Zero Company weapon tier list

More confirmed ability text rewards a pistol than any other type, and the reason is Action Point cost rather than damage. The Gunslinger's whole economy — Onslaught stacking +1 damage per shot within a turn, Quick Draw refunding its Action Point on a kill — needs several attacks per turn, and cheap attacks are what allow that. The Heavy's taunt rides on its primary blaster attack, so a pistol lets one Heavy taunt several targets across the field in a turn where a long arm taunts one. And the Scout can build around a pistol up close, spotting several enemies a turn so that everyone else lands theirs. Three of the eight classes have published reasons to want it.

Moves if Pistol damage is low enough that flat enemy Defense subtracts most of it. Defense punishes volume attackers hardest, and this whole placement is a volume argument — it would fall to B.

The only type with a class built entirely around it — the Sharpshooter's suggested weapon list contains nothing else — and the only one with a confirmed terrain interaction, since high ground raises hit chance and long range is what exploits it. Luco Bronc's Combat Gas grants +5% chance to hit and +1 ranged damage per stack and costs no Action Point, which exists to solve the specific problem a long arm has: range imposes hit-chance penalties, and a missed 2 AP shot can cost a whole turn. The Scout's Spotted removes distance penalties against a marked target, which is worth most to exactly this weapon. It is A rather than S because the developers state that line of sight and mission structure limit pure sniper strategies, and because it is the type that most needs the rest of the squad to set it up.

Moves if Maps turn out to have long sightlines more often than the preview footage suggests. That would make positioning cheap and move this to S.

It has the single most specific confirmed interaction of any weapon and very little else. Trick carries one and can Fire Repeating Blaster, a Final Action that consumes every remaining Action Point and scales its Rapid Fire damage with how many were spent — one preview records 22 damage for 3 AP, which is the only weapon damage figure published for anything. It is listed as a suggested weapon for the Heavy, the Assault, the Gunslinger and the Soldier, so it is the closest thing to a frontline default. What holds it at B is that the Final Action shape is exactly the wrong fit for the classes that gain most from acting repeatedly, and nothing else in the confirmed ability text specifically wants a repeater.

Moves if The Final Action turns out to be a per-weapon attack option rather than Trick's alone. A 22-damage close-out available to any frontline Operator would make this A.

Fourth by absence rather than by weakness, and the distinction matters. The rifle is the medium-range generalist and is a suggested weapon for the Assault, the Heavy, the Medic, the Scoundrel and the Scout — the widest fit of the four. What it does not have is a single confirmed ability, Talent or upgrade that names it or rewards it specifically. Every other type on this list is ranked on something published; the rifle is ranked on having nothing published to rank. That is a statement about the evidence rather than about the gun, and it is the placement most likely to be wrong on 27 August.

Moves if Retail weapon statistics show the rifle as the damage-per-Action-Point baseline the other three trade against. It would then be A or S, and this placement should be treated as the least reliable on the site.