WARDOGS Best Loadouts & Builds

Stats here are community-reported and patch-sensitive, so treat them as a ballpark. Price any build and check the break-even with the cash calculator, or put two weapons side by side in the loadout planner.

What makes a good loadout

The trap is spending on a flashy gun. Armour is applied before ammo type in the damage math, so a protective vest is the highest-leverage buy on a small budget. Put the cheapest adequate weapon in your hands, then load the rest into armour, ammunition and utility. Keep the whole kit cheap enough that dying does not wipe your bank, since a death you cannot afford is what keeps new players broke. The money guide covers how to earn it back.

Fastest weapon in each class

Kill speed wins most head-to-head fights, so it helps to know which weapon in each class kills quickest before you commit to a role. These are time-to-kill figures to the chest, with FMJ, against an unarmoured enemy. The gap is real: the FAL kills more than three times faster than the free rifles.

Armour and ammo change your time to kill

Those numbers are the best case, against a bare chest. Armour is checked before ammo type and it stretches every time to kill hard. A free rifle that kills in about 254 ms against an unarmoured chest needs roughly 762 ms once the target wears Level 4, the jump from four body shots to ten. That gap is exactly why the vest comes before the rifle, and why the person who has been earning well has a real edge.

Ammo is the other half of it. FMJ is the safe default because it stays even against flesh and armour. Armour-piercing is what you switch to when enemies start wearing Level 3 or 4. Hollow point is the trap: it shreds an unarmoured target, but against Level 4 the same shot can take hundreds of rounds, so only run it when you are sure nobody has armour.

The budget starter build (about $3,500)

You do not need to unlock anything for this. The three free assault rifles, the A-91, Bushmaster M17S and KH-2002, are functionally identical at 28 damage, so any of them is fine.

Best assault build: the Galil, then the FAL

The Galil (28 damage) is the mid-game assault pick, controllable where the early rifles are not. Run a vertical foregrip, because most of the recoil in this game is vertical, and a muzzle with strong horizontal recoil reduction. The muzzle only unlocks on the class you are leveling. The real ceiling is the FAL: it kills in about 85 ms to the Galil's 271 ms, the fastest rifle in the game, but at $6,500 you earn your way to it rather than rush it. Before either, a free AR plus good armour still beats a pricey rifle with none.

Best medic build: the PP-19 Vityaz

The PP-19 Vityaz leads the early SMG meta with low recoil and reliable hits out to around 100 m, and the medic kit is also the best earner in the game. Pair it with a defibrillator and healing items, follow the Hot Zone, and keep your team alive. If you want raw speed instead, the Super-45 kills faster on paper (about 96 ms against the PP-19's 206 ms), but the PP-19's low recoil lands more of its shots, which usually matters more than the number. See the money guide for why medics bank the most cash.

Best recon build: Mosin-Nagant or SKS

The Mosin-Nagant (55 damage) one-shots most unhelmeted heads, while the SKS (42 damage) has near-zero recoil on its bipod when you are prone or on a ledge. Both one-shot a bare chest, but armour flips that fast: against Level 4 the Mosin's time to kill jumps past a second, so the helmet and the enemy's armour decide every sniper duel. That is why the highest-tier answers are the SV98 and the AMR-50 later on. Start with the SKS or Mosin and a scope, add a ghillie once you unlock it.

Attachments for these builds

Kit every one of these for recoil first. A vertical foregrip tames the vertical kick that holds the early rifles back, and a bipod makes the recon rifles near-recoilless when you are prone. The full breakdown, including the muzzle class-lock and the recoil-versus-sway trap, is in the attachments guide.