Sniping in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 is not about picking a window and going AFK; that just gets you farmed, even if you have stacked camos or some CoD BO7 Bot Lobby buy setup backing you up. If you want your VS Recon to feel like a real power weapon, you've got to think about the perk loadout as much as the scope or barrel. The way you move, how loud you are, and how long you stay alive all come from those three perk slots, and that's what separates a forgettable game from one of those matches you wish you'd actually recorded.
Slot 1 Recon Perks
Slot 1 sets the tone for how you move. If you're the type who sprints everywhere and hates holding angles, Lightweight is almost a must because that extra movement speed and sprint stamina just lets you rotate out of bad spots before the enemy collapses on you. Ghost plays completely different; you're not faster, but you feel like you vanish whenever a UAV goes up, which makes flanking way more consistent since nobody's pre-aiming your dot on the radar. Ninja sits in a weird but useful middle ground, especially in Search & Destroy: less about speed, more about making sure your sound profile is almost nothing so you can creep up on people sitting in corners and not give it away with a loud sprint.
Slot 2 Strategist Perks
Slot 2 is where you keep your streaks alive. Fast Hands (or Sleight of Hand, depending on how you know it) is the comfort pick for most snipers because reloading a chunky rifle or swapping to a pistol mid-fight is where deaths usually happen. You miss one shot, you reload, and someone who should've been a free kill just beams you while you're stuck in an animation. If you're landing most of your shots and you tend to stay up for a while, Scavenger becomes more appealing since not having to pick up some random floor gun lets you stay locked into your VS Recon without worrying about ammo running dry halfway through a streak.
Slot 3 Tactician Perks
Slot 3 is where aggressive snipers really feel the difference. Dexterity makes sprint-to-aim transitions way smoother, so if you like sliding into fights or constantly breaking line of sight, you're not stuck hip-firing or hard-scoping every time you come out of a sprint. Cold Blooded is more of a survival pick for when the lobby is spamming thermals or AI streaks, because it keeps you from being a free glowing hitbox. Flak Jacket is the one you notice on objective modes; without it you might win the gunfight on the hill or B flag, only to get deleted by a random grenade that bounced in from across the map.
Putting It All Together
Once you start mixing perks, the playstyles get pretty clear. Lightweight, Fast Hands, and Dexterity give you that hyper-mobile sniper vibe where you're basically a rifler with one-shot potential, bouncing between lanes and never really holding still for long. A stealthier setup leans on Ghost or Ninja with Scavenger and Cold Blooded so you can sit off angles, rotate through weird routes, and pick people off without constantly showing on radar or thermal scopes. If you're grinding Domination or Hardpoint and keep dying to explosives, swapping something out for Flak Jacket is worth it, especially when you're anchoring a lane or locking down a headglitch and the enemy starts spamming nades. The best way to figure out what actually fits you is to jump into a custom lobby, test a few combos, and tweak things until the perks feel natural with how you already play, then when you're ready to push harder on streaks or experiment with new setups, you can always grab some help through buy game currency or items in U4GM and finish it off with a tailored u4gm BO7 Bot Lobby.