Weapon Attachments and Recoil: What Each Stat Changes

Attachments rarely give something for nothing. Most improve one part of a weapon's handling and make another part worse. Reading the stats correctly, and knowing what your weapon's own recoil looks like, is the difference between a real improvement and a sidegrade.

Reading attachment stats

Attachment tooltips follow the game's sign convention:

• •Vertical recoil and horizontal recoil: negative is better. Vertical recoil is the upward climb per shot; horizontal recoil is the side-to-side kick.
• •Recoil buildup: negative is better. It limits how much recoil grows during sustained fire.
• •Spread (aiming down sights) and hip-fire spread: negative is better.
• •Aim speed and draw speed: a positive value is a penalty (slower), a negative value a bonus.
• •Sway: drift while aiming; negative is better.
• •Speed: a flat movement-speed change while the weapon is held.
• •Stabilization: visual camera steadiness. It does not move the weapon's actual recoil.

Know your weapon's recoil first

On most automatic weapons in the current data, the vertical climb per shot is several times larger than the horizontal drift. That is why a muzzle that cuts vertical recoil usually lowers total recoil more than one that only cuts horizontal recoil, even if the second one looks more balanced.

Weapons with a large horizontal component behave differently, and for them a balanced or horizontal-focused attachment can come out ahead. The Recoil Visualizer shows which kind of weapon you have.

Muzzles

Examples from the current data:

• •Skyline MBC: vertical recoil −20.25, recoil buildup −10 and spread −7.5, but horizontal recoil +6.75. Strong on weapons whose recoil is mostly vertical.
• •Lantac Dragon 7.62 Flash Hider: horizontal recoil −15 and spread −13.75, with no listed downside.
• •Antithesis (suppressor): vertical and horizontal recoil −13.5 and spread −5, at the cost of aim speed +15, draw speed +20 and sway +15.
• •Hybrid 46 (suppressor): spread −22.5 but only −1.5 horizontal recoil and no vertical reduction, with the same handling penalties.

Grips

• •RK-2: recoil buildup −24, horizontal recoil −15, vertical recoil −10.5, but aim speed +20 and draw speed +25. Built for high fire-rate automatics.
• •Angled Grip RK-1: vertical recoil −15, recoil buildup −16 and sway −40, with draw speed +20.
• •Feather Tactical Grip: speed +2 with smaller recoil reductions; a mobility choice.

Magazines and tactical units

• •Drum magazines carry 50 to 100 rounds at Master rank, but slow you down and add aim-speed and hip-fire penalties. The 5.56 NATO Drum, for example, holds 100 rounds with speed −1.5, aim speed +12.5 and hip-fire spread +12.5.
• •Ergonomic magazines keep a standard capacity and give speed, faster aiming and tighter hip-fire, which suits close-range play.
• •AN/PEQ 15 reduces hip-fire spread by 25 for builds that shoot without aiming.

Compatibility

An attachment only fits weapons that its game data lists. The Recoil Visualizer and Recoil Table offer only compatible attachments for each weapon, so an option that appears there can actually be mounted.

A simple way to choose

• •Start from the weapon's recoil shape in the Recoil Visualizer.
• •Pick the muzzle that cuts the larger of the two recoil directions.
• •Add a grip for buildup if you hold the trigger, or skip it if you tap-fire.
• •Accept aim-speed penalties only if the fight is long enough to benefit from the steadier spray.

Compare attachments on your weapon

The Recoil Visualizer plots the aim point during a spray with your chosen attachments at any distance from 5 to 100 m. The Recoil Table ranks every weapon with its best compatible recoil attachments and lets you prefer or block specific ones.