How armor works in WARDOGS, and where it does not

Armor protects a shape

The mistake almost everyone makes with armor in WARDOGS is thinking of it as a health bar. It is not. It is a percentage reduction that applies to certain parts of your body and does nothing at all to the rest.

Once you know which parts, two things change. You stop overpaying for protection you will not benefit from, and you start aiming at the places other people forgot to buy.

What each piece actually covers

This is the part that is not written anywhere in game, and it decides everything.

Three of the four vests in the game cover exactly one region. You can spend $2,000 on Level 3 and your pelvis, arms, legs and neck are all as exposed as they were when you spawned with nothing.

The numbers, zone by zone

Here is an AK74 with standard rounds against every armor tier, showing what each part of the body takes.

Follow the pelvis row across. Five, five, five, five, then thirteen. Four tiers of armor and three of them do nothing, then the fourth one triples it. There is no gradual improvement, just a cliff at Level 4.

The legs never change at all. Neither does anything below the elbow. If you are getting shot in the thigh, you paid for nothing.

Helmets are the best value in the game

A Level 2 helmet costs $500 and weighs 1.6 kilos. It takes an AK74 headshot kill from two hits to three.

That sounds small. In practice it is the difference between dying to a burst that clipped your head and living long enough to shoot back, and it is the most common way people die in this game.

Compare the money. A Level 2 vest costs twice as much, weighs nearly three times more, and buys you three extra chest shots. The helmet buys one extra headshot for a quarter of the weight. We buy the helmet first every time.

Level 3 is where helmets pick up the neck, which matters because the neck takes 45.8 damage from an AK74 against 26.0 for the chest. An unprotected neck is three shots at any tier below 3.

The weight problem

Level 3 armor weighs 10.5 kilos. Level 4 weighs 18. For comparison, an AK74 weighs 3.

You are carrying a second and third rifle worth of load for that protection, and it comes out of your movement and your stamina. We have watched people in Level 4 lose fights they would have won in Level 2 because they could not get round a corner fast enough.

• Level 1 at 3 kg is close to free weight for 30 percent off chest damage. Always worth it.
• Level 2 at 4.5 kg is the sweet spot for anyone moving on foot.
• Level 3 at 10.5 kg only makes sense if you are holding a position rather than taking one.
• Level 4 at 18 kg is for a gunner sitting in a building or somebody riding a vehicle to the fight.

How to shoot people who bought armor

Aim low. That is the whole guide.

Below Level 4, the pelvis takes full damage from whatever you are holding. An AK74 with flesh rounds kills a Level 3 target in three pelvis hits, and that same target needs eight chest hits from the same gun. You are choosing between a 0.19 second kill and a 0.65 second one by moving your aim down slightly.

If they are in Level 4, go back to the head or bring armor piercing rounds. Nothing else gets through it quickly.

You can check any of this against your own loadout in the damage calculator, which shows all twelve hit zones at once and marks which ones the armor you selected is actually protecting.