Best A-wing loadout in Star Wars: Squadrons
No one can follow you with this A-wing loadout
The nimble A-wing is one of the Republic's deadliest ships in Star Wars: Squadrons, thanks to its agility and damage potential. Most Republic players I've come across tend to use A-wings in both Dogfight and Fleet Battles, but I rarely see anyone doing it right. Below I'll walk you through my best A-wing loadout for Squadrons, along with an explanation of how to play it and why exactly it works so well against pretty much any enemy in the Empire's fleet.
In this A-wing loadout guide:
Best A-wing loadout in Star Wars: Squadrons
The key to a good A-wing loadout is delivering consistent damage by skillfully tracking enemies, and staying alive as long as possible. On the whole, most A-wing pilots find the first part easy, and the second part pretty hard. But our A-wing loadout makes you surprisingly survivable, as long as you have a good grasp of power management.
Here is the best A-wing loadout:
- Weapons: Standard Taim & Bak KX8 Laser Cannon
- Aux #1: Incom E-73 Repair Kit
- Aux #2: Carbanti Targeting Jammer
- Countermeasures: ArMek H/M Seeker Warheads
- Hull: Fabritech Dampener Hull
- Engines: Incom Sublight Engine
- Shields: Sirplex Nimble Deflector
First off: don't be swayed by any of the more exotic-sounding primary weapons. The Standard Laser Cannon is your best bet for dealing consistent high damage for a long enough time to destroy larger enemy ships. All the other weapons just have too many downsides to be as viable in a nippy little A-wing.
Our auxiliaries are for utility, rather than supplementing our damage. You can substitute them for missiles if you like, but I find the Laser Cannon to be good enough. Our Repair Kit is there for replenishing our hull (if they ever break through your shields - more on that later), while the Targeting Jammer is a godsend for losing enemies on your tail. This Jammer does more than it says: it completely disables the enemy's ability to auto-aim (in the sense that all weapons have a slight auto-aim feature which activates whenever your crosshairs turn red), allowing you to slip away with ease and start regenerating shields. It's also the best counter I've found to the emerging meta of guided Rotary Cannons on Bombers.
Speaking of shields: the Sirplex Nimble Deflector is the bread-and-butter of my best A-wing loadout. You'll have a little less HP on your shields, but they regenerate unbelievably fast. As in, max out power to shields and you'll be fully overcharged in a couple of seconds. It's by far the most survivable I've ever felt in an A-wing or an Interceptor.
Everything else is fairly self-explanatory. The Seeker Warheads are the best countermeasures available on any ship, and will keep you alive in the face of missile attacks. The Sublight Engine is the standard A-wing engine, and it's more than good enough for this loadout - I feel no need to add any downsides in this area of the build. And finally, the A-wing's Dampener Hull trades a tiny bit of hull integrity (which doesn't matter that much as we're focusing on shields) in order to make the ship much harder to lock onto with missile attacks. All in all, this adds up to a fairly straightforward but startlingly tanky and slippery A-wing capable of taking down any Empire ship.
For full details on this build, check out the Squadrons Toolkit Loadout Builder where I've recreated the loadout exactly.
How to use our A-wing loadout
Your priority with this A-wing loadout is to stay on top of power management. The Nimble Deflector shields allow you to spend a very short amount of time regenerating and overcharging your shields, allowing you to focus more on boost charge and weapon strength. Switch to weapon charge as you begin to fire. When you disengage, switch to shields briefly to top up anything that was lost, then back to engines to keep your boost ready in case you need to disappear.
When you do need to disappear, feel free to activate your Targeting Jammer to ensure no one can track you. This doesn't just disable the red crosshair for regular weapons, it also completely nullifies guided blasters including the extremely powerful Guided Rotary Cannon used by the TIE Bomber. Use your Repair Kit as needed, and then get back into the fight as quickly as possible.
Otherwise, it's basic A-wing stuff. Get behind enemies (watch out for Seeker Mines!) and blast them with your Cannons, tracking them to the best of your ability, and overcharging weapons whenever it's safe to do so. If you're following an enemy and you end up being shot from behind by a different enemy, it's always best to break off and play it safe, healing back up before re-engaging from a more advantageous standpoint. Keep this up and you'll have an enviable kill-death ratio by the end of the match.
That's everything you need to know on the best A-wing loadout I've come across in Star Wars: Squadrons. But that's not all we have to show you: check out our Best Star Wars: Squadrons loadouts page for top-tier builds for every single ship!