Best PVP Guns in ARC Raiders

ARC Raiders is a huge game, one where fighting big robots is just as important as watching your back for other players.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, or rather a dog-eat-robot-eat-dog… You get the point. It’s a ruthless, unrelenting, and dangerous world out there on the top, and bringing the right equipment with you is of the utmost importance.

We’ve already made one weapon tier list before, but there I regarded ARCs as the ultimate foe, therefore giving the guns’ efficacies against the robots more value than I maybe should have.

This list is purely for PVP purposes, as I have selected five weapons that I would almost always take with me (or have on my squad) if I were to hunt players, specifically.

The Best Guns for PVP in ARC Raiders

In PVP, you’ll be in one of two situations: up close or far away. Mid-range does not count here, as weapons that correspond to both categories are equally useful, though I’d give more credit to the close-range ones in that use case myself. Therefore, the weapons on this list are great both for fighting folks that are nearby, and taking them out from a safe distance.

Here is our list.

Kettle

The Kettle is a gun I did not initially like a lot, nor did I consider it very useful. It’s packed with small ammo, meaning it has next to no armor penetration (necessary for fighting ARCs) and does not carry that many bullets in its magazine.

However, after playing the game a lot, I have come to appreciate the gun far more, both when it comes to taking ARCs down and when fighting other players. It’s not a weapon you’d ever take in a Queen raid, but it will help you knock a Hornet out of the sky and, most importantly, ensure you are never under-equipped for a PVP encounter.

It shoots blazingly fast, packs a punch against human enemies, and is generally super stable and easy to aim with, allowing you to track moving targets with relative ease. Even though it does not have the greatest range, but it will still be effective at medium distance, opening up any target in your relative vicinity to heavy damage.

When upgraded with attachments and magazine expansions, the gun only gets better and is more or less a must-carry for any PVP-minded raider.

Ferro

Ferro is one of the earliest marksman rifles you get in ARC Raiders, and it’s definitely one of the best. It’s an iron-sighted rifle, meaning there’s no fancy scope to help your aim, but it nevertheless maintains a tremendous level of efficacy at range, not least because it carries heavy ammo.

While requiring frequent reloads and down times, Ferro is a cheap, affordable, and easily obtained long-range beast capable of breaking an entire medium armor in a single shot, making most enemies in the game merely two well-placed bullets away from death.

Use it to engage foes that are far away or at medium range, softening them up before you rush in with a more suitable close-range weapon, such as the Kettle or some of the handguns on this list.

Ferro, like Kettle, can also be upgraded, though the gains aren’t as substantial as the latter.

Anvil

Handguns aren’t so commonly seen topside, but damn if they aren’t effective. The Anvil is a heavy-ammo-loaded handgun that packs a serious punch, not much unlike the Ferro, with the difference being that it has a somewhat worse range but significantly better rate of fire. It’s the game’s Desert Eagle, and in the right hands, it can be an actual beast.

Its downside is its long reload time, on account of its being a revolver, but it more than makes up for it with increased mobility, amazing close-range efficacy, and overall massive damage due to its ammo. I love this pistol so much, and I wholeheartedly recommend that you try it out at least once, both against ARCs and other players.

Venator

The Anvil’s little brother, the Venator is a medium-ammo-loaded semi-automatic pistol that both dishes out a lot of damage and shoots rather quickly. Being a semi-auto gun, it more or less shoots as fast as you can click and does not suffer from loss of mobility, unlike the Anvil.

What it gains in terms of speed and versatility, it loses in range, as you will find it tremendously difficult to do any meaningful damage to a moving target at a distance. Players who are carrying better long-range guns will destroy you if you bring a Venator to the fight, but will suffer tremendously if you manage to sneak up close to them.

It’s a great counterpart to a long-range, heavy-ammo gun, though I’d recommend you pick up a Kettle, since ARC Raiders allows two rifles to be carried at once, making the handguns rather obsolete for most playstyles.

Osprey

Osprey is a cheap and readily-available sniper rifle, scoped and ready for proper long-range play. It’s my favorite long-range weapon in the game, up there with the Ferro, and is unbeatable when it comes to taking enemies down from a distance. Climbing the Launch Towers on Spaceport and sniping people across the entire map is an unforgettable experience, and something few other guns in the game can do.

However, it’s rather slow and will be a huge detriment if enemies come up close to you. This, like the Ferro, is a great gun to soften people up before you close the range and put some other guns from this list to use. Or, on the other hand, it could be a gun you use whenever you do not want to approach at all, taking the enemy down before they even know what’s happening.

Il Toro

Back when I made that first tier list, I was unnecessarily cruel to the shotguns. I still believe they’re rather less efficient than they should be compared to other guns, but I’ve come to learn the beauty of Il Toro over the past couple of months. The sheer damage this gun can dish out is incredible, and few other weapons in the game can compare at close range.

I’ve even seen it do tremendously well against less-armored ARCs like Hornets, with a single well-placed shot blowing the entire thing up. With that in mind, you can guess what it does to players’ armor and health bars. If you are more of a rusher than a dragger, then Il Toro might just be the ultimate perfect weapon for you.

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