THE FINALS: Best Medium Loadout After the 12.2.0 Buffs

THE FINALS' Update 12.2.0 landed on November 5 with a quieter headline than a new season, but the balance section is one of the more direct Medium reworks Embark Studios has shipped all year. The Chimera-XB hits harder and fires faster, the FCAR has been pulled back toward a slower, punchier identity, and the AKM picked up extra ammo. None of it requires a client patch — these are server-side tweaks the studio can roll out without touching audio, animations or VFX, and Embark has already flagged a follow-up round of changes coming in Update 12.3.

If you've been sitting on Medium because Light felt unkillable and Heavy felt unkillable in a different way, this is the patch to go back and actually build around. Here's the loadout worth running right now, straight from the class's current weapon, specialization and gadget pool, plus why Embark says it made these specific changes instead of just nerfing Light.

01What Changed in Update 12.2.0

Embark's own dev notes spell out the target clearly: the studio wants to improve Medium's odds in duels against Light, which now sits at 175 HP, and give Medium more viable tracking-aim options in its weapon pool. The specific numbers:

• Chimera-XB: damage up from 47 to 48, rate of fire up from 260 RPM to 280 RPM.
• FCAR: damage up from 23 to 25, rate of fire down from 530 RPM to 500 RPM, magazine size down from 25 to 20.
• AKM: ammo capacity up from 34 to 36.

The FCAR change is the one worth sitting with. Embark describes it as shifting the gun "back towards the direction it had earlier in the life of the game," turning it into a slower-firing but more punchy rifle that's meant to feel distinct from the AKM rather than overlapping with it. That's a tradeoff, not a straight buff: more damage per hit, but a smaller magazine and a slower trigger to back it up.

Embark was also explicit about why it chose to buff Medium instead of nerfing Light outright. Per the dev notes, Light "still lags slightly among the archetypes across many skill tiers and modes," so the team targeted the Medium-versus-Light matchup specifically rather than taking a broader swing at Light's kit. Heavy lost some HP back in Update 12.0 and, in Embark's assessment, "coped just fine with that change" thanks to its defensive toolkit — and the studio expects Heavy to absorb this round of Medium buffs in a similarly comfortable way.

02Best Medium Loadout: Chimera-XB Build

For most Medium players, the Chimera-XB is now the easiest weapon on the roster to recommend. The jump to 280 RPM pushes its damage-per-second well past where it sat before 12.2.0, and because it's an automatic weapon, that extra fire rate matters on every single engagement instead of only on a clean burst. It's forgiving at mid-range, strong in the close-quarters fights Medium tends to get dragged into, and it doesn't ask you to land every shot the way a semi-auto rifle does.

Run it against Lights that lean on peek-and-retreat play. The combination of higher damage and a faster cyclic rate shortens the window a Light has to disengage after taking the first hit, which is exactly the matchup Embark says it was trying to fix. Against Heavy, the Chimera-XB won't out-damage a shotgun up close, but its range and ammo economy let you chip HP from a distance before a Heavy ever gets into its comfort zone.

03The FCAR Alternative Build

The reworked FCAR isn't for everyone, and that's by design — Embark wants it to feel different from the AKM, not redundant with it. Treat it like a tap-fire tracking rifle rather than a full-auto spray weapon: the slower 500 RPM cyclic rate rewards shot discipline, and the higher per-hit damage means clean bursts kill faster than before. The cost is the smaller 20-round magazine, so missed shots sting more than they used to.

Pick the FCAR over the Chimera-XB if you're comfortable tracking targets at range and want a primary that punishes precision instead of volume. It's the better pick on open Arenas maps where fights start at distance, and a weaker one in the tight interior corridors where the Chimera-XB's fire rate does more work for you.

04Gadgets and Specialization to Pair With It

Medium's specialization list hasn't changed in 12.2.0, but the weapon buffs make a couple of picks pair especially well with the new damage numbers.

Healing Beam is the strongest partner for either primary right now. Sustained self-healing lets you actually use the Chimera-XB's or FCAR's extra damage to out-trade a tougher 175 HP Light instead of winning the gunfight and still dying to a follow-up push. If you'd rather play defense around an objective, Guardian Turret covers a cashout or vault while your primary handles whoever walks into its line of fire.

For gadgets, a Defibrillator matters more than usual this patch — longer, more damage-trading duels mean more teammates going down mid-fight, and reviving them fast keeps your squad's numbers advantage intact. Pair it with an APS Turret to shred incoming grenades and gadgets near your objective while you're occupied trading shots. For a throwable, default to a Frag Grenade: it punishes groups clustered around banked cash and adds the extra chip damage that finishes off a Heavy who's already lost HP from Update 12.0's base-stat change.

Building the Best Medium Loadout

1. 1Its damage rose from 47 to 48 and its rate of fire from 260 to 280 RPM, making it the easiest all-around automatic weapon to run as Medium right now.Primary weapon
2. 2Damage is up from 23 to 25, but rate of fire dropped from 530 to 500 RPM and the magazine shrank from 25 to 20 rounds — treat it like a tap-fire tracking rifle, not a spray gun.Primary (alt)
3. 3Self-sustain lets you actually use the extra damage to out-trade a tougher 175 HP Light instead of winning the gunfight and dying to the follow-up.Specialization
4. 4Duels run longer under the new numbers, so teammates go down more often mid-fight — reviving them fast keeps your squad's numbers advantage.Gadget 1
5. 5Shred incoming grenades and gadgets near your objective while you're occupied trading shots with a Light or Heavy.Gadget 2
6. 6It punishes groups clustered around banked cash and finishes off a Heavy that's already lost HP from Update 12.0's base-stat change.Throwable

05Medium's Full Weapon and Gadget Pool

If the Chimera-XB or FCAR builds above don't fit your playstyle, Medium's current roster gives you plenty of other directions to go. The full primary weapon list is the AKM, CB-01 Repeater, Cerberus 12GA, Chimera-XB, CL-40, Dual Blades, FAMAS, FCAR, Model 1887, P90, Pike-556, R.357 and Riot Shield — only the Chimera-XB, FCAR and AKM changed in 12.2.0, so everything else on that list plays exactly as it did before this patch.

Specializations are unchanged too: Dematerializer, Guardian Turret, Healing Beam, Shockwave and Recon Senses are still your five options, and Healing Beam remains the pick that gets the most direct benefit from this patch simply because it lets you spend the extra damage on winning fights instead of just surviving them. On gadgets, Medium has one of the largest pools in the game — APS Turret, Breach Drill, Data Reshaper, Defibrillator, Explosive Mine, Flashbang, Frag Grenade, Gas Grenade, Gas Mine, Glitch Trap, Goo Grenade, Hover Pad, Jump Pad, Proximity Sensor, Pyro Grenade, Smoke Grenade, Sonar Grenade and Zipline — so there's room to swap the Defibrillator or APS Turret above for something more situational, like a Gas Grenade to punish a Light camping a corridor, without losing the core benefit of the weapon buffs.

Medium still sits at a base 250 HP, unchanged by this patch. That number is what makes the Light HP increase to 175 relevant in the first place — Medium was never the squishiest archetype, but it was losing straight damage races to a buffed Light before 12.2.0 closed part of that gap from the weapon side instead of Light's health pool.

06Medium vs. Light: Why the 175 HP Change Matters

Light's HP increase to 175 is the context that makes this whole patch make sense. Before that change, a single clean burst from most Medium weapons could threaten a kill outright. At 175 HP, Light survives that opening exchange more often, which is exactly the problem Embark is targeting with the Chimera-XB and FCAR buffs rather than a direct Light nerf.

Practically, that means you should stop expecting one-burst kills on Light even with the new numbers. Plan for a second exchange: keep your Healing Beam or Guardian Turret positioned so you can finish a fight that runs longer than it used to, and don't overextend chasing a Light that disengages after the first hit. The studio has already said a further round of balance changes lands in Update 12.3 "in support of this set of changes," so treat this loadout as the current best answer rather than the final word on Medium.