Valorant is growing more popular day by day and new players after playing a few games are left wondering which gun to use.
That’s a fair question and at some point, every player has had this thought and the clear answer to it is, for once there is no best gun in valorant. It all depends on how the player performs with a certain weapon.
Image Source: Valorant Fandom
You see, the arsenal in valorant is massive with different kinds of weapons falling in different price ranges. Every weapon has its strengths and flaws and it’s all up to the person using that weapon if he could make the most out of it.
Today, we will be going over the popular weapons and which guns are the best in their respective price range.
Best gun in Valorant in Secondary Weapons
This debate is one of the hardest to settle because every single secondary weapon or pistol whatever you prefer to call it is useful in different situations and each is more or less balanced.
However, after the jump classic was nerfed in an update a while ago, classic took some significant damage to its rankings in the category.
Pistol / Save Rounds
Secondary weapons are mostly only used in pistol and save rounds. The usage of these in any normal AR round is pretty rare, In pistol or save rounds, Long-range and mid-range fights are common and in such cases having a sheriff or a ghost can be highly beneficial.
The sheriff is the only gun in this category that is capable of pulling a 1 headshot kill even penetrating a full armor.
The headshot damage of the sheriff is 159 and the body shot damage is 55. If you are confident in your aim and have good knowledge about recoil control then the sheriff is the go-to gun for you.
One thing to note here is sheriff’s damage changes if you are more than 30 meters away from the target, in that case, the headshot damage is 145 which won’t be able to kill someone in one shot if they had a full shield.
Ghost on the flip side is a 1 headshot kill only if the enemy is not possessing any armor at all. The headshot damage of the ghost is 105 and the body shot damage is 30.
Now you may wonder why someone would buy ghost over sheriff if the sheriff is completely better.
Well, ghost not only has more than double-sized magazines compared to the sheriff, but it also has a faster fire rate and less recoil.
The ghost is better than the sheriff if you are not confident with a sheriff because it is easier to hit ghost shots than sheriff shots.
Image Source: Valorant Fandom
Sidearms
These secondary weapons are also referred to as “sidearms” which is a self-explanatory name but here, what I mean by sidearms is a pistol that helps in tough situations in an ordinary round like running out of bullets in your rifle or playing on an agent’s ult like Jett knives, Neon’s overdrive or Chamber’s tour de force.
For instances like these, I highly recommend using a shorty or frenzy because they are incredible in close-range fights and if you’re already playing with an auto rifle then most of the time you’ll need a sidearm at your disposal in a close-range fight and that’s where frenzy and shorty shine the brightest.
You may be wondering why I did not talk about classic and the answer to that is Classic is simply good in both close-range and long-range fights.
It doesn’t specialize in any single type of battle, it makes it super versatile and you might wanna use classic to save yourself extra credits.
SMGs
Next up are the SMGs and I don’t think I need to say much here. We all know that spectre is better than stinger by a long shot. The only match-up I can see stinger winning against spectre is the fire rate.
Stinger has a higher rate than spectre but that is of no use in long and mid-range because stinger has just as high of recoil as well.
Stinger can be good if you want to play really close range, as close as you would play with a shorty but other than that I don’t see stinger anyway half decent.
Stinger is generally used in some particular circumstances with the most common being when you can’t afford Spectre but you are desperate.
Image Source: Valorant Fandom
Spectre is a great gun and one of the most common weapons after phantom and vandal. Spectre is generally used when you can’t afford an AR or after losing one or two consecutive rounds.
It is best used for mid-range and it also works for close range but in long-range you might not be able to get the best out of it. It’s pretty clear that spectre is the go-to gun in the SMG category.
Shotguns
Now we are onto the second most hated type of gun after machine guns. If you have ever faced a raze with a judge you know exactly what I’m talking about.
I don’t know about you guys but from what I’ve seen shotguns are rarely used especially bucky. You might see some players use judge from time to time but bucky is nowhere to be found.
There’s a good reason for that as well, the fire rate of bucky is not really the best. Bucky has a fire rate of 1.1 rounds per second whereas its rival judge has a fire rate of 3.5 rounds per second.
Even though bucky has better damage, there’s a slight delay in between shots when you’re using bucky which decreases its efficiency, unlike judge.
Image Source: Valorant Fandom
Bucky is not good at all unless you aim for the head, in that case, it may be useful in some fights but there’s a good chance you will get yourself killed with a bucky as it is not very useful against weapons like a phantom, vandal, or the spectre.
The judge on the other hand is one of the best if you could get close to enemies, the judge’s damage at close range is beyond overpowered.
If you aim for the head in a close-range fight with the judge, there’s absolutely no way you could lose that fight no matter which gun the enemy has which makes the judge easily the best in the Shotgun category.
But like I said you need to be really close to an enemy in order to pull that off. Many raze players use their double satchel to get close to enemies and pick a kill or two with the judge in a save round.
Rifles
Finally the part most of you came here for, which rifle should you use? There isn’t a clear-cut answer to this question so we will have to go over some stats here.
The first rifle we would be going over is the bulldog. Bulldog is a pretty balanced gun as long as we aren’t talking about aim-down sights which is also commonly known as ADS.
The bulldog is super strong when you use ADS because it has no recoil in that stage whatsoever and it burst fires like a stinger in ADS.
Bulldog is a great gun to hold angles with your ADS because it’s easier to get some kills with the bulldog ADS if you already hold an angle with a crosshair on the head level.
Guardian feels like a rifle and a sniper rifle at the same time. I would suggest using a guardian as a sniper holding angles as you would do with any other sniper rifle.
It is certainly not the best gun in close range but works like a charm if you can hit those headshots.
Image Source: Valorant Fandom
Guardian hits one tap on a headshot at any range and because the guardian is a single fire weapon, holding a particular site with the guardian is just as good as an operator if you have a decent aim.
Now we talk about the big deal, Phantom vs Vandal. Almost every single valorant player uses either phantom or vandal as their primary gun.
Well as they are the only legit auto rifles available in the game it’s only natural for everyone to use them, however, there is a slight dispute amongst the valorant community about which one is the superior rifle.
Both of them have their own pros and cons and we will go over them one by one here. To start off, let’s talk about the vandal.
Vandal
Many professional and esports players use vandal as their go-to gun because of its 1 headshot kill specialty.
Even though vandal is the most effective in particularly long-range fights you can still maintain a decent control in close range with practice over time.
One of the most important piece of info you must know before using the vandal is, that you can get the maximum value from the vandal only when you use it on burst fire or single tap rather than auto fire although it may also depend on the distance between you and the enemy but in long-range fights, this will come particularly in handy.
The biggest drawback of the vandal is, that if we imagine a scenario with 2 players of the same skill level doing a phantom vs vandal in close range, it’s almost a given that the one with the phantom will win, let me explain why.
Phantom
Phantom can be a little more tricky than the vandal. You see, as I mentioned before vandal having a 1 headshot kill, well it is also partially true for the phantom.
Just like the sheriff, the phantom has a dynamic damage system. The damage it deals depends and changes with increase and decrease in distance.
One of the only reason phantom is able to rival the vandal is because of its ridiculous fire rate and the spray control; it doesn’t require as much practice to be able to control the recoil as you would normally need with the vandal.
These little things play a big role in the phantom’s standing as a rifle making it the polar opposite of the vandal; better for close-range fights and easier spray control.
We have a separate article where we have addressed the vandal vs phantom in more detail, you may want to refer to that article for more on this.
Read for more info: Why is Valorant so hard
Snipers
I think we all know it, this one is pretty obvious even for a newbie. Even though the marshal has an incredibly faster shooting delay compared to the operator, you need to be insanely skilled to work with the marshal since you can only kill someone with ease when you hit a headshot.
Image Source: Valorant Fandom
The operator on the other hand is a one-shot kill if you hit a headshot or even a body shot which makes it far better and easier to use comparatively which clearly makes the operator the best sniper. But we need to take the price into consideration as well.
The marshal costs 1100 credits to purchase while the operator is a whopping 4500 not only making the operator 4 times more expensive than the marshal but also the most expensive weapon in the whole game for the time being.
Machine Guns
Coming down to our last category we have the machine guns, depending on the servers you play on, you may see people bashing these guns alongside the players using them implying that only noobs use them and it takes no skill to kill with the machine gun as it is essentially “spam”.
Image Source: Valorant Fandom
I for once disagree and see machine guns as the weapon I would use when I’m bored or tired of regular guns. The biggest advantage of machine guns is the number of bullets you have in a single magazine so you don’t have the reload as often as any other gun.
Even though the price difference in this category isn’t as big as with snipers but it still is a lot. The Ares is only 1600 credits with the Odin being 3200 credits which is double the credits. Out of the two, Odin might be the better option.
Conclusion
Now that I have listed all of the guns in each and every category there is, I wish you now know which gun to use to get those sweet sweet kills. Overall, Phantom or Vandal are the two candidates for the best gun, now it is up to you to decide which one to choose for yourself.
If you are having problems or difficulty while using rifles, you start off easy using a spectre and working your way up. You can use any other gun once in a while for a change of pace.
Thank you for reading our article, We hope to see you again
You might also like:
