WARDOGS Season 2 Weapon Tier List: Best Guns After the Rework

WARDOGS Season 2 didn't just add four weapons and four vehicles — it rewrote how every high-calibre gun in the game deals damage. If you spent Season 1 running a .308 or 7.62x54mmR battle rifle because it hit almost as hard as a sniper rifle at assault-rifle fire rates, that era is over. Here's our opinion ranking of where every weapon class lands after the Season 2 patch, built from BULKHEAD's own patch notes rather than guesswork.

01What Actually Changed in the Season 2 Balance Pass

BULKHEAD's official notes single out one problem: high-calibre rounds like .308 Winchester and 7.62x54mmR were designed for slow-firing, small-magazine sniper rifles, where huge per-shot damage is balanced by a low rate of fire. Those same rounds were doing close to sniper-rifle damage in assault rifles, DMRs and LMGs, which fire much faster — making anything chambered in a lesser calibre feel like a handicap by comparison.

The fix is a blanket base-damage reduction by calibre: .308 Winchester -25%, 7.62x54mmR -20%, 7.62x39mm -19%, and .50 Cal -16%. That hits infantry weapons and vehicle-mounted guns alike, including the Little Bird AH-6M, Z20 Lakota and Humvee miniguns.

Suppression got rebuilt in the same patch, and it matters just as much to this list as the raw damage numbers. BULKHEAD moved suppression onto shared falloff curves per weapon so being shot at feels consistent regardless of what's shooting at you, made near-miss suppression from small and medium calibres considerably stronger, and factored rate of fire into the formula so fast-firing SMGs and pistols don't suppress disproportionately just by spraying. Screen shake from suppression was also toned down to compensate, so the effect reads clearly without fighting you for control. A weapon that lands fewer, more accurate hits now rattles an opponent more than one that fires wildly and misses, which is a meaningful shift in how trading favors precision over volume.

DMR hit-location damage was separately retuned so headshots and upper-body hits land between assault rifles and snipers, and assault rifle and LMG torso damage was evened out so LMGs win fights through sustained fire and magazine size rather than out-damaging an AR on a single hit. Armor took a hit too: Level 3 reduction dropped from 55% to 50%, and Level 4 from 65% to 60%, while both gained extra suppression resistance to compensate. The Scout Rifle now one-shots any target without a helmet. None of this makes high-calibre weapons bad — it just closes the gap, and that reshuffles our tier list from top to bottom.

02S-Tier: Still the Guns to Beat

The FAL keeps the highest damage-per-shot of any assault rifle even after its calibre cut, and that alone keeps it in S-tier — it just no longer dwarfs everything else in its class the way it did in Season 1. The Scout Rifle joins it on the strength of its new one-shot-to-an-unhelmeted-head rule, which rewards the aim-heavy playstyle the rifle was always built around without needing raw damage inflation. Both weapons reward precision over spray, which is exactly where WARDOGS' reworked suppression system wants a fight to go. The Mosin is an honorable mention rather than a full S-tier pick: it gets a new PU 91/30 (3.5x) scope this season, but BULKHEAD also locked it out of every other optic it used to accept, so it's now a dedicated long-range tool rather than the flexible pickup-and-go rifle it was in Season 1.

03A-Tier: Closer to the Pack, Still Strong

The TCX-SPR, one of Season 2's four new weapons, is a 7.62x39mm assault rifle that launched already sitting in the same damage bracket as the FAL and M4 — a real alternative rather than a downgrade. The M4 itself benefits from the AR torso-damage evening-out, since body shots are more predictable even if slightly lower per hit. LMGs as a class move up here too: body damage now matches assault rifles, so an Evo-3 Ultra or similar gun that can hold a sustained burst still wins extended fights even without a damage advantage on paper.

DMRs land in the same tier for a specific reason — BULKHEAD explicitly built them to sit between assault rifles and snipers rather than above both, so a well-placed DMR shot is still more punishing than an AR hit, just not a faster-firing sniper rifle anymore. That's a nerf in isolation, but it's the kind of nerf that makes a weapon class make sense again instead of making it unusable.

04B-Tier: Solid, Situational Picks

The PP-19 Bizon, Season 2's new 9x19mm SMG, dodges the calibre rework entirely since pistol-calibre rounds weren't touched, and its magazine size makes it a dependable close-range pick without being an obvious best-in-class choice. The M14, the season's new .308 Win marksman rifle, inherits the -25% calibre cut on day one, which keeps it from immediately topping the DMR tier even though its stats on paper look strong. The MP5 drops here specifically because of a recoil change: BULKHEAD's own patch notes say its pattern was made more horizontal "as it was too easy to use," a direct admission the gun needed taking down a peg.

The Compound Bow also sits in B-tier. Its arrow drop-off is shorter than Season 1 and it's now slightly more effective against lower-tier armor since bow damage scales by armor tier instead of a flat reduction — a genuine buff, just for a weapon that will always be a niche, skill-gated pick rather than a go-to loadout choice.

05C-Tier: Harder to Justify Right Now

The Super-45 falls here after its damage fall-off beyond 50 metres was increased, pushing it firmly into a close-quarters-only role it can no longer step outside of. The MGL-40 grenade launcher takes the heaviest hit in this patch: -25% muzzle velocity, a stronger damage fall-off at its outer blast radius, and — if you're firing it from the Little Bird's bench — extra sway, slower aim-down-sights speed and a reload penalty specifically to cut down on how reliable it is as a flying weapon platform. Any weapon still chambered in .50 Cal without a vehicle-mount advantage also drops here; a 16% damage cut is the smallest of the four calibre reductions, but it's enough to erase the edge these guns had over mid-calibre alternatives.

06The New Weapons, Ranked

Of Season 2's four additions, the TCX-SPR is the clear standout — it launched already balanced against the FAL and M4 rather than needing a follow-up nerf, which says a lot about how deliberately BULKHEAD built the calibre rework around its release. The Evo-3 Ultra LMG benefits from the same torso-damage changes that lifted the whole LMG class, making it a strong pick out of the gate on the WARDOGS Steam page's current build. The M14 and PP-19 Bizon round out the roster as perfectly usable but unremarkable additions — reliable rather than meta-defining.

Season 2 also adds the Molotov Cocktail, a thrown incendiary that splashes fire on impact and burns anyone caught in the flames, including destructible foliage. It's not a weapon this list ranks alongside guns, but it changes how you should think about loadouts against the season's much pricier buildables — a Large Shelter or MG Nest that now costs several times its Season 1 price is also a structure fire can threaten in a way bullets can't, which makes room for a Molotov in slots that used to default to another frag grenade.

Quick Tier Rankings

1. 1Still has the highest damage-per-shot of any assault rifle after the calibre cut — the benchmark gun for the archetype.S-Tier
2. 2Now one-shots any target without a helmet, rewarding precise headshots over raw damage.S-Tier
3. 3Launched already balanced against the FAL and M4, with no follow-up nerf needed.A-Tier
4. 4Body damage now matches assault rifles, so sustained fire and magazine size carry the class.A-Tier
5. 5Retuned to sit between assault rifles and sniper rifles instead of above both.A-Tier
6. 6Dodges the calibre rework entirely since pistol rounds were untouched; solid but unremarkable.B-Tier
7. 7Recoil pattern made more horizontal after BULKHEAD called it "too easy to use."B-Tier
8. 8Muzzle velocity cut 25% and handling nerfed hard when fired from a Little Bird bench.C-Tier

07Loadout Notes for a Still-Shaky Season

It's worth flagging that Season 2 hasn't been a smooth launch outside of weapons, either. BULKHEAD spent its first day walking back a team-specific cash and XP bonus for the underperforming Lonestar faction after it backfired. BULKHEAD's own Season 02 trailer, published alongside the patch notes, is a good primer on everything shipping this season before you dig into the weapon-by-weapon changes above.

BULKHEAD's Season 02 Trailer, published October 14 alongside the official patch notes ahead of the October 15 season launch.

That same transparency showed up again days later, when the studio owned up to the bonus misfire directly to players.

We're holding our hands up and we got a few things wrong. We are pushing a backend update: ▫️Removing Blue Cash & XP Bonus ▫️Driver Progression Fixes ▫️Fixing Driver Exploit Preventing lots of players from accessing tanks too early

— WARDOGS (@WARDOGS), Oct 15 on X

None of that affects the weapon numbers above — the calibre rework is a separate, already-live system — but it's a reminder that BULKHEAD is iterating on Season 2 fast. If you're building a loadout around anything in C-tier on the assumption it stays there, keep an eye on the patch notes; a studio this willing to reverse course in 24 hours isn't going to sit on an unpopular weapon change for long if the data backs a second pass.

One quality-of-life change is worth pairing with any loadout decision on this list: the old placeholder "Rebuy Last Loadout" button has been replaced, and clicking it now populates the vendor UI with your previous purchase visually so you can add or remove individual items before buying, instead of blind-repurchasing the whole kit. If you're experimenting with moving a C-tier weapon out of your rotation for an S- or A-tier pick, that makes it far less costly to test the swap mid-match and revert if it doesn't click.