Builds

The Create-a-Class screen in Black Ops 3 gives you a fixed number of slots and no way to fill all of them well. Every strong loadout in the game is therefore defined less by the gun at the top of it than by the slots deliberately left empty underneath, because those are what pay for the perks doing the real work.

Reading our five recommended loadouts that way is instructive. They cover four very different playstyles, and yet four of the five make exactly the same sacrifice, and three of them keep exactly the same defensive perk. This guide sorts them by what they give up rather than by how they play.

The slots almost nobody fills

Line the five up and the pattern is hard to miss. Only one of them carries a secondary weapon, and only one carries a lethal. Four of the five spend those slots elsewhere, most often on a second Concussion, which tells you a lot about how the game rewards controlling an engagement rather than winning it outright.

The perks that survive every cut

Once those slots are cleared, the perks are where the personality goes, and three of them recur often enough to count as defaults rather than choices. Sixth Sense appears in four of the five, which makes proximity awareness the single most valued effect across the board. Hard Wired shows up in three, guarding against Shock Charges and Trip Mines. Blast Suppressor appears in three as well, keeping you off the enemy minimap while you move.

The interesting case is the loadout that refuses all three. The rushing build drops Sixth Sense, Hard Wired and Blast Suppressor and takes Afterburner, Fast Hands and Awareness instead, spending its entire perk budget on speed and weapon handling. It also runs three perks where the others run four, which is the price of that focus.

What each one is actually buying

The rushing ninja gives up the most and gets the most specific reward. A Suppressor, Quickdraw and Stock on the ARK-7 means you can fire while moving, raise the weapon quickly and stay off the minimap when you do, and Afterburner keeps the thruster charged so you are never standing still long enough to be found. It is a build that fails badly if you camp with it, because nothing in it protects you.

The 205 Brecci build gives up range and does not pretend otherwise. Fast Mags and Extended Mags keep the shotgun firing, Gung-Ho lets you draw it mid sprint, and the reason it carries two Concussions is that the weapon drops off sharply past close quarters. Those grenades are the answer to a fight you cannot win with the gun in your hands, and Flashbangs work in their place.

The Locus build is the only one carrying a genuine second weapon, and it pays for that by leaving both grenade slots empty. A Thermal optic makes targets easier to pick out at distance but offers no aim assist, so it rewards deliberate shooting, and the VMP covers the mid range the rifle cannot. If enemies keep closing to arm's length, our loadouts guide suggests a pistol instead, purely to shorten the swap.

The KN-44 build is the most balanced of the five and the one that hides best. Ghost and Blast Suppressor together keep you off both UAVs and the minimap while you move, Stock keeps you firing on the move, and Quickdraw snaps you onto targets. It is designed to fight at a slight distance rather than at shotgun range, which means more time aiming and less time sprinting.

The Kuda build is the odd one out because its constraint is not tactical at all. Everything in it unlocks early, which is the whole point: it is a loadout you can actually assemble in your first evening. The Grip lets the SMG contest assault rifles at medium range, Quickdraw wins the close fights, and Fast Hands covers the rest.

The swaps worth making

Two substitutions are called out in our full guide and both are about how quickly you want a fight to end. On the KN-44, High Caliber can replace Quickdraw if you would rather drop enemies faster than acquire them faster. On the Brecci, Flashbangs can replace the Concussions with no change to how the build works, since the point of that slot is only to buy you the distance the shotgun cannot cover.

Which of these you can build at all depends on rank, since attachments, perks and wildcards unlock on the same ladder as weapons. The mechanics guide covers what arrives when, and the camos guide covers the one build requirement that exists purely for looks.