Use your favourite features in-game with our Desktop AppPoE 2 Build
Mercenary
Witchhunter
The Sniper King - Beginner Friendly
MercenaryWitchhunterCreator
Trending
End Game
Build Overview
Welcome to a beginner friendly guide for what I like to call the Sniper King.
We play as a Mercenary (eventually a Witchhunter for those awesome explosions) and focus on using 
High Velocity Rounds as our main single target skill (putting the sniper in sniper king) in combination with 
Gas Grenade with lots of armour breaking supports like Corrosion and Demolisher to ensure that our sniper does tons of damage on fully armour broken enemies.
For big AoE and regular map clearing, we use 
Galvanic Shards as it really is the best ammo based clear skill crossbows have access to without too much investment, plus it's just satisfying as heck. It's basically a pump action lightning shotgun.
Add in some useful buffs like 
Scavenged Plating and 
Shard Scavenger and this build can be surprisingly tanky while still dishing out great damage.
There's also plenty of room for you to explore the build in your own way by adding other skill gems besides those I have listed or taking the build in a different direction on the tree.
I am still quite early into my character's progression (level 74), but so far I've made it to tier 5 waystones without much trouble (a death here or there when I'm not paying attention) and will continue to update the guide as I progress further into endgame.
It has zero required unique items so anybody can pick this up as their first build and have a good time with it (as I have done).
I will work on a video guide as soon as I get a chance!
Equipment
Gearing this character is extremely simple. Don't get overwhelmed by the spedific information I'm about to share, instead just make do with what you find and have access to.
Prioritize upgrading your weapon before upgrading anything else since your damage is entirely reliant on having a strong weapon.
We want crossbows with as much physical damage on them as possible. At all times while progressing through the acts, swap for a better weapon if it makes your DPS numbers in your gem tab go up. All of our skills' damage is based off the weapon's damage so it is the biggest contributor to doing big damage.
Most importantly we want: increased physical, flat physical added, and attack speed. Critical related suffixes are also welcome, but not required. If you can also fit in "loads an additional bolt" on your crossbow that would be amazing but that is very expensive in the late game. "Grenades fire an additional projectile" is also a good one for our Gas Grenade.
For everything else, we'll be wanting life, resistances (to be capped at 75% eventually), armour/evasion and any attributes we might be needing.
For our helmet, chestpiece and belt, we want: Life, Resistances, Armour/Evasion.
On boots we're looking for the same as above but we also want good movement speed (I like at least 25% in cruel and beyond).
On gloves we want: life and resistances, but also "adds # physical damage to attacks" or attack speed.
On our rings and amulet we still want life, but these are also a good place to get any dexterity, intelligence or strength you might be missing to fully level up your gems.
For charms, I've gone with a stone charm, which helps against getting stunned, but a thawing charm for freezes would also be a good candidate. Ideally both if you can get a belt with "+1 charm slot" affix on it.
Make sure to have an appropriate life flask for your level at all times. Mana flask is much less important, but you'll still want one when you face off with a mana donut rare enemy.
Skill Gems
Support Gem Requirements:
Str 45
Dex 35
Int 10
High Velocity Rounds
Gas Grenade
Galvanic Shards
Vulnerability
Shard Scavenger
Scavenged Plating
Emergency Reload
Shield Charge
Early on you won't have access to the core skills for the build which only unlock when you get tier 5 skill gems (late act one) so I recommend using a combination of 
Explosive Grenade, 
Flash Grenade, 
Fragmentation Rounds and High Velocity Rounds.
Once you unlock the core skills of High Velocity Rounds, Gas Grenade and Galvanic Shards, you should be good to go.
Make sure to put Double Barrel and Scattershot on High Velocity Rounds as soon as you can as they make the skill so dang satisfying to fire off. Heft and Brutality can be added later on for more damage. Don't be baited into using Longshot, we will often be in close range to our enemies.
Gas Grenade needs to at the very least have Corrosion so that its poison damage also breaks the enemy's armour which is extra helpful since our High Velocity Rounds do double damage to enemies that have their armour broken.
Galvanic Shards can be supported with Pierce early on for better AoE clear but I eventually decided to stop using it, as the damage penalty is pretty significant, and we can grab some pierce on the passive skill tree. I recommend supporting it with Martial Tempo for increased attack (and reload) speed, Ammo Conservation (so you have to reload less often) and Close Combat since you'll be using this shotgun at enemies that are right up in your face most of the time.
Vulnerability is a curse that makes enemies take more physical damage since armour gets ignored to some extent. Only use it on tanky rares and bosses. Its supports are just there for convenience.
Emergency Reload is a nice button to press for a free reload of our High Velocity Rounds that I like to use early on in fights with bosses. It has an extremely long cooldown (40+ seconds), but don't forget to use it.
Scavenged Plating gives you some extra armour whenever enemy armours are broken from your Gas Grenades, and Shard Scavenger gives you an extra free reload here and there.
Feel free to try out different buffs like 
Herald of Thunder or 
Herald of Ash if you want to. I used Herald of Thunder early on for a very long time before switching it out. 
Attrition could also be useful in very difficult boss fights, but I haven't really noticed it too much when I tried it out.
Also you can grab a random one handed mace and shield and throw those onto your 2nd weapon swap so that you can use Shield Charge in wide open areas for mobility! Make sure to allocate "use only weapon set 2" in the shield charge gem tab.
Passive Tree
main:
122
122
set 1:
20
20
set 2:
20
20
The MOST IMPORTANT thing to rush for early on is the notable 
Instant Reload. This will dramatically increase the fun factor of the mercenary and playing crossbows. The reload speed of crossbows early on is incredibly slow, and just feels plain bad, so we want to lower that as much as we can, as soon as we can.
Grab the armour and evasion wheels whenever you feel like you're too squishy or dying a lot, otherwise focus on:
Quality of life like Reusable Ammunition, 
Repeating Explosives, 
Sand in the Eyes, and 
Adrenaline Rush,.
OR
Outright damage like 
Overwhelm, 
Shrapnel, 
Giantslayer and Cull the Hordes (if you have gotten your 2nd ascendancy done). Getting "chain an additional time from terrain" chance is actually great for our High Velocity Rounds since they will usually bounce right back and hit the boss twice.
For ascendancy, I went for the Witchhunter and chose 
Zealous Inquisition first for those sweet sweet big AoE explosions which are absolutely worth grabbing early for maximum fun, followed by 
Pitiless Killer for culling strike which kills enemies before they reach 0 hp.
I plan to grab 
Judge, Jury, and Executioner next for more single target damage and 
Weapon Master last, since the other options are all useless unless you grab the second node in those trees.
Still very experimental and early into our progression so we may change all of this around if other options end up being better.
How it Plays
The playstyle is rather simple and very satisfying. It took me a while to land on the right combination of skills and support gems, but I've settled for this setup and I think it is quite comfortable now.
I recommend using WASD controls if you are playing on pc. Crossbows are made for it.
For regular clearing white and blue mobs, we use Galvanic Shards with the occasional Gas Grenade for the slightly tankier enemies.
When facing off with actual tanky rare enemies or bosses it's 100% a case of throwing out a couple Gas Grenades and Vulnerability, then hitting them hard with our sniper aka High Velocity Rounds and going back and forth between grenades, vulnerability (as necessary) and sniper rounds until the enemy dies.
We also use Emergency Reload after emptying our High Velocity Rounds the first time for an extra free reload. There is a very long cooldown on it, so I like to use it at the start of a fight.
