This is my favourite sniper rifle, the MK14, and I’ll tell you why; I wanted to love the MSR – who doesn’t? But this gun is much more forgiving if you miss.

If you look at the sniper rifle stats, there are some heavy hitters, which have great damage and penetration stats. But in Wildlands if you’re undetected, you’ll kill an enemy with a single shot anywhere on the body in most circumstances. That’s if you’re undetected. And if you’re undetected you have all the time in the world for a shot. No problem. But if either you’re being hunted or engaged, or you MISS that shot… you won’t have the benefit of a stationery target any longer.

And that’s the problem with all the bolt action sniper rifles for me, is that when you miss you need to get that second shot off before the enemy reacts and hides, or raises the alarm. The bolt action rifles simply take too long to rechamber a round. So their damage and penetration stats are only any good if an enemy is prepared for you and is going to otherwise take a headshot or several body shots. But those guns also have tiny magazines and take ages to reload as well.

So that leaves the semi-auto sniper rifles, and for me the MK14 is the best because not only does it have the highest rate of semi-auto fire, but it’s also very customisable.

The MK14’s strengths are its range and accuracy. Let’s make this gun even better…

• You can equip the folded buttstock to this rifle to improve handling, but I don’t bother, I just leave the stock buttstock on there.
• For a scope, of course it’s the TX5i Tactical, which is considered the best scope in the game and as you can see will max out the MK14 range. It also massively improves accuracy. We’re off to a great start.
• The trigger I leave alone, as long as you have a semi-auto option, I never use the full auto or three round burst fire. In fact when you pick the gun up for the first time it’ll probably be in full auto. Turn that off – the recoil wrecks your aim and there’s no point in using a sniper rifle that way. It’s not precise.
• The magazine I use the 20 round extended mag, which slightly reduces handling but basically means you never have to worry about reloading during an engagement, because if you’re sniping you’re unlikely to use 20 rounds.
• Underbarrel I fit the Shift Short Angled Grip, which takes our accuracy up to max, so now we have max accuracy and max range, but again it reduces the handling a little. I don’t sweat the handling for a sniper rifle because we’re not going to be swinging it around, we want to take our time with this gun so that’s ok.
• The rail I leave empty because none of those three accessories will benefit the stats we have already. They all just hamper handling further and can’t increase accuracy any more than it is.
• This probably doesn’t matter at all, but I opt for the long barrel to slightly benefit the damage, again sacrificing some handling.
• Finally of course it’s the suppressor, to boost noise reduction, stay stealthy and because I don’t have to worry about any drop off in damage with this as I have the ADV Suppressor skill unlocked in the Weapon skill tree.

So I’ve basically built a long range highly accurate sniper rifle which can send more shots down range more quickly than anything else. The scope is super clear and the recoil is very manageable if you need to fire at a target more than once.

This is the best sniper class I’ve found in my experimentation and works really well for me. If you’d like to build this yourself, all the links to find the MK14 and the accessories I use above or in the description for the video below.

Please leave a comment on your favourite sniper rifle load out below, and let me know how you use it and what you like about it.