Meta
What to run, from your first hour to endgame. Each pick is the gun that kills fastest against the armor you will meet, worked out from the game’s own numbers.
Time to Kill
Every gun, fastest first. Pick the armor and the distance you expect to fight at.
How this is worked out
Health is 100. A hit does the gun’s torso (or head) damage, reduced by the armor level and by how far the bullet has travelled. Kill time is the gap from the first shot that lands to the last one, at the gun’s rate of fire. Every shot is assumed to land, and recoil and spread are not part of it.
Stages follow your Wardog level, which is the total of your role levels: Level 1 armor opens at 3, Level 2 at 30, Level 3 at 60 and Level 4 at 100. Guns open by the level of their own role. A role cannot be higher than your Wardog level, so Early assumes a role up to level 15, Mid up to 30 and Late any.
The pick is the fastest standard-round gun among the ones you could have at that stage, against the armor you should be wearing then. Shotguns, launchers and the bow are not ranked because their spread and blast are not published, and the AMR 50 is left out because it one-shots.
Ammo. Hollow point does double damage to an unarmored target and almost nothing through armor. Armor piercing is a little weaker on a bare target and pulls ahead from Level 3. Standard rounds are the safe choice against Level 1 and 2. The Wiki shows the evidence for every number, and where sources disagree both values.
Fan-made and not official: this is what the numbers say, not a poll of what players use. Prices and unlocks are the game’s as of .