THE FINALS classes guide explains Light, Medium, and Heavy Builds, including their strengths, weaknesses, Specializations, Gadgets, team roles, and practical loadout ideas. Learn how each class works and choose the right Build for your playstyle.
THE FINALS has three primary body Builds:
Light
150 HP
Highest mobility
Lowest survivability
Strong flanking and disruption tools
Medium
250 HP
Balanced movement and survivability
Strong team utility
Excellent objective and revival support
Heavy
350 HP
Highest survivability
Lowest movement speed
Strong demolition, defense, and objective control
Current equipment information continues to list these standard health values as of late August 2026.
These differences create three very different ways to approach a match.
A Light should generally avoid absorbing unnecessary damage.
A Medium should look for opportunities to multiply the effectiveness of the whole team.
A Heavy should create and control space.
None of the Builds is restricted to one specific role, however. A Heavy can play aggressively. A Medium can become a highly mobile attacker. A Light can provide reconnaissance and objective utility.
That flexibility is one of the defining features of THE FINALS.
Since Season 8, new players encounter Playstyles when creating Contestants.
Playstyles combine a Specialization, Weapon, and Gadgets into premade packages designed around a recognizable role. Embark introduced the system because new FPS players frequently focused exclusively on their gun and overlooked THE FINALS' much larger sandbox of movement, destruction, Gadgets, and Specializations.
Examples include:
Scout
Hacker
Demolisher
Aerialist
These are useful starting points.
They are not permanent classes.
Embark describes THE FINALS as closer to a hero builder than a hero shooter. Once equipment is unlocked, players are free to combine compatible Weapons, Gadgets, and Specializations however they want.
Think of Playstyles as lessons.
Your actual build is what you create after understanding those lessons.
Light is the fastest and smallest of the three body Builds.
It has only 150 HP, meaning positioning errors are punished quickly. In exchange, Light gains exceptional mobility and equipment designed around flanking, stealth, reconnaissance, breaching, and disruption.
A good Light player creates problems that enemies cannot ignore.
A bad Light player sprints ahead of the team, begins a 1v3, and disappears before the Medium and Heavy arrive.
That distinction matters.
Light excels at:
Fast rotations
Flanking
Escaping dangerous situations
Reaching high ground
Reconnaissance
Disabling enemy defenses
Harassing isolated targets
Creating unexpected attack angles
Quickly reaching objectives
Light also has access to equipment such as Gateway, Glitch Grenade, Sonar Grenade, Thermal Bore, Vanishing Bomb, Gravity Vortex, Tracking Dart, and other specialized utility.
The obvious weakness is survivability.
With 150 HP, Light cannot afford to take the same trades that Medium or Heavy can.
Poor Lights frequently:
Challenge enemies head-on
Stay in fights too long
Re-engage without recovering
Push before teammates arrive
Use mobility only for aggression
Die where teammates cannot revive them
Mobility should help you survive as much as it helps you attack.
Light currently has three core Specializations:
Evasive Dash
Grappling Hook
Cloaking Device
Each creates a very different style.
Evasive Dash rapidly moves Light in the chosen direction.
Season 11 changed Dash from three charges to two charges, while reducing its recharge time. Embark explained that Dash had been a long-standing outlier among Light Specializations and wanted to reduce some of its frustration without removing its mobility identity.
Dash is excellent for:
Dodging
Breaking enemy tracking
Closing distance
Escaping
Repositioning during duels
Moving unpredictably around cover
The biggest mistake is spending every Dash to enter a fight.
Try to keep an escape available.
If you Dash into an enemy and have no movement left when their teammates appear, your greatest advantage has disappeared.
Grappling Hook allows Light to quickly travel through vertical terrain and reach locations that would otherwise require longer routes.
Update 11.3 reduced its cooldown to six seconds, as Embark continues trying to make Grapple more attractive relative to other Light Specializations without allowing it to disrupt objective pacing too heavily.
Grapple works especially well for:
High-ground control
Rooftop rotations
Escaping vertically
Long-range scouting
Creating unusual firing angles
It rewards map knowledge more than simply mechanical aim.
Cloaking Device supports stealth and ambush gameplay.
Season 11 adjusted its energy behavior so moving slowly consumes less Cloak energy while faster movement consumes more. Embark specifically described its intended direction as more of a deliberate hide-and-seek playstyle rather than permanent high-speed invisibility.
Cloak is valuable for:
Repositioning unnoticed
Waiting for isolated targets
Escaping visual attention
Setting up ambushes
Approaching objectives carefully
Do not assume Cloak makes you completely safe.
Good players still use sound, environmental information, positioning, and prediction to locate cloaked Lights.
These setups demonstrate different Light roles rather than representing mandatory meta builds.
Specialization: Evasive Dash
Weapon: XP-54 or another comfortable close-to-mid-range option
Gadgets: Gateway, Glitch Grenade, plus situational utility
The idea is simple:
Attack from an angle your teammates are not occupying.
Glitch utility can disrupt enemy equipment while Gateway gives you another mobility option. Dash then helps win or escape the engagement.
This build works poorly if you attack ten seconds before everyone else.
Your flank should happen during your team's pressure, not instead of it.
Embark's official Scout Playstyle uses:
Grappling Hook + SR-84 + Sonar Grenades + Thermal Bore.
The concept is much more important than the exact items.
Take high ground, identify enemy positions, open sightlines with Thermal Bore, and pressure opponents from locations they are not expecting.
This is a team-oriented Light despite operating away from the main group.
Specialization: Cloaking Device
Weapon: Close-range or flexible weapon
Gadgets: Glitch Grenade, Gateway, Sonar Grenade or another utility choice
This style revolves around information and timing.
You are not trying to remain invisible forever.
Instead:
Find an approach.
Cloak before becoming exposed.
Wait for your teammates to create pressure.
Attack from another direction.
Disrupt enemy defenses.
Escape before the entire team turns toward you.
Patience often matters more than raw aggression.
Medium is the most balanced Build in THE FINALS.
It currently has 250 HP and sits between Light and Heavy in both movement and survivability. More importantly, Medium has an extremely broad equipment pool covering healing, revives, traversal, defense, destruction manipulation, deployables, and combat.
That versatility means Medium can fit into almost any team.
Medium excels at:
Team support
Reviving
Sustained fights
Mid-range combat
Team traversal
Objective defense
Environmental manipulation
Deployable utility
Flexible loadout building
Medium has access to equipment including Defibrillator, Jump Pad, Zipline, APS Turret, Data Reshaper, Hover Pad, Breach Drill, mines, traps, and various universal Gadgets.
Medium does not have Light's extreme speed or Heavy's enormous health pool.
That means its strength comes from using its toolkit properly.
A Medium that ignores Gadgets and Specializations becomes little more than an average-sized shooter.
A Medium that constantly creates movement routes, revives teammates, heals, manipulates structures, or protects objectives can influence almost every part of a fight.
Medium currently has:
Healing Beam
Guardian Turret
Dematerializer
Shockwave
Recon Senses
That gives Medium one of the broadest Specialization selections.
Healing Beam allows Medium to sustain teammates.
It is especially effective when supporting a Heavy who is absorbing pressure or keeping a teammate alive during an objective fight.
The mistake is becoming a full-time healer.
You still have a weapon.
Healing should create a combat advantage, not remove you from combat entirely.
Look for moments where healing changes the outcome of a fight.
Guardian Turret provides automated pressure in a controlled area.
It is useful around:
Cashouts
Choke points
Entrances
Defensive positions
Areas where enemies must expose themselves
The turret currently has 300 health and can be retrieved rather than simply abandoned, making intelligent placement and repositioning important.
Do not hide it somewhere that cannot see anything.
Also avoid placing it where opponents can destroy it immediately from complete safety.
Dematerializer temporarily removes parts of structures.
This gives Medium one of the game's most creative tactical abilities.
You can use it to:
Open walls
Open floors
Create surprise entrances
Drop objectives between floors
Escape through structures
Create firing angles
Close previously opened surfaces again
Embark's official Hacker Playstyle combines Dematerializer with FAMAS, Data Reshaper, Zipline, and Pyro Grenade to emphasize environmental manipulation and disruption.
The best Dematerializer players do not simply create holes.
They manipulate how an entire fight moves through the building.
Shockwave was introduced with Season 10 as part of the Medium Aerialist Playstyle.
It launches an orb that detonates on impact and pushes players and objects away. Embark specifically highlights its ability to detach deployables, displace opponents, and create creative traversal opportunities.
This makes Shockwave useful for:
Displacing defenders
Interrupting positioning
Moving players away from advantageous ground
Manipulating objects
Creating movement opportunities
Disrupting deployables
It is a good example of how THE FINALS rewards tools that do more than simply deal damage.
Recon Senses provides another direction for Medium by emphasizing information rather than healing, deployment, or environmental manipulation.
A reconnaissance-oriented Medium can help a coordinated team prepare for pushes rather than reacting only after opponents appear.
Information becomes especially valuable around objectives with multiple possible entrances.
Specialization: Healing Beam
Weapon: AKM, FAMAS, or another comfortable general-purpose weapon
Gadgets: Defibrillator, Jump Pad or Zipline, plus situational utility
This is one of the most straightforward team-oriented setups.
Your responsibilities include:
Helping teammates survive
Reviving quickly
Providing team mobility
Contributing weapon damage
Defibrillator can revive a teammate automatically rather than requiring the normal manual revive interaction, although it is unavailable in certain modes such as Team Deathmatch.
Do not instantly Defibrillate every statue you see.
A revived teammate in the middle of enemy fire can simply die again.
Create space first when necessary.
Specialization: Dematerializer
Weapon: FAMAS or another flexible firearm
Gadgets: Data Reshaper, Zipline, plus offensive or defensive utility
This follows the philosophy behind Embark's Hacker Playstyle.
Rather than forcing your team through a defended doorway, create another route.
Rather than fighting around a difficult Cashout position, change the structure around it.
The build becomes stronger as your map knowledge improves.
Specialization: Guardian Turret
Weapon: Flexible mid-range option
Gadgets: APS Turret, Defibrillator or mine, plus traversal
This setup focuses on controlling territory.
The APS Turret can intercept enemy projectiles and received Season 11 improvements that increased both its interception capacity and health.
The combination works well when enemies are forced to push into an area your team has already prepared.
Be careful not to become completely static.
THE FINALS objectives move.
Your defensive equipment needs to move with them.
Specialization: Shockwave
Weapon: Chimera-XB or another mobile-friendly weapon
Gadgets: Hover Pad plus additional team utility
Season 10 introduced Shockwave, Chimera-XB, and Hover Pad together as the foundation of the Aerialist Playstyle.
Hover Pad creates temporary elevated space, while Shockwave manipulates players and objects.
The result is a Medium setup centered around creative movement and vertical control rather than traditional healing.
Heavy is the largest and most durable Build.
It currently has 350 HP, but this comes with slower movement and a larger target profile. Heavy equipment focuses heavily on demolition, fortification, displacement, and controlling objectives.
Heavy should not be viewed as merely "the tank."
The best Heavy players actively reshape the battlefield.
Heavy excels at:
Holding objectives
Breaking structures
Creating entrances
Protecting teammates
Controlling confined spaces
Forcing enemies out of position
Sustained frontline pressure
Manipulating Cashout areas
Heavy has access to tools including Barricade, C4, Dome Shield, RPG-7, Lockbolt, Anti-Gravity Cube, Healing Emitter, mines, and universal grenades.
Heavy's size and movement make poor positioning expensive.
A Light may escape after overextending.
A Heavy often cannot.
Common Heavy mistakes include:
Entering open areas without cover
Becoming separated from Medium support
Using destruction randomly
Blocking teammates with defensive equipment
Chasing highly mobile enemies
Assuming 350 HP makes them invincible
Your durability gives you more time to make decisions.
It does not make bad decisions harmless.
Heavy currently has:
Charge 'N' Slam
Mesh Shield
Goo Gun
Winch Claw
Charge 'N' Slam combines aggression with destruction.
It can:
Break walls
Break floors
Open objectives
Damage enemies
Force opponents away
Create instant attack routes
Season 11 also improved its consistency when breaking floors.
Do not use Charge simply because it is available.
Ask what happens after the wall disappears.
If charging through a wall leaves you alone in front of three enemies, you have created an entrance for yourself but not necessarily for your team.
Mesh Shield creates forward-facing protection that teammates can use while fighting through it.
Current information lists the shield at 850 energy, making it a major defensive tool when used intelligently.
Mesh Shield is excellent when:
Crossing dangerous sightlines
Protecting a revive
Contesting an objective
Helping teammates reposition
Absorbing initial enemy pressure
You should still use natural cover.
A shield is a resource, not a replacement for positioning.
Goo Gun creates solid structures that can quickly alter terrain.
Its uses include:
Blocking doors
Creating cover
Building temporary paths
Fortifying Cashouts
Interrupting enemy routes
Separating opponents
Creative Goo Gun players can make an objective extremely awkward to attack.
Remember that you are modifying terrain for everyone.
Poorly placed Goo can interfere with your own teammates just as easily as the enemy.
Winch Claw pulls players or objects toward Heavy.
Its role is primarily displacement and gap-closing.
Season 11 reduced some of the brief movement lock associated with pulling enemies because Embark wanted Winch to function more as a displacement tool and less as an easy close-range mini-stun.
Use Winch to:
Pull enemies out of position
Bring close-range targets toward you
Manipulate objects
Disrupt defensive setups
Create opportunities for teammates
Do not rely on it as an automatic elimination button.
Specialization: Mesh Shield
Weapon: M60, Lewis Gun, M134 Minigun, or another sustained-pressure option
Gadgets: Dome Shield, Barricade, plus RPG-7 or other utility
This setup focuses on keeping your team alive while controlling important space.
Barricades establish cover.
Dome Shield provides temporary 360-degree protection.
Mesh Shield gives mobile frontal protection.
Your weapon then punishes enemies who attempt to push through that space.
The goal is not simply surviving.
It is making the objective easier for your teammates to occupy.
Embark's Demolisher Playstyle uses:
Charge 'N' Slam + M134 Minigun + RPG-7 + Explosive Mine + Pyro Grenade, with Sledgehammer available in Reserve.
This is THE FINALS destruction fantasy at its clearest.
Open walls.
Collapse floors.
Remove enemy positions.
Create routes that did not previously exist.
The M134 Minigun also received accuracy and environmental-damage improvements in Season 11 as Embark attempted to improve its viability.
Destruction should still have a tactical purpose.
Bringing down half the building is impressive.
Bringing down exactly the floor protecting the enemy Cashout is useful.
Specialization: Winch Claw
Weapon: Flamethrower, Sledgehammer, SA1216, or another close-range option
Gadgets: Dome Shield, RPG-7, Barricade or situational utility
Winch solves one of Heavy's biggest problems:
Getting enemies into a range where close-range equipment becomes dangerous.
Pull an opponent away from their team, force them into your effective range, and finish the engagement quickly.
Be careful when pulling enemies toward yourself while low on health.
You are also bringing their damage closer.
Specialization: Goo Gun
Weapon: Flexible close-to-mid-range option
Gadgets: Barricade, Dome Shield, mine or area-denial utility
This build is less explosive but can be extremely frustrating to attack.
Use Goo and Barricades to reshape entrances and force opponents toward predictable approaches.
Then position your team so those approaches are covered.
Fortification works best when you leave yourself an escape route.
Do not build a fortress that traps your own team inside it.
There is no single correct answer.
Choose based on the type of decisions you enjoy making.
High mobility
Flanking
Stealth
Quick engagements
Reconnaissance
Aggressive mechanical play
Escaping and repositioning
Light rewards players who can recognize exactly when to enter and leave fights.
Versatility
Team support
Healing
Reviving
Mid-range combat
Traversal
Environmental manipulation
Objective utility
Medium is usually the easiest Build to recommend when you do not yet know what role you prefer.
It can participate effectively in almost every part of a match.
High durability
Objective defense
Destruction
Frontline pressure
Fortification
Close-range control
Protecting teammates
Heavy rewards deliberate positioning and understanding how to manipulate buildings and objectives.
For many new players, Medium is the most forgiving starting point.
That does not necessarily make it the strongest class.
Medium simply gives beginners room to learn several aspects of THE FINALS simultaneously:
Shooting
Reviving
Gadgets
Movement
Objective defense
Team positioning
Destruction manipulation
With 250 HP, mistakes are less immediately fatal than on Light, while movement is easier to manage than Heavy.
Once the basic systems make sense, try all three.
Players often discover that the Build they perform best with is not the one they expected.
Do not select equipment because each item looks individually powerful.
Build around a purpose.
Your Specialization often defines the rest of your setup.
Examples:
Dash → mobile aggression
Healing Beam → sustain and team support
Dematerializer → environmental manipulation
Mesh Shield → frontline protection
Winch Claw → displacement and close-range pressure
Once you know your purpose, choosing Gadgets becomes easier.
If your Weapon dominates close range, consider utility that helps you reach close range.
If your setup struggles with vertical movement, consider traversal.
If your team lacks defensive utility, add defensive utility.
Your loadout should solve problems rather than create four versions of the same solution.
Three individually strong builds do not automatically create a strong team.
Ask:
Who provides movement?
Who revives?
Who controls entrances?
Who breaks defensive positions?
Who protects the objective?
Who provides information?
THE FINALS rewards combinations.
A Heavy creates cover.
A Medium sustains the Heavy.
A Light attacks from the angle created by their pressure.
That interaction is often stronger than any isolated build.
Speed makes it easy to arrive before teammates.
Do not confuse arriving first with needing to attack first.
Medium loses much of its value when played as nothing more than a rifle user.
Use your Gadgets constantly.
350 HP disappears quickly when multiple enemies focus the same large target.
Create or use cover.
A tournament player's setup may solve problems you are not currently facing.
Understand why the equipment works before copying it.
THE FINALS contains many different objectives, maps, team compositions, and engagement ranges.
Adapt when necessary.
Adaptation is useful.
Constant panic-swapping is not.
Give yourself enough time to actually learn each Weapon, Gadget, and Specialization.
THE FINALS has three fundamental body Builds: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Playstyles provide premade templates within those Builds, but they do not replace the underlying class system.
No. Embark explicitly describes Playstyles as templates rather than heroes. Players can freely mix compatible Specializations, Weapons, and Gadgets to create custom builds.
Heavy has the largest standard health pool at 350 HP, compared with Medium's 250 HP and Light's 150 HP.
Light remains the fastest and most mobile standard Build, with equipment centered around movement, stealth, flanking, and evasion.
Medium has the deepest traditional support toolkit, including Healing Beam, Defibrillator, traversal options, defensive deployables, and several utility-focused Specializations and Gadgets.
Heavy has the strongest overall demolition identity through equipment such as Charge 'N' Slam, RPG-7, C4, Sledgehammer, and other environmental tools. Light and Medium can also manipulate structures through equipment like Thermal Bore and Dematerializer.
Not universally.
Light and Heavy solve completely different problems. Light offers mobility and disruption, while Heavy offers durability and objective control. Team composition, player skill, mode, map, and loadout matter more than simply choosing one archetype over another.
Medium is often the easiest all-round option because it can fight, move, revive, defend, and support without depending completely on teammates filling every missing role.
Experienced Light and Heavy players can still perform extremely well solo.
No. Once the relevant equipment is unlocked, you can customize compatible Weapons, Gadgets, and Specializations and create multiple Contestants for different purposes.
Light, Medium, and Heavy are not simply fast, normal, and tanky versions of the same character.
They fundamentally change how you should think about THE FINALS.
Light wins through movement, timing, flanking, reconnaissance, and disruption.
Medium wins through adaptability, support, traversal, revives, and utility.
Heavy wins through durability, demolition, fortification, displacement, and control of important space.
The best Build is ultimately the one whose tools match both your playstyle and what your team needs.
Do not choose Light only because you want more eliminations.
Do not choose Medium only because it looks balanced.
Do not choose Heavy only because it has the most HP.
Learn what each Specialization contributes, build Gadgets around that purpose, and consider how your equipment works with your teammates.
That is when THE FINALS' class system becomes much more interesting than simply selecting Light, Medium, or Heavy.
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