It’s been a few months since I last updated my tier list in legendary form. As promised, I’m here to deliver the long-awaited Season 23 update to the legendary weapon tier list. Today, we’re going to be going over special and power weapons, and in my next article,
Legendary Weapon Tier List: Season 23 Update
One of the biggest improvements I made from last season was more accurately rating certain archetypes. I think I overrated aggressives and underrated lightweights a bit, which I compensated for this season by adjusting quite a few shotguns up and down, including Seven Ser of CQC 12 and Ragal D, for example. I also underrated Heritage a little, as I still find its recombination and kinetic affinity to be very potent in the current sandbox, regardless of my overall feelings on the slug archetype.
Special Weapons Analysis
When it comes to new additions, the Retr Futurist Season 23 version has much more compelling PVE perks, including Slick Draw, Autoloading Holster, Frenzy, and Trench Perel. So, I bumped it all the way up to a tier.
Super Cluster, the new seasonal slug, also made a decently strong showing, ending up next to Fortisimo 11 in the B tier, thanks to its very solid perks but mediocre affinity and archetype. I also restructured the way I group snipers. In the S tier, we have only The Supremacy and Succession since they were the only two snipers that I think have enough utility that they expand beyond being only great for boss damage or only great for utility use cases.
The A tier is strictly the best case boss damage options in one scenario or another, like Twilight Oath or Distant Tumulus. The B tier includes all snipers that have great perks but a mediocre archetype, or vice versa. In the C tier, I chose to group a huge number of snipers, all of which I would call indistinguishable or just usable, since they all have some sort of mag or reload assist and a decent damage perk. Finally, the D tier is reserved for awful options.
New Additions and Adjustments
As for new additions this season, Twilight Oath’s new Envious Bortle role is worth a mention in the A tier, as I think it’s the best swap option when you don’t need to care about ammo or Firing Line requirements, especially since Tumulus is currently not easy to farm. Finally, Naim’s Lance, The Warlord’s Ruin Strand 140, fits the B tier bill pretty well with Reconstruction and Precision Instrument being decent together, despite the lackluster affinity.
Fusion Rifles: Understanding Their Role
After mulling over fusion rifles for the past couple of months, I’ve gained a greater understanding of how the weapon fits into the endgame meta. Essentially, fusion rifles are used for either utility purposes, like stunning a champ using Unstopped Fusion, or bursting a major.
Fusion Rifles: Extended Boss Damage and Utility Use
In both scenarios of super chunking in extended boss damage context, high impact frames are usable but either unwieldy due to their long charge time or less effective thanks to their low bolt count. As a result, I moved all of the high impacts into the B tier, with Riptide remaining as the only S-tier Fusion, along with the new Scatter Signal in A, with Royal Executioner and Cartesian Coordinate.
New Glacio Clasm gets a B-tier spot next to Aramite and Loaded, with the addition of Controlled Burst and Overflow to its arsenal. Logically, the game’s first rapid-fire fusion with Controlled Burst and Enhanceable Overflow gets a spot in the A tier as well.
We didn’t get any change to grenade launchers this season, just Undercurrent, so let’s start with that. Volot on Undercurrent has been experimented with for a while, and the jury seems to be out: it’s decidedly worse than Chain Reaction, requiring a kill reload and only activating once per shot. Even if we ignore the lack of Soul Drinker, it is the only energy wave frame with Demolitionist, which does boost its ranking up past a low tier. I decided to place it in the B tier, alongside wave frames like Deafening Whisper and Harsh Language, which I view as utility-oriented rather than purely ad-clear focused.
Grenade Launchers and Glaive Tier List Updates
Besides that, I slightly readjusted a few other placements on this list, with some blinding grenade launchers moving up as I feel I underrated them. My glaive tier list
Glaives are primarily defensive tools, but through some damage testing this season with new Worm Gods, I’ve discovered that they’re fairly potent for offensive ventures as well. However, one could make the argument that you would probably be better served just going full-on into a one-two punch grapple melee build instead of spamming glaive melees if you want to do melee damage, which would be a correct assessment.
Revamped Glaive Tier List: Prioritizing Defense and Craftable Power
As a result, I moved almost every glaive in the previous tier list to more accurately reflect the defensive capability of glaives, with a focus on buffing shield uptime and quality of life. Most notably, NZ’s Whisper is now in the S tier as a result of its craftable status, with access to Demolitionist, Lead from Gold, Frenzy, and the Extrovert Origin Trait, along with the best defensive archetype.
The new Albo Wing from this year’s Dawning also makes an appearance as the only AER glaive, thanks to its solid utility perks in Field Prep, Demolitionist, and Lead from Gold, as well as the potential for offense in the Grave Robber and Close to Melee combo.
Machine Guns: Re-evaluation and Ranking Adjustments
Power weapons are up next, let’s start with machine guns. I made a few missteps when ranking these last season, so I want to go out of my way to correct them here. First, the two stasis machine guns, Recurrent Impact and Chain of Command, were ranked far too low, with the former combining Subsistence, One for All, Headstone, and Land Tank, and the latter with the classic Demolitionist and Adrenaline Junky combo, with a solid archetype. As for the other changes, Avalanche moves down its tier thanks to its low reserves. Corrective Measure moves up a tier thanks to the potent Demolitionist and Firefly combo, and I’ve also refined the bottom two tiers a bit by separating some of the better options.
LMGs and Machine Gun Rankings
LMGs have seen some notable changes, with Marcato 45, the Strand adaptive machine gun from this season, breaking into the A tier with a never-before-seen combo of Demolitionist with Onslaught and Golden Tricorn, something I’ve been wanting to see for a while. Heavy grenade launchers did not have any new additions or even changes this season, so there’s not much to say here. I’ve made a few readjustments to certain options, but nothing too noteworthy, besides A Cosmic, which was released after I made my first list. It’s currently sitting in the B tier alongside other rapid-fire GLs like Marelon C that lack Enhance Surrounded. Admittedly, I was a little lazy when ranking swords last season and wasn’t as sensitive to archetypes as I could have been. This season, I refined the separation between A and S tier, ensuring that it is clear that Bequest is the best damage sword in the game.
Rocket Launchers and Swords Update
Two changes were made to the rocket roster this season: the Sleepless Reprise and the addition of Krux Termination 4 to the world drop pool. I made some small adjustments outside of those rockets, with Pezen dropping a tier thanks to its lackluster perks by Season 23 standards and a few others dropping for similar reasons. As for the changes, Sleepless jumps two tiers from D to B thanks to the addition of Bipod to its perk list, making it a usable GM or roam rocket. Krux Termination, on the other hand, is starting strong at S tier. Slide on a rocket is already good enough, but with Bipods, Surrounded, Clown Cartridge, Reconstruction, Wild Card, and an aggressive frame, this one’s definitely S.
Linear Fusion Rifles Re-evaluation
The last weapon type we have to talk about is the linear fusion rifle. I’ve also taken a step back and readjusted my stance on archetypes for these weapons. First, the difference in total damage between aggressives and precisions isn’t as high as I originally thought it was during the creation of the old linear tier list. For reference, Briar’s with Enhanced Surrounded reaches 3.7 million total damage, with Lmic at 4.5, but only if you do perfect triple four times a charm procs every mag. The DPS difference also isn’t very high, but it’s enough to shift the overall balance in favor of aggressive linear.
As a result, I’ve actually placed the new aggressive linear, Doomed Petitioner, at the top spot in the S tier, above Cataclysmic. While Briar’s has a weakness in lacking a really strong damage perk that isn’t conditional like Surrounded, Doomed has both Surrounded and Precision Instrument, which fully activates in two shots, on top of having access to Envious and Reconstruction, and presumably a one-day fixed Dragon’s Vengeance origin trait. As for the other changes, I’ve shifted some of the lesser linears down a tier to allow Briar’s its own space in the A tier.
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