With Season 2 set to launch at the start of February, we expect frequent balance patches to impact the current Call Of Duty: Vanguard meta. If any changes impact the BAR or this setup, we’ll update this guide to let you know.
Best BAR loadout in Call Of Duty: Vanguard
While your first instinct might be to boost the fire rate, this actually makes the BAR much weaker. Instead, our BAR loadout focuses on pushing the damage even further while maintaining minimal recoil, making it highly accurate and extremely deadly. With this setup, you can kill enemies with just two shots, allowing you to rip through entire teams with ease.
Optic: G16 2.5X Muzzle: Mercury Silencer Barrel: CGC 27’’ 2B Underbarrel: M1941 Hand Stop Magazine: .50 BMG 30 Round Mags Rear Grip: Fabric Grip Stock: Pistol Grip Custom Ammo Type: Lengthened Proficiency: Focus Kit: Fully Loaded
The cornerstone of this BAR loadout is the .50 BMG 30 Round Mags attachment, which increases the damage-per-shot of the BAR from 40 to 60, and allows you to kill an enemy with two shots to the body. Just like that, the gun’s base time-to-kill has gone from 450ms down to a far more respectable 328ms. There’s a fair amount of extra recoil associated with this magazine conversion, which is why we’ve also attached the CGC 27’’ 2B barrel, the M1941 Hand Stop, and the Pistol Grip Custom Stock to keep the BAR within the realms of easy control. Another thing that helps in this regard is attaching the G16 2.5X optic, which decreases recoil a little further while also providing a very clean 2.5x sight to help you land those ideal shots at medium-to-long range. The Mercury Silencer keeps you off the enemy’s radar while also providing even more recoil control (hey, you can never have enough with a weapon like this). This silencer does decrease our effective range a little, but thanks to our barrel attachment it’s still higher than the base BAR’s effective range. Some increased responsiveness is in order at this point, so attach a Fabric Grip onto the BAR’s Rear Grip slot to speed up its sprint-to-fire and ADS speed. After that, the Lengthened Ammo Type gives us a bunch of extra bullet velocity for free. Finally, we can dramatically reduce the effect of bullet flinch with the Focus Proficiency attachment, and increase our ammo reserves with the Fully Loaded Kit attachment to make sure we never have to stop spitting two-shot-kill bullets down the major sightlines of any Vanguard map.
Use this gun as though it were a nippier LMG: locking down sightlines and punishing enemies that poke their heads out at you. With a 2.5x optic and two-shot-kill capability up to a decent range, there won’t be much that can stand against you with this BAR loadout. A word of warning though: several of these attachments negatively impact the hipfire accuracy of this gun. Since the BAR really isn’t the sort of Assault Rifle you should be running-and-gunning with, that isn’t a big deal. But be aware that if you try to hipfire, you’ll be leaving your fate very much up to chance.
Secondary Weapon
This BAR loadout is incredibly powerful, but don’t forget that it is slow and clunky. You can easily pick off enemies in the distance and drop them in two shots, but that becomes much harder when enemies move closer. To deal with nearby enemies, you’ll need a strong short-range secondary. The Combat Shotgun is a top-tier close-range weapon and currently the best gun in Vanguard Season 1, but you could also try an SMG, such as the MP40 or M1928, if you’d prefer something automatic.
Best BAR Perks and Equipment
These are the ideal perks and equipment to use alongside the above BAR loadout:
Perk 1: Ghost Perk 2: Radar Perk 3: Overkill Lethal: Mk2 Frag Grenade Tactical: Stim
Ghost, Radar, and Overkill are among the best Perks in Call Of Duty: Vanguard, and there’s no reason in this BAR loadout that would cause us to deviate from our standard perk choices which allow us to see enemies on the radar, hide from enemies’ radars, and equip two primary weapons. Those three benefits are just too useful to pass up. The Frag Grenade is universally useful, and the versatility is only increased by the ability to cook frags for as long as you need before throwing them. The Tactical is less important in Vanguard, but for this loadout I’d opt for the Stim simply to help you recover from painful engagements slightly more quickly. That’s everything you need to know to make the best BAR loadout in Vanguard. If you want to see how other weapons compare to the BAR and understand the Vanguard meta, check out our Call Of Duty: Vanguard weapon stats tables. If you want to try out some other long-range weapons, take a look at our lists of the best Sniper Rifles and Marksman Rifles in Vanguard.
