Best Guns in Apex Legends: Season 30 Weapon Tier List (29 Guns Ranked)

The short answer: the best guns in Apex Legends Season 30 are the Kraber .50-Cal from care packages, and the R-99, C.A.R. SMG, Hemlok and Nemesis from floor loot. Season 30 “Marked” — live since 4 August 2026 — nerfed the close-range trio that dominated Season 29, deleted energy ammo from the loot pool entirely, and swapped the G7 Scout out of the care package for a buffed 30-30 Repeater. The meta is still fast and close, but the numbers have moved.

We ranked all 29 weapons in the current pool using damage, fire rate, DPS and magazine sizes taken from Respawn’s official Marked patch notes and cross-checked against live Season 30 tracker data. Every figure below reflects the game as of August 2026. Apex remains one of the most-played shooters on Steam — see our live tracker of the most played Steam games in 2026 for how it compares — and weapon choice is the single biggest variable you control in every match.

Apex Legends Season 30 weapon tier list — all 29 guns

The full Season 30 hierarchy, as of August 2026. Damage is per body shot at base values; DPS is damage × rounds per minute, measured at maximum ramp for the Nemesis and Devotion. Care package weapons are marked — they are excluded from floor loot and judged against each other as much as the field.

⭐ = care package weapon in Season 30 (Kraber, L-STAR, 30-30 Repeater). Bolt-action, lever-action and charge weapons show approximate cycle rates rather than true automatic RPM, so their DPS is omitted.

What changed in Season 30 Marked — every weapon change

Respawn’s 3 August patch notes delivered the biggest ammo-system change in Apex history alongside a care package swap and targeted nerfs to Season 29’s close-range winners. All figures below are from the official Marked notes.

The five new Corrupted Attachments round out the patch: Overflowing Magazine (bigger than purple, slower reloads), Headseeker Barrel (more headshot damage, worse hip-fire), Tactical Laser (faster reload, weaker ADS recoil control), Agile Standard Stock (no movement penalty, smaller magazine) and Rapid Sniper Stock (faster rate of fire, smaller magazine). Only one fits per weapon, and each can turn a B-tier gun into a specialist tool.

Best assault rifles in Apex Legends Season 30

The Hemlok took Season 30’s most pointed AR nerf — damage down to 21, Breach Charge cooldown stretched to 30 seconds, and half damage against hardlight and structures — yet it remains the class benchmark. Its burst profile still deletes shields at mid range, and heavy ammo is plentiful now that energy boxes are gone. If your squad plays around its charge windows, nothing else in the class pressures it.

The Nemesis is the season’s quiet riser. With Turbocharger unlocked it reaches its 637 RPM ceiling after two bursts, and its energy stockpile means you never scavenge for ammo — a genuine advantage in extended ranked fights. The R-301 Carbine, untouched by the patch, keeps its role as the low-recoil evergreen at 203 DPS; it is the rifle we recommend to anyone still learning recoil control. The VK-47 Flatline (20 damage, 200 DPS) hits harder with heavier kick, and the HAVOC — 224 DPS, the highest sustained output in the class — thrives under the new ammo rules, provided you respect its charge-up and stockpile.

Best SMGs in Apex Legends Season 30

Respawn aimed Season 30’s nerf hammer squarely at this class, and it barely mattered. The R-99 drops to 12 damage per bullet but still posts 216 DPS at 1,080 RPM — the fastest time to kill on the ground. Its 17-round base magazine is the tax: at this fire rate, one reload window loses fights. The C.A.R. answers with 217 DPS, a gentler recoil line and the unique trick of accepting both light and heavy ammo, which keeps it fed in any loot scenario. The Alternator, cut to 18 damage and a 26-round purple magazine, remains the most forgiving tracker in the game and the SMG we’d hand to a new player first.

The Volt is the class’s biggest beneficiary of the ammo overhaul. At 192 DPS it was already smooth; now its two-magazine stockpile regenerates in the background, freeing backpack space for shields and healing. The Prowler’s five-round burst (16 damage, 190 DPS in burst mode) still punishes peekers, though full-auto recoil keeps it a step behind the automatics.

Best LMGs in Apex Legends Season 30

The L-STAR owns this class. Promoted to the care package in Season 29 with a 19→20 damage buff and the Redline hop-up — which boosts damage and projectile size as the barrel nears overheating — it stayed there for Season 30 with a four-magazine stockpile. A squad that secures one controls mid-range angles for an entire rotation. The Devotion remains the highest-ceiling floor LMG: 16 damage per shot climbing from 300 to 900 RPM, a theoretical 240 DPS at full ramp, but its Turbocharger now costs 500 points and its stockpile punishes sloppy trigger discipline. The Spitfire’s 45-round purple magazine and 189 DPS make it the forgiving suppression pick, and the Rampage (29 damage per round) serves teams that want to thermite doors and hold choke points without attachment dependence.

Best sniper and marksman weapons in Apex Legends Season 30

The Kraber is still the Kraber: 150 body damage and a headshot that ends a fully-armoured opponent in one pull of the trigger. Tracker power ratings put it at 93.7 out of 100 for Season 30 — the highest score assigned to any weapon — and the only real question around it is whether you’ll land the second shot after missing the first.

The bigger story is the 30-30 Repeater. Swapped into the care package for the G7 Scout, it arrives with 51 damage (up from 43), a 0.25-second ADS charge (down from 0.4) and the new Shattercaps hop-up, which splits hip-fire rounds into a seven-pellet blast worth up to 56 damage. It is now the best value crate in the game when the Kraber isn’t inside. The demoted G7 Scout — 33 damage, reduced fire rate, no sniper optics, Double Tap gone — drops from meta-defining to serviceable floor poke. On the floor, the Sentinel’s 70-damage charged shots open fights, the Longbow DMR (60 damage) rewards consistent marksmanship, the Triple Take keeps its three-projectile 66-damage volley on a two-magazine energy stockpile, and the Bocek Compound Bow stays the silent option for players who want picks without announcing themselves.

Best shotguns in Apex Legends Season 30

• Peacekeeper — 99 damage per blast (11 pellets × 9), the one-shot punish for peeking corners
• Mastiff — 95 damage (5 pellets × 19), tight horizontal pattern for doorways
• EVA-8 Auto — 56 damage at 193 RPM full auto, the easiest shotgun to land
• Mozambique — 51 damage (3 × 17), floor-loot filler until something better spawns
• New: Executioner hop-up — Peacekeeper and Mastiff regenerate 50 shield over 5 seconds after a knock (375 points)

Shotguns received no raw damage changes in Season 30, but the Executioner hop-up — introduced at the Season 29 mid-season point and carried forward — reshaped their ranked value. Knocking an enemy with a Peacekeeper or Mastiff now triggers shield regeneration, turning successful peeks into sustainable aggression instead of one-off trades. In a meta built around breach-and-clear, that matters: the Peacekeeper’s 99-damage blast still threatens a one-shot knock on blue-armoured targets, and the EVA-8’s full-auto spread remains the go-to for pushing buildings where tracking targets through door frames beats precision.

Best pistols in Apex Legends Season 30

The Wingman remains Apex’s great divider. Fifty damage per body shot, 63 to 86 on headshots depending on helmet tier, and a 168 RPM cap that makes every miss audible to the enemy squad. In the hands of a confident shot it out-damages rifles at every range; for everyone else it is a fast route to the deathbox. The RE-45 Auto lost one damage point and three purple-magazine rounds in Season 30 but still outputs 200 DPS from the hip — the strongest panic button in the game, now with a self-regenerating two-magazine stockpile. The P2020, buffed to 24 damage last season, stays a specialist’s pick: with the Akimbo hop-up it becomes a genuine close-range threat, and without it, a 9-round magazine leaves no margin.

Ranked meta: what high-tier players actually run

Season 30’s ladder data points in one direction — speed. According to tracker power ratings, the top ground weapons by expert score are the Alternator (83.5), C.A.R. (83.3), Prowler (82.7) and R-99 (82.5), with the care package Kraber (93.7) sitting above everything. Four of the five strongest floor guns are close-range weapons, and Respawn’s nerfs trimmed their damage without displacing them.

Legend pick data from apexlegendsstatus, drawn from a database of 34.1 million tracked players, explains why: Loba leads at 10.3% (up more than 50% week on week, driven by her ability to summon weapons for the whole squad), new skirmisher Axle holds 9.6%, and Pathfinder sits at 8.7%. These are movement-first picks that fight at slide-jump distance. Meanwhile Bloodhound fell 37% ahead of this season’s rework. The practical read for ranked: pair an SMG with a mid-range option — C.A.R. plus Nemesis, or R-99 plus Hemlok — and save the sniper crate runs for when your squad controls the rotation.

Apex’s competitive scene reinforces the point — the ALGS remains one of the larger prize pools in battle royale esports, as our breakdown of the top esports earners in 2026 shows — and pro loadouts have converged on the same SMG-heavy formula.

Apex Legends Season 30 weapon questions

Apex Legends is free to play on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, with Season 30’s content available to every account at no cost. Cosmetic weapon packs sit behind the same regulatory scrutiny as other games’ loot systems — our guide to UK loot box law covers where the rules stand in 2026. For the bigger picture of how Apex’s 100-million-player base compares with the industry’s giants, see our ranked list of the best-selling video games of all time.