Assault Class battle Rig: Outfitted for operating in a variety of situations
An all-purpose combat Rig, the Warfighter has payloads and traits that are broadly useful across many game modes. If you aren’t entirely sure what Rig to take, the Warfighter is a good choice.
Payloads
Claw
Rapid fire, spread shot firearm with ricochet ballistic rounds. Aim Down Sights for more focused damage.
The description for the Claw almost downplays its effect. The Claw sprays projectiles extremely rapidly, and between the spread and the bouncing, any soft targets in your way can be quickly mowed down.
Take advantage of the bouncing and spread both in narrow spaces by saturating small rooms and narrow halls from around the corner or out of view. You can kill enemies without even exposing your location.
When ADS, the Claw’s spread tightens enough to target enemies at a medium range, but it is generally not a good choice for tackling distant enemies. Try to keep your targets at close- to mid-range at most.
The Claw is extremely effective at destroying scorestreaks. You can rapidly take down Vultures, Sentries, even the mighty R-C8 or Apex. If a Warden gets close enough and you can fire at it from cover (or with Blind Eye equipped), you can destroy it, as well.
Combat Focus
Gain double streak points for a limited time.
A straightforward payload that requires some care to use well, Combat Focus doubles your potential score earnings for a short time, but you have to both stay alive and get a good score while it is active for this to be a worthwhile payload to take over the alternatives.
With that said, Combat Focus can be extremely useful for reaching the high-end streaks if you are careful about when and where you use it.
Trigger Combat Focus when you are already a good part of the way towards an upper-tier streak, and just before you are about to gain a bunch of points from completing an objective or ambushing a group of players.
If the battlefield conditions are firmly in your favor—friendly streaks or teammate intel, known enemy positions, a near certain objective completion—activate Combat Focus and capitalize on the potential gains.
Combat Focus can also be useful for gaining mid-tier streaks more reliably, but if you are planning on looping low end streaks, other payloads are usually a better choice. Likewise, if you’re still struggling to chain together kills while learning the game, you may want to pass on this ability until you have gained more experience and you’re confident you can take full advantage of its power.
Overdrive
Grants a temporary speed surge .
A very simple, but very useful, payload, Overdrive gives you a huge burst of speed for a short time.
This makes Overdrive ideal in objective modes where reaching a target quickly is critical (especially modes like CTF or Uplink).
Overdrive can also be useful at the beginning of rounds to quickly reach a key chokepoint before the enemy can get in range. Surprising and ambushing the enemy team by already being in place and ADS as they round the corner can net you some easy early kills.
Overdrive can also be used as a defensive skill to help escape from dangerous situations. Don’t rely on it to save your life if you’re surrounded by multiple enemies, but it can help if there’s a lot of mixed cover on your escape route. Your extra speed can make you a tough target to finish.
Traits
Ping
Kills and assists activate a sonar ping at the enemy’s death location, revealing nearby hostiles to teammates.
A powerful informational trait, Ping can give you early warning of nearby enemies, and avoid the dreaded post-kill ambush from your target’s teammates.
This is an extremely effective trait for aggressive rushing builds, where knowing the location of enemies in close proximity can be the difference between life and death.
When playing more defensively or at long range, Ping is usually less useful, although there is still some value in tagging targets for your teammates if you’re protecting a key objective location or chokepoint.
The Ghost perk hides enemies from the radial ping after you kill an enemy, but if you kill an enemy with Ghost, they still generate a ping at their location. Just keep in mind that if you’re ambushed by someone in close proximity and you didn’t spot them on the minimap, one or more players on the other team are probably running Ghost. Keep your guard up even if the minimap looks clear!
Enemies killed by teammates after being pinged give you bonus score. Combine this with the Hardline perk to earn even more points.
Persistence
Disables the reset of scorestreaks on death while making scorestreaks cost increasingly more points. You can only earn each of your scorestreaks once per match.
Persistence is an unusual trait; it changes how scorestreaks are acquired. Instead of death resetting your score and progress, while you have Persistence active your score remains even if you die.
The trade-off is that your streaks become much more expensive, and you can only earn them once in a match.
In general, Persistence is most useful for the mid-tier streaks. You can usually earn the lower streaks with a bit of practice, even if you’re new. The high-end streaks become extremely expensive with Persistence active.
The mid-tier streaks, however, can be reliably earned, and if used carefully and intelligently, the one-time use of those streaks can aid your team significantly.
Persistence isn’t a bad choice for low end streaks in non-respawn game modes, where you may not earn many streaks to begin with, and a few guaranteed streaks can tip the outcome of a match.
Spend some time playing with Persistence. You may find that you enjoy not worrying about death resetting your streak progress, or you may find that it hampers your ability to rapidly loop low end streaks or achieve high streaks, period.
Resupply
Resupplies Lethals and Tacticals by picking up ammo boxes after successful kills with non-explosive ballistic or energy weapons.
A very powerful trait for equipment-focused builds. If you want to torment the enemy team with an endless barrage of Jamming and Blackout grenades and a rain of C4, this is the trait to take.
Needless to say, Resupply is a rather poor choice if you aren’t running equipment…
Keep at least one build around in your custom classes that has Resupply and one or more Lethals and Tacticals equipped. In several objective game modes, near endless grenade spam can provide a decisive advantage for your team.
If you’re on the receiving end of this unpleasant bombardment, remember that Blast Shield and Tac Resist can help reduce the effects of hostile equipment considerably, and Engineer can help you spot traps ahead of time.