M249
The M249 is a 5.56mm light machine gun. It carries a cyclic rate of 800 rpm, a 75-round magazine and a 3.5 s reload. Against an unarmored target at point-blank range, a torso shot deals 43.1 damage (3 hits to kill) and a head shot deals 94.3 (2 hits).
Lethality point-blank, every shot on target
any armor, any range →↳ DPS = one hit × cyclic rate. Time to kill = delay from the first shot to the killing shot at the cyclic rate, every shot on the same zone, no misses — a best case; one-shot kills read 0.
Trajectory
1.00 → 0.80 over 400m
Zone damage point-blank, unarmored
representative bone shown↳ representative bone per zone: Head→head, Torso→spine_02 (baseline 1.0, not the inflated spine_03 1.1), Arm→upperarm, Leg→thigh, Pelvis→pelvis. The detail table on the reference page shows the full bone breakdown.
Field notes
reviewed for Update 43.1The M249 is sustained output, quantified: 41 damage per bullet, 800 rounds per minute, 75-round box. That is over 3,000 potential damage between reloads — enough to knock an entire squad without touching the reload key. The reload has always been the price of that box, though Update 42.3's class-wide rebalance cut LMG reload times by roughly a quarter and softened the recoil spike at the start of sustained fire, so the weapon handles noticeably less like an anchor than its reputation suggests. Update 43.1 then pulled some of that back for the whole class: crouched and prone recoil got harder to hold, ADS slowed from 0.30 s to 0.37 s, the 1.1× vehicle-damage bonus is gone (now 1.0×), and world spawns dropped by 30%.
What the raw fire rate hides is the bullet itself: at 915 m/s the M249's muzzle velocity is the highest of any LMG (MG3 820, RPD 735) and quicker than most DMRs. Tap-firing it at range works far better than most players expect.
Since 42.3 it also has a direct rival: the new RPD trades rate for weight — 43 damage per 7.62 round at 750 rpm from a 50-round drum, against the M249's faster, flatter 5.56 stream and bigger box. The M249 remains the choice when volume and trajectory matter more than per-bullet punch.
It is full-auto only — there is no single-fire mode to toggle — so range discipline comes from your trigger finger. Fit a stock and an optic (it takes both, plus a magazine attachment), find something to rest behind, and it turns compounds into no-go zones.
- 75-round box magazine — tied with the MG3 for the game's largest.
- 915 m/s muzzle velocity, the fastest of any LMG.
- ~546 damage per second of sustained full-auto fire.
- Update 43.1: ADS 0.30 → 0.37 s, crouch/prone recoil control reduced, vehicle damage 1.1× → 1.0×, world spawn rate −30% (42.3 had cut reloads ~25% and horizontal recoil 30%).
Recoil
- Vert. min
- 0.05
- Vert. max
- 7.0
- Vert. var.
- 0.1
- Speed V
- 15.0
- Speed H
- 10.0