being more of a generalist early on is more survivable.

Think about it: 3 gets you the "crucial" perks of armorer, gun nut, sneak, rifleman, gunslinger. For a sniper 5 in Agility gets you both Sandman and Action Boy/Girl. A 4 in Perception gets you lockpick, and increases distance you can detect enemies. INT of 4 makes hacking available, which is nice but not indispensable, while higher INT in general increases XP earned (accelerating advancement overall) while also making the hacking and lockpicking minigames easier.

I disagree completely.

I just finished a Hard (scaling to Very Hard later) playthrough with a sniper character. IMO, Luck isn't necessary at all (but it doesn't hurt, obviously).

Perception, OTOH, is vital, as is Agility. Between the two of them, you have most of the ways to increase your chance to both hit and the chance to do overwhelming amounts of damage in a single hit. As a Sniper, being able to kill multiple enemies without wasting Action Points in VATS is essential, especially when they're bearing down on your position. Consistently doing massive sneak attack damage (Perception + Agility) is, IMO, better than periodic bursts through critting.

I'd start with Perception 7, getting 8 from the Bobblehead in Concord asap. Set your Agility to 6 and use the SPECIAL book in Shaun's nursery to upgrade it to 7. After that you put Int to 5 (raising to 6 with bobblehead so you can make recon scopes, generators, etc) and Charisma to 5 (so that Local Leader is within reach, plus Black Widow/Ladykiller).

Luck will take a Bobblehead + a leveled perk point later to get up to 3 (because you do want Bloody Mess).

What this gives you is (assuming maxed perk):

Rifleman 5 - 100% additional damage with rifles - Sniper Rifle, Laser Sniper Rifle, Plasma Sniper Rifle, and Gauss Rifle are the most important weapons for this build. Your off weapon should be something like a combat shotgun and not the Deliverer unless you want to spend perk points on Pistol

Sniper 3 - +25% additional accuracy to headshots in VATS (add MacCready's perk for another 20%, assuming you get it bugfixed with a mod on PC), the chance of knocking any enemy who survives a sniper shot down, and rock steady aiming when looking through a scope. With the Stabilized trait on both arms and this perk, the aiming point on the sight barely moved for me. I would headshot without VATS constantly.

Penetrator 2 - Within reach, but not necessary. Headshotting people behind cover is, simply put, amusing. Also, when enemies are on alert and constantly ducking behind things, you don't lose shots to sudden movement.

Lady Killer/Black Widow 3 - TBH, this is just for the damage bonus against half the humans and ghouls you encounter. 15% is 15%. Plus you'll need Local Leader to do anything with Settlements of note and this is on the way.

Gun Nut 4, Scrapper 2, Science 4 - This is how you make the best guns, the best scopes, and get the materials for them.

Sneak 5 - Vital. Max this first and foremost every time. Get armor with Shadowed trait (as a sniper you won't move much, so muffled does less for you, but shadowed prevents them from spotting you after they go on alert). Stealth Boys are amazing for tight confines in buildings where you may not get an opportunity to park a quarter mile away and kill them all.

Mister Sandman 3 - Amazing. Ignore the 'kill in their sleep' bit, it doesn't matter much. Your guns with silencers do up to 50% additional sneak attack damage. This stacks with other sneak attack bonuses. When building your guns. Put. Suppressors. On. All. Of. Them. No exceptions. If it can't have a suppressor, you don't bother with it. (Fun Fact: Gauss Rifles can have a suppressor. Good times, good times.)

Action Boy/Girl 2 - More AP is better AP. Between a high agility and accurate shots, you will and will want to take a lot of VATS shots. The best times to use VATS, IMO, is when very quick twitch skills are required (enemy barges around a corner, something suddenly goes hostile from neutral, radscorpion bursts out of the ground). If you're always walking around in stealth (which is normal after you get Stealth ranked to 4), you may get a sneak attack bonus still if you queue up the attack quick enough. Afterwards, when sniping with less pressure, trying to get your kills in based off your skill with the scope is the way to go. Just be accurate and don't be afraid to go center mass if you can't get a clean headshot -- once your sneak attack bonus is high enough, even hitting the leg can kill them.

Ninja 3 - And here we go. Increasing base sneak attack damage to 3.5x normal damage for ranged weapons. A vital skill you must have for this build. Combined with Mr. Sandman and Deacon's Killshot will get your average crit with scoped, silenced guns to 6.3x normal damage.

Bloody Mess 3 - 15% additional damage is 15% additional damage, and this applies to everything. Go get the bobblehead off Spectacle Island (just walk from Warwick Homestead in the T-45 armor from Concord). You should have one leftover point in CharGen to get it to 2 base. (That'll leave STR and END as 1, but who cares? Those stats just don't matter much to this build in the end).

If you want Armorer to mod out your own armor or to tinker on Power Armor, go to the Mass Fusion building and clear out the Gunners during your early levels and get the Bobblehead, then spend a level's perk point on it. That'll unlock Armorer.

At this point, a standard (non-legendary) .50 calibre sniper rifle should baseline around 375 damage. A sneak attack by you will hit for 2362.5 damage. This means it surpasses the damage resistance threshold for even X-01 mark VI power armor.

As an FYI, the way your Damage Resistance works is that it compares the values of the incoming damage to the DR of the target and on a 1:1 scale it halves the incoming damage. If DR exceeds the damage, then the remaining DR (with huge diminishing returns) continues to reduce the incoming damage. Hitting power armor with low damage weapons is like spitting at a wall due to this; yes you may wear them down but that 50 damage your gun does is getting reduced first by half, then the other 1000+ points of DR is doing everything it can to squash it to near zero (you will always do 1 point of damage). This works in the other direction, too. The more damage you do past the DR, the further away from 50% damage reduction you get, down to the single percentile range.

So... if I should someone in X-01 mark VI armor with that rifle, and it's a sneak attack, their 1850 DR will be exceeded by over 500 points (512.5). The way the math works (and the equation's a pain to do, so I'll guesstimate), the damage being so high should reduce the % of incoming damage reduced from 50% down to about 35% (very roughly). That means the target still takes 1,535.63 points of damage.

How many NPCs do you think can survive that hit? Upgrade to a Gauss Rifle or get a Sniper Rifle with the Instigating or Two Shot traits and watch the damage roll in. Instigating, for instance, turns the above 2362 damage hit into a 4725 hit and nothing survives that without being a Behemoth sized creature (even then...) or some ridiculous Legendary Supermutant bullet sponge. I had an Instigating Sniper Rifle and one shot Swann in Boston Commons with it, as an example.

Critical hits aren't even necessary, so I never relied on them (though obviously used them as available). You will use VATS enough to make them come up with some frequency, but would have to spend a fair few leveling perks to get Luck much higher.

Did not know that about Sandman and the silenced weapons. Completely skipped over that perk thinking it was once again the utterly useless sleep-kill bonus. Interesting.

I guess adding another 50% to that 4.2x sneak shot damage won't hurt.

Trust me, it does not. And no matter what faction you're going, you need to max Deacon's affection out double time before finalizing your faction choice.

Yeah, his was one of the first I got. Also worth going down the Railroad path at least long enough to get Ballistic Weave. If you're going a low strength/endurance sniper but you want to be able to carry loot and junk, protecting yourself without weighing your self down with armor is fantastic. It's like the Railroad was made for that type of character.

Yeah. My end game armor set was:

Military Fatigues (+2 Agility) with Ballistic Weave

Military Cap/Beret (+1 Perception)

Patrolman Sunglasses (+1 Perception)

Carried a Clean Suit, Black Rimmed Glasses and a Formal hat as well to max that Charisma out.

Weapons - Instigating .50cal Sniper Rifle - Suppressor, Recoil Stock, Recon scope

Two Shot Combat Shotgun - Brutally effective if having to enter a room and clear it. Suppressed, of course.

Overseer's Guardian - Suppressed, short light barrel. It played like have an MP5 from a SWAT team. Mid ranged firefight weapon, though could VATS/Headshot its way through a room pretty well.

and later...

The Last Minute - Legendary Gauss Rifle that Ronnie Shaw sells, with added suppressor and recon scope. I was picking fusion cores out of the backs of Brotherhood knights with this and watch them just collapse. Has the punch necessary to just pound through an enemy if you can't sneak attack them.

I did have one power armor suit I actually kept running. Swapped it to X-01 from 35 Court. Final loadout was:

X-01 Mark VI (all pieces) -- Had to up Strength to 3 and get Armorer for this.

Calibrated Shocks (both legs) -- For that sweet, sweet inventory space

Stealth Boy (torso) -- I've seen a lot of folks knock on this, but it's pretty sweet IMO. While using the PA, I don't think any single enemy landed one direct hit on me. Several times I had an enemy run right up to me, then stop and look around confusedly -- only to get headshot. If you can't hit X-01 hard and direct, you're not killing the wearer. It's just too resilient.

Targeting HUD - I already had Recon scopes on my guns, so didn't need the Recon visor, and I debated the one with +2 Perception, but ultimately the ability to spot enemies in the dark from very long distances won me over.

Arms had no extra system in them, no point and I didn't have Blacksmith

I swapped the Army Fatigues for the Military ones, since I wasn't using VATS too often and found myself needing the extra point of strength for carrying loot/junk. I also swapped the beret for the Battered Fedora, so I could Ballistic Weave that too. Despite my low Endurance (3), I was able to shrug off a Mini-Nuke round with around half health left.

Also, with my encumbrance issues, I only kept two weapons around: my rifle and the Deliverer. Fully upgraded, it shoots fast enough and hits hard enough to kill anything that takes me by surprise in smaller spaces.

Tyvm for all of your posts guys. I really appreciate it and I'm glad I started this topic. Violynne Bannister - your assumption is 100 % correct

So I can safely consider luck as the dump stat then , right? If so I made some tweaks . I'm thinking about two options now :

S-3

P-3 ( I wanna get the bobblehead ASAP to get to 4 and acquire locksmith)

E- 2 ( wanna use the book in Shaun's nursery to get it up to 3 for the life giver)

C - 6 ( local trader and other perks)

I - 5 ( and upgrade later on with skill perk)

A- 8

L - 1

OR go higher with perception as Asmodai suggested. Then it would go sth like this :

S-3

P- 7 ( 8 with bobblehead)

E- 1

C- 5

I- 5

A- 6 ( book in Shaun's nursery to get to 7)

L - I

Which build would be better? Once again any suggestions are welcomed lol.

That makes me wonder - why is perception so useful? Is it about the breath holding or the VATS accuracy? I'm planning to rely more on VATS but manual aiming with a mouse isn't really a problem. And what about charisma? In previous games it could be a dump stat due to speech and barter skills . What changed? I wanted it to be fairly high because i want to use the local trader perk. Oh and is the "life giver" perk any good? I know I have a lot of questions but I'm not quite familiar with the changes and gaming sites often provide contradictory information..

You could just cheat if you use Dogmeat you could just go with 10 in all stats but some people don't like cheating for some moral reason.

Perception is good because it does a couple things --

Increases VATS accuracy. Combined with Sniper and Killshot from MacCready to get those high percentage headshots from a looooong ways away (Note: MacCready's perk is bugged to give way too big of a bonus - I played with a PC Mod that reset it back to the base 20%.), and near guaranteed ones up close.

It directly contributes your chance of success in pickpocket (and not agility) and makes the "sweet spot" on tumblers larger for lockpicking. I could open most Master locks with 1-2 bobby pins at most with my sniper. I didn't bother with the 'unbreakable bobby pin' perk, as I didn't need it.

The difference I've seen with characters with Perception 2-3 vs 9 in VATS is very noticable. VATS, for low perception characters, is a method of making sure you hit in a short range, twitch skill intensive fight. For a sniper character like this, VATS is how you headshot everyone in a room in one VATS animation without missing any of them.

I see. Would you change anything in the 2nd build then? I was thinking i should invest in agility asap so I was planning to start with 6 and go to 7 but i'm wondering about the rest of the stats - especially endurance and the life giver perk

Absolutely this. But don't get so hung up on the end-game goal that you forget about the beginning game.

I would still recommend that you not dump Endurance and Luck quite so much to start with. You're going to have to make it through several (4 or 5 at least) levels before you get anything approaching a decent sniper rifle. Unless you get very lucky with a drop. You need to survive until you can get the base of perks built up to actually play the character you want to play.

Well, the most important perks for the build are:

Sniper, Rifleman, Mr. Sandman, Stealth, and Ninja.

If you can modify the build and still include those, you're good. Crafting can be done by disassembling found items instead of making them yourself so you can lower Intelligence, and if you don't want local settlements, you don't need Charisma.

But those five perks have to be available, and must be available as quickly as possible.

Short Hunting Rifles are pretty common, and TBH, at low level everyone's just using what's scrounged.

For that playthrough, I used the Laser Musket as my sniper weapon since the silenced weapon bonus from Mr. Sandman wasn't invested into yet. I one shot the Power Armor schmuck in Lexington with the Fat Man like that. Very satisfying.

The Musket is a guaranteed drop as it always spawns on the museum steps in Concord next to a dead Minuteman. Fusion Cells are common. Upgrade it to three cranks (which doesn't require any skill) and you can hurt some lowbie enemies. Keep your 10mm pistol and upgrade it as much as you can and use it as a close in weapon until you find a shotgun.

And I just dealt with the 'not running' part of stealth. It svcked, but the moment I could get Stealth 4, the build just came together.

I see. Tbh i wanted to have settlements and a fairly high intelligence but I'm wondering if I should decrease them a bit to bump up endurance either just to be tougher or for the HP perk. Other than that I don't see any interesting perks but I could be wrong.

It's up to you. There's no shame in wanting to be a little more durable, and it does open some options up. You could be more aggressive entering rooms and areas with an assault rifle, for instance, than I would be. It's all up to you to decide what you like most. Hopefully you have fun with whatever you decide.

I hope so too. Thank you

If you really want to min/max the character build (I don't think many of us did that on our first playthroughs, though, and still had fun) I would recommend that you plan through each Perk "purchase" up to level 10 or so and I think you'll start to see some of what I'm saying. If you focus too heavily, you're going to run into situations where you can't spend a perk because you don't have enough levels in your areas of specialization. At those points you can either upgrade a SPECIAL attribute, or bank it until later. Whichever you choose to do, odds are you'll end up at a pretty similar place because YOU have complete control over the direction you're going. I'm just saying that being a bit more of a generalist early on is helpful in a lot of ways.

FWIW, I literally started my first character on release day (or second, as I made a 3-hr throwaway toon with which to learn the controls) with straight 4's and put the book point into INT. Now that character is a demi-god sniper who can quite literally mow through two complete Deliverer magazines in a single VATS run, headshotting each enemy (and I fixed McCready's broken perk with a mod).

The point is that you don't really have to get it perfect from the start because you can always move in the direction you want to go. Did you "waste" a point on Charisma at the beginning? Well, you can fix that with just one level-up.

I say stop agonizing over starting stats, pick something and go!

I'm not experienced as many here but I'm playing a sneak/snipe build so I'll put my two cents in. One thing to keep in mind is that you can use perks to add stats, so you don't have to min/max so heavily in the early game. I'm playing a character with a fairly similar but more balanced build (End 2/Str 3) and I'm not sure I'd want to go down another notch. I find getting one-shotted by grenades to be a bit of a problem. VATS is...a bit wonky. With a weapon like a sniper rifle with a good scope, you're often better off not going into VATS. I find it most useful when something's charging me or when I'm using a shotgun because it seems like the reload is action-point free for some reason. I got off four double-barreled shotgun blasts to the head against one skull enemy in one VATS.

Stealth becomes much more powerful later on. You probably won't get access to a sniper rifle for a while and I'm not sure (haven't really used them) how abundant the ammo is for energy weapons in the early game. The early rifles are mostly .38 ammo which is essentially limitless but their damage is kind of low, so you might want to mod a good 10mm pistol for range with sights.

I'm going with STR 3 as well so what would you reduce to get END 2. And does going from 1 to 2 END really make such a difference ^^?