I love my sniper rifle ammo perks, at the expense of pretty much all other perks. Not because they’re better, but it’s a quality of life thing for me. Outlaw and firefly are great and all that, but they are not what I want in a sniper. With the removal of Field Scout from rollable sniper perks and the retroactive nerf coming soon, I decided to create a nerf proof sniper rifle for me. This is PVE only.

Here’re the ammo perks I considered:

Life Support: nope, it’s gone.

Double down: borked in PvE for a few months. It used to give me 36 rounds per spawn on a field scout sniper rifle. Now nothing. Also, it’s gone in HOW.

Mulligan: 5% proc rate. No thanks.

Clown Cartridge: Clown cartridge has a 25% proc rate. This is pretty low. Count on it to get you 1 extra round, not much else. Still, I decided to do it because it’s in the first slot, and its only competition is mulligan.

Performance Bonus: also has a 25% proc rate, but it’s on every kill. This will get you more free ammo than clown cartridge, but I don’t use my sniper to kill low health enemies very often, so I usually don’t bother. I always feel like I need the ammo when killing bosses, not mobs. Furthermore, shooting a greg already gives you a chance to get ammo. As you know, sniping the legs off of the fallen walker and running out of ammo in The Blast is no issue, since all the guys will resupply your reserves.

Replenish: supers are casted too rarely for me to want to use this perk. I have used it during boss fights for an extra 4 rounds, but it’s just not worth it.

Shoot to loot: undeniably a good perk when you’re camping or at the top of the templar well, but I don’t think it is on a sniper rifle. I switch to my Acheron SR5 for this perk, then switch back. You do not lose ammo swapping normal primary weapons.

Surplus: this is the perk I used. It shares the second slot with Performance Bonus, Replenish, and Shoot to Loot. It works by doubling the ammo picked up per ammo cake, and it works for heavy, too. 4 rockets instead of 2, etc. If you have it on your heavy weapon, you fill up both your reserves with one ammo cake. Also stacks with ruin wings. To me, this is the new best perk in the game. It allows you to use heavy forever. I mean, not really, but you get to use it more than you normally would.

The middle perks have two ammo perks.

Skip Rounds: I used these in my machine guns when I couldn’t get field scout in the right element. It let me carry quite a bit more in my reserve, but it only gives you one extra one on Benevolence with an armor perk, ZERO extra without an armor ammo perk. Nearly useless.

Casket Mag: No extra reserve rounds come with this, and you lose stability.

In the middle tree, I’d suggest taking a stability perk over either of these.

That said, I ended up rolling a Benevolence with Clown Cartrige, Skip Rounds, Casket Mag, and Surplus. Surplus can be substituted for Performance Bonus or shoot to loot depending on how you use your sniper rifle, performance bonus for mobs, shoot to loot for camping, but I maintain surplus is the best overall, since it works all the time, and if you really want to shoot to loot, just pop on a scout rifle.

I tested the perks and their combinations, plus armor perks for more ammo.

More ammo for sniper rifles: gives you more ammo. Not as much as special ammo, which gives you one extra round.

More ammo for special weapons: gives you a full clip of extra ammo. Doesn’t matter if it’s on boots or the chest. They work the same.

On Field Scout snipers, they both only give you one extra round, so they’re functionally identical.

One has more for special, one has more for sniper, one has nothing for either.

Here are the tests.

15 rounds of ammo with no ammo perk on gun or armor.

18 rounds of ammo with no ammo perk on gun but with more sniper rifle ammo chest.

19 rounds of ammo with no ammo perk on gun but with more special ammo chest.

25 rounds of ammo with no ammo perk on gun but with special ammo boots and special ammo chest. Weirdly, this adds more than the sum of their singular additions. This is more ammo than you can carry with a field scout sniper.

15 rounds on skip rounds, no armor perk.

19 rounds on skip rounds, sniper chest. This is where the skip rounds start to show their “benefit.”

20 rounds on skip rounds with a special ammo chest.

26 rounds on skip rounds with both special ammo chest and boots. Bonus: cameo from Zero Point Fox.

15 rounds on casket mag with no ammo armor. Casket mag does not appear to add any reserve bullets over no perk.

18 rounds on casket mag with sniper armor.

19 rounds on casket mag with special ammo.

25 rounds on casket mag with two special ammo armor pieces.

But what about casket mag and clown cartridge? Well, on Field Scout clown cartridge snipers, you get 8 shots per magazine. On a normal one, you get 5.

Do you get 7? Could the extra round make casket mag worth it? No. It doesn’t. You only get 6. Surplus ammo pick up also doesn’t increase.

So, in conclusion:

If you have a Field Scout machine gun like Thunderlord, feel free to throw on those special ammo boots for max sniper ammo. If you have to choose between sniper rifle chests and special ammo chests, go for special ammo chests. Casket mag is lame. Skip rounds are lame.

Ideally, if you're like me, you’d want a middle perk that increases stability, an ambush scope (lots of folks like this one), Clown cartridge, and Surplus for consistent maximum ammo and stability, which is how I like my snipers. It’s a quality of life thing, like I said.