Sniper Elite 5 has 3 basic skill trees: Combat, Equipment and Body. Each of these has one central skill, followed by 2 rings of skills. In order to get to the first ring, you need to acquire the central skill. To get to the skills on the outer ring, you need to unlock the corresponding skill in the first ring.
Overall there are a number of useful skills in SE5, so let’s get started with the guide!
The best skills in Sniper Elite 5
Back in the Fight – this skill is fantastic, and it’s the central skill for the combat tree. It allows you to revive if you’ve been downed by using a medpack; While you may not be taken out often, it can happen, and this saves you the hassle of reloading another save sometimes, and is also very useful when being invaded.
Maintain Focus – Another central skill, Maintain Focus allows you to make greater use of your focus skill by retaining the focus vision for longer after leaving it, assuming you were using focus for long enough.
Focus Range – This one is a real life-saver: Focus range significantly increases the range of your focus vision, meaning you spot enemies using it from further away.
Rifle Special Ammo – Soft target, AP and subsonic rounds are three of the most useful ammo types for snipers in SE5. Being able to carry two from the start instead of one is always a good thing.
Additional useful skills in Sniper Elite 5
No Time to Bleed – This allows you to fight back with your secondary instead of a pistol should you be downed, which (typically) means more rounds and more damage against your foes at a time when it’s most critical.
Combat Medic – This is essentially a second recovery method from being downed. I personally haven’t ever needed it, so as long as you’re careful you won’t either, but it’s not a bad backup to have.
Triangulation/Advanced Triangulation – Knowing where your enemies are is always a good thing. If you aren’t sure where that fire is coming from, this will help. In most cases you can tag your enemies via your binoculars before even approaching, and keeping an eye on them is easy with focus, but for those rare instances that you can’t this will help. Note that this is a scope-tag, and not a bino-tag, which means it will only last a brief amount of time.
Scavenge Weapon Ammo – If you find yourself running out of ammo this allows you to pick up dropped weapons and strip the ammo from them: No playing the guessing game of which corpse will supply the ammo you need!
Focus Movement – Improving focus is always a good thing. This just makes it so you move faster while focus is active.
Deep Breath – Your biggest headache when it comes to managing your heart rate is going to be deep breath, especially when chaining multiple followup shots. This helps reduce the rate at which it increases while using deep breath.
Health Boost 1 & 2 – Nothing like a little extra health. Grab these if you’ve got nothing better to get!
There are a number of other skills, but you’ll find their usefulness more limited typically when doing a stealthy/sniper playstyle. Still, you’ll earn enough experience to unlock every skill, so don’t feel like you absolutely have to choose one over the other!