In extraction shooters like Arc Raiders, handling your weapon’s physical kick is the difference between a successful extraction and losing your entire hard-earned loadout. Among the stock attachments available, the Epic-tier Padded Stock is highly misunderstood.
Most stock options focus purely on passive recovery, but the Padded Stock changes active gun mechanics while you are actively pulling the trigger. However, it is a high-risk, high-reward attachment that can destroy your build if paired with the wrong weapon.
The Math Behind the Padded Stock
The Padded Stock is a heavy-duty modification designed for sustained automatic fire. Its statistical profile shifts weapon handling by trading agility for sheer precision:
The Pros: It slashes both Vertical and Horizontal Recoil by 15%, and reduces Per-Shot Dispersion (bloom) by 20%.
The Cons: It hits you with a heavy 20% penalty to both Equip and Unequip Times, alongside a massive 30% reduction in ADS (Aim Down Sight) Speed.
By cutting per-shot bloom by a fifth, this attachment keeps your bullet groupings tight during prolonged magazine dumps. The catch? It makes your weapon slow to draw and sluggish to aim. If you get ambushed while swapping weapons, that extra 20% draw time can send you straight back to the lobby.
To maximize this attachment, you must pair it with weapons that either desperately need the bloom reduction or naturally bypass the handling penalties.
Top Loadouts for the Padded Stock
1. The Stitcher (The Zero-Recoil Laser)
The Stitcher is an incredible value weapon to pair with the Padded Stock. As a common-tier submachine gun, it is cheap to craft but packs an incredibly fast base equip time of 0.90 seconds.
[Base Stitcher (0.90s Draw)] + [Padded Stock (+20% Equip Time)] = ~1.08s Total Draw TimeBecause its baseline handling is so snappy, adding the Padded Stock barely hurts its mobility, effectively negating the attachment's worst downside.
When you stack the Padded Stock with a Compensator III, the dispersion reductions multiply. This turns a budget SMG into a laser beam. In mid-range fights, you can comfortably land tight bullet groups on enemy hitboxes, maximizing the weapon's 7-damage-per-bullet profile without fighting wild horizontal drift.
2. The Torrente (The Medium-Range Beamer)
The Torrente light machine gun sits on the opposite end of the spectrum. It boasts a massive default shot dispersion and an aggressive, unpredictable kick that makes it wild to control past close-quarters scenarios. However, it yields an immense magazine capacity—up to 102 rounds when fitted with a Blue Drum Mag—and beats the Stitcher in pure body and headshot DPS.
Applying the Padded Stock to the Torrente tames its vertical and horizontal recoil range by 15%. Instead of the gun bouncing erratically every 5 to 6 shots, your full-auto fire stays concentrated. It transforms the Torrente from a clumsy hip-fire spray tool into a medium-range powerhouse capable of wiping an entire squad without a single reload.
⚠️ Survival Note: The Torrente is naturally heavy. Adding a 30% ADS penalty and a 20% equip delay means you cannot panic-swap to this weapon. If you run this build, keep your gun out before entering dangerous territory.
3. The Bobcat
The Bobcat is an Epic-tier SMG that functions as the high-end cousin to the Stitcher. It offers a faster time-to-kill (~1.4 seconds against light armor compared to the Stitcher's 1.7 seconds) but suffers from rapid, severe bloom during prolonged firing.
The 20% dispersion reduction from the Padded Stock provides the heavy-duty stabilization needed to keep your crosshairs glued to target hitboxes. It bridges the gap for the Bobcat, allowing its high-DPS output to stay accurate further into its magazine cycle.
Maximizing Your Arsenal: Blueprints and Markets
Acquiring high-tier attachments like the Padded Stock can be a frustrating grind. Its blueprint is locked behind RNG and high-risk extraction runs; if you get third-partied or fail to evacuate, the blueprint is gone.
Because of this, many players skip the grind entirely by looking for external trading platforms like U4N to buy weapons, materials, or shortcuts. Whether you choose to risk the extraction zones or decide to buy arc raiders blueprints pc setups online, securing permanent crafting access to this stock is a massive priority for endgame PvP and PvE setups.
? Weapons to Avoid with the Padded Stock
Do not use a Padded Stock on single-shot or slow-firing, semi-automatic weapons like the Ferro or the Renegade.
The entire purpose of the Padded Stock is to mitigate recoil and bloom during sustained, continuous fire. Because semi-automatic options have slow fire rates or manual reload animations, the weapon's physical kick naturally resets between shots anyway.
Using it on a Ferro or Renegade means you are absorbing a severe 30% ADS penalty and a 20% swap delay for absolutely zero real-world accuracy benefits. For single-shot or burst weapons, stick to a Stable Stock to smooth out initial sway, or a Lightweight Stock to keep your handling fast and responsive.
