The Finals, THE game show competitive FPS, is finally here in all of its fast, destructive glory. Out of the game’s three different body types that determine your loadouts and gameplay, the light loadout is potentially the most challenging, so here’s our best light build in The Finals.
The Finals Best Light Build
The light body type in The Finals is all about speed, hit and run tactics, and traversal. As the fastest class by far, light builds are as effective as they are difficult to play, because you have that much less health than medium builds and heavy builds. Enough that if you make a mistake and are caught out of place, then you’re going to die that much faster.
Because while you do very good damage, it doesn’t make up for the health you don’t have that they do. That’s where the speed and utility of this build comes into play.
Specialization
The default option, the grappling hook, is going to be this build’s bread and butter. The range on it is long enough that you can use it to easily scale four-story buildings. This specialization easily makes your light build much more maneuverable, especially compared to medium and heavy builds. The cooldown on it is a mere 10 seconds making it almost spammable as you weave in and out of gunfights.
This is a strategy you will need to not deviate from, because staying in the fight longer than you need to with only 150 HP is a death sentence if you’re caught unaware of an ambushing medium or heavy.
Weapon
Now, when I first started playing light, I actually liked the M11 automatic machine pistol. It’s high magazine, fast fire rate, and fast reload meant I could delete people quickly. But at some point, I wanted to try the XP-54 tactical submachine gun and I’m glad I did. Its higher accuracy, range, higher damage, and lower firerate make handling this gun easier than the M11 too, especially with the game’s overzealous relationship with horizontal recoil—which makes higher firerates harder to potentially handle.
Thankfully, the red-dot scope helps a bit in this regard compared to iron sights. If you can tweak your hit and run playstyle to handle a 1-second longer reload speed, then the XP-54 is GOATed.
Gadgets
The gadgets, here, are what will make this build shine as we build on the light class’s strengths and cover their weaknesses. I like to do this with three particular items: the frag grenade, motion sensor, and breach charge. While the pyro grenade’s area of effect and area denial are no doubt strong, I like the grenade’s impact and the ability to lob it or chuck it like a world series baseball pitcher. That, and you get two of them to the pyro’s one.
Additionally, having two motion sensors that adhere to walls is really useful for anticipating ambushes, especially while defending cash out machines. Finally, the breach charge does a good job of letting you, the lightest class, make your way through floors and walls and make strategic plays with destruction in mind. Why find a door when you can make your own?
Reserve Loadout
For the reserve loadout, I like to use a wildly different setup that consists of long-range support, and lots of gadgets to reposition or provide area denial support. To do this, I recommend using the SR-84 sniper rifle, its headshot’s 2x multiplier makes killing lights instant, while it takes two shots (head plus body) to take down a medium and three shots (one head plus two body) to take down a heavy. But because you’re still using the grappling hook, finding a new point to snipe from after a kill is very easy.
Even if you are hunted down and ambushed, your reserve gadgets will help you escape. This is where I advise the use of the flashbang grenade and vanishing bomb. Flashbangs offer a few seconds for you to get away while the enemy is deaf and blinded, while the vanishing bomb will make you invisible for around five seconds. Lastly, the pyro grenade lets you support your team from afar or directly attack those that seek to end your distanced support.
At the end of the day, this build should allow you to do what light does best. Get in and out of gun fights, move objectives very quickly, escape within seconds of being caught out, and even being useful by supporting your team from a distance. For more, check out our preview of The Finals, good luck out there, contestants.
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