Sniper

Sniper
..and so they left, the sound still ringing in deaf ears.

Beat the game.

The Sniper is the ultimate boss killer. A perfect reload and a fully charged Steady Aim, along with Spotter: SCAN, can one shot many bosses. Try to stand in a preferable position where you can charge Steady Aim for as long as possible.
Primary: Assassin Secondary: Ranger	First Released: Alpha v0.28.9.2

119 HP

Difficulty

Artifacts

STATISTICS
HEALTH REGEN	1.2 HP/SEC3 HP/SEC (+0.24 HP/LVL)	ARMOR	0 (+2/LVL)
ATTACK SPEED	Up to 69.23 (59.02 with perfect Reload)	MOVE SPEED	1.4
DAMAGE	1575 (+4/LVL)	CRITICAL CHANCE	1%
JUMP HEIGHT	3
Bonus Stat Per Level --

Abilities[]

Snipe
Cooldown: 0 seconds Shoot an enemy for 250% damage. Reactivate the ability to reload your weapon, granting bonus damage if timed correctly.

Steady Aim
Cooldown: 4 seconds Carefully take aim, increasing the damage the longer the button is held down. On release, fire a bullet for up to 2000% damage.

Military Training
Cooldown: 6 seconds Backflip a large distance. You cannot be hit while rolling.

Spotter: SCAN
Cooldown: 0 seconds Send your Spotter out to analyze the most dangerous enemy, increasing critical strike chance against it by 100%.
Spotter: ISOLATE Send your Spotter out to analyze the most dangerous enemy, slowing and increasing critical strike chance against it by 100%.

Spotter: RETURN
Cooldown: 10 seconds Call your Spotter back.

Tactics[]

Frequently using Spotter: SCAN for guaranteed critical strikes is recommended.
As long as there's a lot of running space, Sniper can handle crowds just as well as (if not better than) other characters. Simply run away from the crowd to create distance and hit them with a Steady Aim charged as much as possible before enemies close in.
Military Training can be used to gain distance by turning around just before activation.
With Rusty Jetpack, Photon Jetpack, and Soldier's Syringe, an experienced player can not only perform a "skip" when landing from a elevated position using Military Training, but also hold themselves in the air while charging a fairly powerful Steady Aim, effectively singling out a towering boss with a higher hitbox, or safely dipping into a mob for a quick hit and run attack.
Sniper has high base damage (15 instead of 12, 4 growth instead of 3), making offensive drones and certain items more powerful than they would be for other characters.

Snipe[]

With practice, the player can Snipe, then jump and perfect reload just in time to Snipe again when they land. With attack speed increases, they can fire in the air without needing to land.

Reload:

When reloading the gun, stopping the bar in the white area preforms a "perfect" reload. The white area is close to where the bar starts off, so preforming a perfect reload immediately after firing is a skill worth learning.
Attack speed bonuses increase the speed of the bar, which can take some time getting used to.
The Sniper can't move while reloading. However, they don't lose their momentum, so they can reload while jumping to keep moving.

Steady Aim[]

Activating Steady Aim stops horizontal momentum.
Prioritize Steady Aim over Snipe. Only use Snipe while kiting enemies in-between Steady Aims.
Steady Aim will pierce through enemies, but each subsequent enemy takes half the damage of the previous one (min 1).
Perfect reloads affect this ability as well, granting a great damage bonus for a fully charged, perfect reloaded Steady Aim.
If Steady Aim crits, all piercing damage after that will be crits as well. This synergizes with Spotter: SCAN, allowing the Sniper to critically hit all enemies. This also synergizes extremely well with The Ol' Lopper and Harvester's Scythe, as striking a low-health target will always deal crits to all other enemies struck after them, meaning large heals from the Scythe. When going for this effect, the Lens Maker's Glasses is an excellent choice as well as the Wicked Ring.
Attack speed bonuses increase the charge speed. However, the damage dealt seems to scale on the length of time the button is held, not the fullness of the bar (similar to Miner's Drill Charge). Consequently, the maximum effectiveness of Steady Aim diminishes as attack speed increases (since the skill automatically fires after a set time).
Hold the button for Steady Aim while waiting for it to cool down, and it will start charging as soon as possible. This is useful when shooting off Snipes during the Steady Aim cooldown.

Military Training[]

Distance increases with movement speed.
It can prevent fall damage.
It can extend the range of it by jumping before or during. Also, extend the range of any jump by turning around for a backflip mid-jump.
The Sniper cannot climb a ladder/rope until the animation ends, so make sure to not overshoot when performing acrobatics off of ledges.

Spotter: SCAN[]

Can be activated this while charging Steady Aim (and climbing ropes/ladders).

Items[]

The best use item for the Sniper is anything that can attack enemies without requiring aim, such as Jar of Souls, Glowing Meteorite, Nematocyst Nozzle, or even the Disposable Missile Launcher (but NOT the Sawmerang). This is because Sniper's only true fault is an inability to fight effectively against large crowds in tight spaces, so having an item that can kill from a safe location the sniper can't shoot from is practically a necessity. Getting a Drone or two with Arms Race is also a good way to keep up some DPS while repositioning.
Due to the Sniper's high damage and low attack speed, on-kill items such as Gasoline and Will-o'-the-wisp are more effective than chance-on-hit items such as Rusty Knife and Ukulele.
Heaven Cracker is an item that helps immensely with crowd-control for the Sniper, since their basic attack, Snipe, does 250% damage.
Old Box works especially well with the Sniper since it tends to put a decent amount of distance between enemies and the Sniper when large crowds of enemies start to swarm them.
Crowbar dramatically improves the effectiveness of Steady Aim against undamaged enemies and is among the best items for the Sniper for one-hit kills. Since Heaven Cracker applies on-hit effects, it can be extremely effective with the Crowbar
Items that reduce the cooldown of abilities are especially useful to the Sniper, for their Spotter: SCAN and Steady Aim abilities. Alien Head is an item that works very well simply because of the reduction of their cooldown. The Wicked Ring's effect when paired with Spotter: SCAN helps to drastically reduce cooldown since the cooldown is reduced by one for every critical hit, and Spotter: SCAN gives a 100% chance to hit a critical.
Brilliant Behemoth hurts the Sniper when used with Steady Aim in close proximity to enemies.

Trivia[]

This character's abilities are similar to gameplay mechanics in the game "Gears of War". The Sniper's reload is like the "Active Reload" from Gears of War, and players can also perform backflips to avoid danger like the Sniper.
Since the ending refers to this character as "they", some people claim it is referring to both the Spotter and the Sniper. In either case, their gender is left undetermined.