I think it's not a good idea to waste two feat slots on grenades. Those are only meant to be used for crowd control and your pistol or sniper should do the damage. Even high-tier HE and Frag are not that powerful and you can only throw a single one in a turn anyway.
When I was planning out a pistol build, I invited Traps into the setup instead. They seemed so much better, since I could still toss any Flash or Molotov if needed and they seemed immensely better + Traps doesn't cost AP if you prepared the battlefield in advance while stealthed + you can put down as much as you want. They can even trigger each other, so multiple can go off. And you have all kinds, from Crawler poisoned BT, to Incendiary (guaranteed Fear + Ambush trigger) or you can just put 3 Frags together to guarantee the kill. Trap Expert is awesome and Quick Tinkering is super helpful against incoming melee's. And so does Kneecap Shot with the pistol. Therefore I would either focus on that (especially without PSI).
On the other hand, as I tuned the build, I realized, the sniper and the pistol make a really nice pair. Sharpshooter benefits both guns and so does all the CC ability. This led me to prioritize the rifle and just use the pistol as a sidearm. Mainly for two reasons: cheap Kneecap Shots and getting the Initiative bonus with Gunslinger. The sniper rifle simply outclassed the pistol when it came to dealing damage and soon I realized that devoting into this gun completely, would make me a lot more efficient as well.
See, the more you use the rifle, the better it becomes. In every scenario, it's just better to use that instead of anything else. It's a special weapon that is unique in a sense that it lowers your cooldowns when you kil something with it due to Shooting Spree. So to maximize the gains, you just need to drop enemies with Snipe and Aim Shot, throw a Molotov and mop up the rest with regular crits due to them being lid up and Ambush kicks in. You get AP refunds from Shooting Spree + Rapid Reloader and cooldown reduction with each kill, to use Snipe and Aim Shot more. Which again does the reductions for you - it's a cycle that can be boosted even further with Temporal Increments. So the sniper rifle is not just an opener sidearm - it should be your main instrument. Using any other weapon (even the pistol) will just break the cycle in battle, it won't benefit you in the ways mentioned above, thus never be the better option. I started out with a pistol, but came to the conclusion that full devotion to the rifle is the way to go. Once you experience it, fighting against waves of crowds will be your favorite thing due to just how satisfying it is. Every action has meaning, every bullet gives results. The one shot per enemy policy is something you can rely and plan with. It's awesome. Also you're nowhere near harms way, due to the superior range - often giving you several turns of advantage (sometimes even drop combat mode while falling back after restealth, then again that is even possbible with a Flashbang) instead of pistoling from point blank and getting hit next turn.
Here's the build:
https://stygiansoftware.com/forums/index.php?topic=10837.0
It is specialized to boosting AP and cooldown reduction with using Thermodynamic Destabilization to turn the tides immediately at the start. Can switch out Premeditation or maybe Advanced Psy Empathy to Polymath if you want due to the recent update that makes decent crafting require more skill points.
Hmm hmm.... You make valid point with the grenades. My idea of a build stopped at level 18 or 20. You can use the sniper as a tool with 14 dex and 10 perception, but it's gonna suffer some precision there, but not a huge amount, I think. Taking anatomically aware scope and rapid reloader for a Reaper model would be great. One shotting most things that get in the sights. Problem is, if a zerg happens, then it could cave in the pressure. So, to counter that, bullet time and a good sidearm is needed. With 14 dex and a .44 hammerer, With 14 dex, the base 32 AP goes down to 23, and if I calculate correctly, the rapid reloader for that gives -20% AP cost, so 18 or 19, depending if it takes floor or ceiling. Let's say 18, so from that activating bullet time gives you 9AP attacks and fatal throw gives back 18 points, so it'd be 68 AP, and from that we take the knife throw, which gives the pistol 68 - 10 (with knife thrower's glove and -AP with dex) = 58 AP of shooting. Not considering reloading, you'd get 58 / 9 = 6 shots off with that. That'd cover the close range quite well.
So, I don't really know if I'd be kneecapping myself with putting points in DEX rather than PER, but I like to have a balanced short and long range capabilities. Have to see, if it causes problems, and then just roll back with my saves, if it proves to be bad.
But, I'm gonna change the grenade feats to something better. Maybe snipe, and quick pockets (which is quite good value for what it is).
From grenades, I'm mainly going to use gas grenades (cryo, toxic) and incendiary for some good CC and debuffing. Throwing knives are going to be finishers for some extra AP. 25mm grenade launcher for some AoE stuff, if need be (not really sure, but grenade launchers are easy to use, even without the feats). Then the rifle and pistol. I don't really want to carry traps around that much, maybe some regular bear traps, so that I can block off some corridors potentially. They can be used without skill, and the enemy will just walk into them, if there's no way around them. Also, swapping the fatal throw health threshold specialization for both shooting spree specializations seems to be far better investment.
