Door Kickers: Action Squad – Characters & Weapons Guide

Welcome to this guide! I hope you are having fun with this game.

This guide is meant for beginners who are unsure of what classes to level up or which weapons to buy. I was looking for a guide such as this in the beginning when stars weren’t plenty to buy whatever weapons I wanted. Also, because levelling is so slow, it is crucial to pick the right classes in the beginning to raise a powerful class for end-game levels. Unfortunately, in my opinion, a lot of options in this game are imbalanced. At first glance they seem to be different enough to be interesting, but due to the simple gameplay, there is a clear difference of how good or bad certain characters are. To better illustrate the characters usefulness, they have been assigned into tiers.

This game is all about killing bad guys and saving hostages. Therefore, the character’s worth unfortunately happened to be mainly determined by how well they take down multiple armored enemies and occassional boss enemies, which are the game’s biggest hurdles.

S Tier -The strongest characters that can handle the hardest levels and enemies with relative ease. If you are stuck on a level, these guys will do it for you.

Assaulter
His ridiculously strong weapons with insane armor piercing, DPS, accuracy, and aimed shot, and sniper support means there are no situations he can’t handle.

Breacher
Breacher’s insanely overpowered weapons makes you feel like you’re cheating the entire time. His only problem is that he could kill hostages too easily, but he can bring a pistol for situations like these.

A Tier – Definitely strong, very strong. However, they can’t handle all situations exceptionally well like S tiers.

Off-duty Guy
Off-duty Guy is known for one thing. His trapper rifle. It flies quite straight, thus making it perfect for leaving hostages unharmed for them 3 stars clears. Furthermore, It one shot kills unarmored enemies after some upgrades. Combined with his weapon penetration, he will turn the early levels into a complete joke. However, he severely lacks the means to penetrate armor except aimed shot, which means he will struggle very hard in breaching rooms filled with multiple armored enemies.

B Tier – They have their unique strengths, but unfortunately lack the high power weapons needed to tackle late game enemies.

Recon
Recon can produce some very satisfying gameplay and incredible DPS with his ability to highlight enemies with cameras, but unfortunately, his SMGs produce too little dps to be any higher than B tier.

Agent Fergie
EFF BEE AYE. I wanted to main her so bad in the beginning. She’s so cool! Unfortunately, this game is mostly about killing enemies, and her weapons just don’t do that well enough. Her gimmicks of high melee damage and rolls just don’t have that much of incentive to use once you realize using guns from a far distance is just a far more rewarding option.

C Tier – They may get through the early levels with ease, but they start to struggle too hard when they face multiple, armored, or boss enemies.

Shield
Shield’s got a lot of cool gadgets that are completely unique, but her weapons just deal such sub-par damage. Agent Fergie and Shield shares a lot of weapons, but Agent Fergie’s weapons have special abilities such as double tap and aimed shot to deal with armored or massed enemies. Shield has none of them. She struggles with every kind of late game enemies, and especially bosses. Her flash shield is so awesome though.

It is a bit tricky to decide this because of the limited stat distributions. When you press skills, you will see that there is the team skill branch and the class skill branch. Skills invested into the team skill branch will apply for all playable characters. Class skill branch is just for that individual character. It should really say character instead.

When you hit the max level, which is a long, long, long and arudous process, you will realize you won’t be able to get all the skill points, which is incredibly disappointing. So if you want to min max your character, you can select a few characters that you won’t be playing a lot, or just aren’t that good or fun like the shield, and use her to level up the team skill branch. This is honestly a boring and frustrating way to get into the game so I won’t recommend it.

There is good news though. Many characters don’t benefit a lot from the bottom skill path of the class branch, which is called Tactics, or Gear Bag for Off-duty guy. Not only does it flat out say no gradual improvement, but for characters like Off-duty guy, Twixie, and Garand AP ammo really isn’t good, at all. They just won’t be used anywhere as much.

The characters that don’t require investments into tactics due to very limited benefits:
Assaulter, Shield, Agent Fergie, Off-duty Guy.

Characters that benefit from a maxed out skill tree: Breacher, Recon.

May this piece of information help you figure out who you’d play!

Before heading into weapon descriptions, occasionally the weapon stats that says damage will be listed as AP damage instead. That means armor piercing, and while it doesn’t pierce through armor, it deals much more damage to armor than non-AP weapons normally would. You won’t see enemies with armor for a while, but the way it works is that the armor has to be damaged first before they can be harmed. Aimed shot has the ability to deal massive damage regardless of AP or not AP, and it can take out most heavily armored enemies (not boss/elite units) in one hit, making this ability important for many characters.

A lot of assaulter weapons have crazy amounts of recoil after the initial burst. Thus, the damage per shot is incredibly important.

Damage too low!

The UMP45 is a worthy weapon that can get you through all the way until heavily armored enemies start to appear. If you really want to play assaulter from the start, grab this weapon early.

Unfortunately, the MP7’s damage is way too weak.

The P90 has armor piercing damage, which is nice, but the low damage makes it a very bad weapon, and the high magazine capacity is meaningless.

This is what makes assaulter so darn good. Despite not being the most expensive weapon, you want to have this weapon on at all times on assaulter because it is the best weapon. The initial burst of this weapon is very accurate, and the fire rate is much higher than the MCX300 Carbine, despite the game telling me that it’s the same. Has AP ammo, so it will basically chew through every enemy.

Good weapon, but the recoil gets too high too fast. This weapon should not be 10 stars, but it is. Get the M4A1 Carbine instead.

This is a great shotgun with high damage. You can use this shotgun for a long while. Slug Fire is a single shot of a slug round that fires straight. Great for rooms with hostages, terrible versus armor.

Despite having a tighter spread (therefore landing more pellets) than the Pump Action shotgun, it has much lower damage, which leads to some enemies needing two shots. The only advantage of this gun is fast reload speed, which is not significant. Do not buy.

The Semi-Auto shotgun is an amazing gun with high damage, high rate of fire that can clear any rooms very well throughout the game.

The S12K Tactical Shotgun is the first magazine-fed shotgun, allowing you to reload all shells at once. The damage is slightly lower than other shotguns, and the rate of fire is good, but not very fast. While the developers must have thought the magazine-fed reload would be nice, but it can be cumbersome and slower since most reloads happen after firing few shots. I recommend the Semi-Auto shotgun over this one.

KSG Twin Shotgun’s comes with a shotgun loaded with buckshots and a shotgun loaded with slugs, allowing you to switch between guns. It’s tube-fed, so individual loading of shells. The buckshot option is very subpar for the price it costs, because while the damage is amazing, the rate of fire is too slow to be a late game weapon. When you are getting this gun, you are getting it’s ability to fire slug shots continuously.

In my opinion, this is the best shotgun in the game. High magazine capacity, high damage, high rate of fire, tighest spread, and tube-fed. Change fire mode means the spread of the pellets can be wider or tighter. On tighter mode, this weapon can be used in rooms with hostages and not kill them, though not always.

Magazine-fed Shotgun. This shotgun is a scam. It’s expensive and it does nothing well. The damage and range of the shotgun is good, but it fires so slow. The Switch Ammo ability gives slug shots but the recoil is so ridiculously high you have to fire them very slow. Do not buy.

Shield has no aimed shot or any special abilities, which means the damage stat for her guns becomes incredibly important.

High magazine capacity but low damage.

Ditto.

Getting somewhere with the damage. Can now reliably take down enemies in 2-3 hits as opposed to 3-4. High magazine capacity.

Ah yes. This is the gun that takes out enemies reliably in two hits, including end game unarmored enemies such as red masks. Lower magazine capacity, but the ability to take out unarmored enemies in 2 hits is what makes this pistol good.

Her only gun with AP damage. The damage is low but this gun allows her to go somewhat toe-to-toe with armored enemies. However, this means suicide bombers and red bandana machetes become much harder to deal with so bring a breaching charge to use it as c4.

I don’t know why this gun exists. It doesn’t follow the video game trope of revolvers being high damage, nor does it justify the high cost of this gun. Enemies require 3 shots. THREE. SHOTS. You can only handle 2 unarmored enemies per room before a reload. At least Agent Fergie has aimed shot with her revolver. Do not buy.

Her highest DPS weapon. It’s got very high recoil so its terrible for enemies at far away, and it doesn’t have AP damage so a single armored enemy will soak up all the rounds in the magazine. It is fun to use though.

Agent Fergie’s weapons are pistols, just like that of Shield’s. This means that being able to kill enemies in 2 hits also becomes important, especially since Agent Fergie’s double tap allows her to quickly take out enemies. Her ability can also be used by normal fire + double tap + normal fire, allowing her to deliver 4 rounds in very fast delivery.

Weak Damage

Weak Damage

The 1911 takes out enemies in two rounds, but a better pistol awaits

This has the same damage as the 1911 but it is much more accurate with much lower recoil and much higher magazine capacity. Definitely a buy!

Despite low damage, it has AP, which means it can take out highly armored enemies surprisingly well combined with spamming double tap. Must buy for Fergie in later levels.

Fun to use, but probably not better than the m1076 due to its high recoil.

It does not one shot unarmored enemies sadly, but it does have aimed shot which is always good throughout the game. Two shots unarmored enemies but low magazine capacity forces this gun to make careful, slow paced plays.

Really bad weapon due to low range, low damage. High rate of fire means nothing with these disadvantages.

Still too low of DPS.

The only weapon of Recon with aimed shot, which is insanely useful in a lot of maps.

This is recon’s best weapon. Armor piercing damage, high rate of fire, high magazine capacity and great accuracy.

While it is the most expensive weapon, it is not the best weapon. The DPS and the fire rate is too low, leading to increased likelihood of taking damage before completely clearing the room.

Trunk Carbine is a poor weapon. It is inaccurate and the recoil gets too high too fast. Let’s put this back into the trunk.

This is an absolute monster of a weapon for those who aren’t armored. With the right character upgrades, this weapon penetrates and one shots enemies. It’s accurate too, so it leaves the hostages unharmed. He is just too good in the early-mid levels of the game. Aimed shot for occassional armored enemies. Must buy.

Slightly slower rate of fire than the trunk carbine (the interface is wrong), but it is quite accurate with low recoil. Just play assaulter if you are going to use automatic rifles on this guy.

Some of these may be obvious, but you never know who it will benefit!

-Breaching charges are basically c4s. You can use them to kill a charging machete, or use it like frags from a 2nd floor balcony. You can also breach, move far away, detonate the room, then use aimed shots to slowly whittle away the enemies.

-Smoke grenades are incredibly powerful, especially for characters that lack DPS. if there is smoke between you and the enemies, they will act like you’re not there, allowing you to shoot them without getting return fire.

-If there are too many enemies in breaching a room with slow motion, go in and go out. It will lure some end game enemies out. Same way with elevators.

-Use cam balls to get critical bonus damage versus the big topless boss. That will chew through his green healing potions. Cam ball or spy camera can also be used to pierce through armor of shield bosses.

-You can use the breaching charge and detonate behind the shield boss’s back. 3 will do the job.

-You can use breaching charge detonation to cancel the big topless boss’s health potion drinking.

In conclusion, while I love this game, the strengths of some characters aren’t enough to play them.

Note to developers

-Please double the EXP gain rate. It takes too damn long to get to 17, the max level, and you can’t even get all the skill points! It is literally punishing to keep playing the character you like. And once you get to the later levels, the other characters perform so bad because they are underlevelled. This probably won’t happen, but the best option is to have a shared EXP and level pool, or at least double the EXP gain. Nobody wants to downgrade and farm low level characters for a long time, and then only to find out they suck.

-So many things to buy, but stars are hard to come by early on. Maybe lower the price of weapons, but gate the progression of weapons just like the mission bundles so that we don’t immediately get the best weapon after clearing 3 levels.

-Buff Shields

-Give everyone the sniper support. If Off-duty guy can use sniper support, I think Agent Fergie definitely could.

-Buff the weapon ultimates except Assaulter’s LMG. Shield’s SMG, Garand, Recon’s suppressed shotgun, Off-duty’s pie are so underwhelming despite costing so much points.

-Make it so that losing a live doesn’t impact the number of stars. The wise advice is to actually avoid spending strategic points on bonus lives because I’ll just restart the game since losing a life means 2 stars.

-Maybe more creative missions. Vehicle-riding highway chasing missions, fortified MG positions, helicopters. More gears like sleeping gas underneath the door to make the hostage lie down for a safer clear.

-Flashbang thrown underneath the door because right now flashbangs are really not that good.

But thank you so much for your continued support and for making this game! It is deceptively fun and addictive.