How to Pick Your First RW Armour Set
A good yellow rifle is the best bang for your buck in terms of combat performance and you should always get one of those first. If you need help with that, check out How to Pick Your First RW Weapon
Once you have that though, the most affordable next upgrade is getting an RW armour set. Melee/secondary won't come into play much if you have a good primary and moving on to orange rifles is not cheap (1.5b+ for something useful).
If you can only afford one piece of armour, protect your head. 80% of critical hits are on the head and taking a single unarmoured Deadeye hit might lose you an otherwise winnable fight. Furthermore, your head gear determines your resistance to temps. If you can only afford one piece of kit, get a motorcycle helmet (cheaper) or a Riot helmet (more expensive). They're both resistant to Pepper Spray.
The three affordable full RW sets are:
| Name |
Bonus
|
Armor Rating |
Pros |
Cons |
| Dune |
Reduced opponent damage (%) when under 1/4 life |
44 - 49 |
|
- Bonus rarely useful
- Bad head piece (poor coverage & vulnerable to pepper)
|
| Riot |
Reduced opponent melee damage (%) |
45 - 50
35 - 40 (helmet) |
- Good head piece (solid coverage and pepper immunity)
|
|
| Assault |
Reduces opponent bullet damage (%) |
46 - 51 |
|
- Bad head piece (poor coverage & vulnerable to pepper)
- (More) expensive
|
Dune combines the weaknesses of the two sets. Finishing hits often take more than 25% of your health, so the bonus doesn't even trigger at all. Also, while almost dying is better than not dying, it's still a bad outcome in wars, burning your med cd down. The headpiece is vulnerable to pepper and only covers 65% of the head, so one third of your opponent's head shots (always critical) will hit completely unarmoured areas. Given that they are only slightly cheaper than Riot, I am not a fan.
Riot comes with a great headpiece that has full coverage, is immune to pepper, and has a better armour rating than the motorcycle helmet. The downside of the full set is another not-very-useful bonus. Why? As established above, melee is weaker than rifles and is not used much in competitive RWs at a high level. You might encounter them in 5-10% of your fights. Most of the time you will be fighting guns, which are also the more dangerous opponent, and Riot will not help you with that. That said, the set performs okay even without the bonus and is much better than any of the non-RW armour. I'd recommend full Riot as the budget alternative/stepping stone to full Assault.
Another use for Riot is for missions or chaining on inactives (including for Halloween). These targets have usually run out of ammo and will be melee based most of the time. If you can afford it, it can be nice having an extra budget Riot set loadout for this purpose.
Assault has an amazing bonus. The downside is the helmet, which only covers 66.5% of your head and is vulnerable to pepper. It's a slightly better version of the Dune helmet, as at least you get 10% damage reduction even on unarmoured gun hits because of the set bonus. 1 out of 12 hits will hurt you quite bad, but you'll be well protected against the other 11. Also, it takes quite a well prepared opponent to scout your loadout and switch temps accordingly. Most factions just use smokes as a default so usually you'll be fine. The other downside is that it's more expensive than Riot, but for a good reason. If you can afford it, this is my favourite of the three affordable RW sets.
TDLR: In tests against a typical RW opponent (with guns) the order of performance is Assault > Riot > Dune. Their price is, of course, in reverse. I don't recommend Dune, but do recommend Riot or Assault depending on your budget.
Bonus vs. Quality vs. Price
Another consideration when picking RW armour is how much to spend on better gear, and what to focus on. Higher quality/bonus can come at a significant increase in price, but is it worth it?
For maximum value: buy the cheapest complete set you can get. 0% quality and the lowest bonus possible are still huge jumps in performance compared to the previous set you can have (combat/moto -> riot, as well as riot -> assault). If you have to choose between a better armour set and a weaker yellow rifle, or a stronger rifle and a weaker set, always pick the stronger rifle first as the rifle upgrade will make a much bigger difference.
If looking for a better Riot set: quality is more important than the bonus. For reasons outlined above, the bonus is not very useful, whereas the quality (armour rating) of the set will reduce damage from all sources.
If looking for a better Assault set: bonus is more important than quality. Since we're looking to primarily reduce bullet damage, the bonus is more powerful. A 0% quality, 29% bonus piece will take less damage than a 100% quality, 20% bonus piece. Also, the set bonus is not affected by Piercing/Penetrate or by piercing special ammo, which competent opponents will use.
Very high quality/bonus pieces are rare and cost a lot, so it's worth considering whether you'd be better off investing that money in a better weapon or the next set upgrade instead. Other than bragging rights, you'll be paying dearly for very small increases in performance.