Apex Legends is being constantly supported by new content and balance patches, which in result often change the meta in one or another way. Once you get used to a specific weapon, there’s no guarantee it won’t be nerfed in the next patch. It’s fairly easy to get lost in such circumstances, as the ever-changing balance can become a challenging obstacle.
The developers use the feedback they receive to fine-tune the existing weapons and to introduce new ones. The balance changes affect every aspect you could imagine like damage, magazine capacity, and even the amount of ammo in an inventory stack. The best weapons and the worst ones, obviously, have changed in Season 4.
10 Worst: RE-45
RE-45 is an okay starting weapon, but you’ll never see it in the endgame other than in the players’ loadouts who have been camping the entire match and avoiding combat (until they die during the very first encounter). It’s a gun that you always desperately try to exchange in the favor of Alternator or R-99.
RE-45 was once enhanced with a special mod called Disruptor Rounds, which increased damage dealt to players with body armors. You could literally drill through their shields, and it was the only reason to pick RE-45. Sadly, the mod has been ditched since.
9 Best: Hemlok
Hemlok is simply amazing – it’s a versatile and precise weapon, which is great for both long-range engagements and close-quarters combat. Sadly, it is very skill-dependent. In CQB, you have to rely on burst-fire mode, which can be punishing if you miss the shots. At long distances, Hemlok is best used in single-fire mode, which allows hitting your targets with deadly precision.
In Season 4, the rate of single fire has been improved and increased, so that you can tap-shoot enemies even faster. It’s a wonderful weapon to carry, but just in case, you might want to have a better CQB-suited gun as the secondary.
8 Worst: L-Star
With the start of Season 4, L-Star has lost its “gold” status and has become a regular energy weapon. Its place in supply drops has been taken over by Devotion, which no longer appears on the map. It was actually a very thoughtful move by the developers since players were generally ignoring L-Star and leaving it untouched.
The key reason for that is the blinding muzzle flash, which can easily annoy even a mentally stable person. You can get sometimes killed by an epileptic red storm (which is the description of L-Star shooting), but it’s more of a rare exception rather than a rule.
7 Best: Sentinel
The newest sniper rifle, Sentinel has been added to the game in Season 4, and it quickly became a rather popular weapon. Its bullets travel especially fast, and it is, perhaps, the easiest sniper rifle to use, but it requires high skill to land headshots regularly. It is also very satisfying to shoot with the sound effects and the fancy animations, which make you believe you’ve done something significant.
With the Sentinel’s arrival, the in-game sniper rifles were all switched to a specific type of ammo with 20 rounds per stack. It does feel reasonable given the advantage you receive with long-range weapons.
6 Worst: Prowler
Prowler is a difficult weapon to handle and take advantage of. It does have a five-shot rapid burst, but the recoil needs too much control to be called at least relatively comfortable. It also shoots incredibly fast, and before you know it, the magazine is empty – and the enemy is still alive and ready to mow you down.
Prowler can be effective with the switch-fire modification, which turns it into a fully automatic weapon. But unfortunately, you are not guaranteed to find it soon enough, and the Prowler usually gets replaced by a different weapon with heavy rounds.
5 Best: Peacekeeper
The mother (father?) of all shotguns in Apex Legends, a fully kitted Peacekeeper often occupies its well-deserved place in the loadout even if you happen to find the supply-drop-exclusive Mastiff. Much like many other weapons in the game, the Peacekeeper has a slot for a mod attachment, Precision Choke, which lets you charge the shotgun for a few moments to deliver a devastating compressed shot.
You can easily hit enemies at medium ranges and do substantial amounts of damage with the Choke, but the modification has a negative side to it. It increases the spread of an uncharged shot, which can be a disadvantage in CQB.
4 Worst: M600 Spitfire
One of the few machine guns in the game, M600 literally spits fire but does it slowly. Even if you start hitting the opponent first, the low rate of fire will get your character killed by the enemy with a faster shooting weapon. The only situation you could win a standoff in is when the enemy runs out of ammo while the huge Spitfire’s magazine allows you to continue hitting the foe to eventually kill them while they’re reloading.
The problem with the Spitfire is its unspecific scope of use. It’s not even remotely a good choice for CQB because of the low rate of fire. Neither is it a useful ranged weapon because of its inaccuracy.
3 Best: Wingman
The trusty revolver has the best nickname among existing weapons in Apex Legends. It is indeed a wingman for a skilled player. If you are able to land precise shots and unfold the gun’s damage potential, then you’ll surely win every firefight against whoever you meet. And what’s most important, Wingman allows doing that regardless of the enemy’s weapon.
It has long been arguably imbalanced, and the development team has been forced to nerf the gun a few times. The latest changelist, however, tries to incorporate some well-balanced tweaks. Along with an increased base clip size of 5 rounds, Wingman now can only shoot 8 times with an epic mag.
2 Worst: Mozambique
Despite several changes made to Mozambique, it steadily keeps its status of the worst ever weapon in Apex Legends. It has been treated with a special mod called Hammerpoint Rounds, which drastically increases the damage dealt to armorless players once equipped. If you can land a headshot, then you’ll have a guaranteed kill, but the necessity to find the modification almost neglects this advantage.
Mozambique is a living meme, and Respawn has once stated that it wouldn’t remove the weapon from the game due to its love-and-hate reputation. The community loves the gun for being stupidly useless and hates for the very same reason.
1 Best: R-99
The rapid fire and the controllable recoil have made the R-99 sub-machine gun a living icon. This is the weapon of choice for all the pros out there, but average players also tend to use it on a regular basis. Season 4 has introduced several changes to the gun, with the most important one being the reduced damage output. Instead of 12 points, R-99 now deals 11 per shot.
This has been somewhat counterbalanced with an increased base magazine capacity, which is now 20 rounds instead of 18. And while damage decrease is a significant nerf, R-99 remains the absolute champion on the list of Apex Legends’ weapons.