Are you enjoying Battlefield V so far? At this point in the game, you might be wondering which weapons to use in your daily play sessions in DICE’s latest shooter. Most of the time, it boils down to preference, and if it suits your play style. But there’s also another basis that most people use — and that’s time-to-kill (TTK).

In a super detailed post by Reddit user kht120, he measures the time-to-kill of each weapon for each class, and gives a recommendation and why it’s considered the “best” for now.

This measures the time to kill of every gun in the BFV in frames (assuming 60Hz, one frame = 16.66ms), using 100,000 samples of 15 round bursts across a variety of ranges. If a gun does not have 15 rounds in the magazine, it assumes a burst length equal to magazine size.

How to read the charts, and other notes:

• The hitrater assumes perfect control of vertical recoil, aimed at center mass.
• Each picture has four charts are concatenated into one. The top two charts are for aimed down sights fire, and the bottom two are for hipfire.
• The left two charts measure the gun with full upgrades on the left side of the specialization tree (hipfire upgrades, rapid fire, etc.).
• The right two charts measure the gun with full upgrades on the right side of the specialization tree (ADS accuracy upgrades, etc.).
• Since these charts only show 15 round dumps, you can achieve better TTK than displayed by 5-round bursting (more on this later).
• FTK: Frames to kill. To get TTK (time to kill), just multiply numbers by 16.66. Represented in colors, designated on the right side.
• E[FTK]: Expected frames to kill. A value factoring in average time to kill and the probability of the 15 round burst actually killing the target.
• U[FTK]: Average frames to kill. A value that is the mean of all the instances where the gun actually killed.
• Frequency: The number of times a gun killed, out of 100,000 (100K).

Charts:

Here are the picks as the best Battlefield V weapon for each class:

• Assault: M1907, Turner, G43
• Medic: MP40 (max ADS accuracy), MP28, M1928A1 Thompson, Suomi
• Support: KE7, FG42 (KE7 is the better overall pick), bigmag MG42 for cheesing and bipoding
• Scout: Autoloading 8 (RoF buff), ZH-29

Explanation as to why each gun was chosen is mentioned below, as well as other musings on which weapons to avoid.

Personal thoughts and opinions about BFV guns, based off the Launch:

• Although you can now create up to 8 ‘variants’ with the specialization tree, only left-most and right-most paths are chosen for analysis. Not all 8 specialization paths actually result in guns with different performance, as measured here.
• Semi-autos were made much stronger between the Beta and launch of BFV with RoF buffs for many of them. They’re very worthwhile picks that shouldn’t be underestimated.
• Support guns also got a big buff across the board between the Beta and launch of BFV. They actually have usable hipfire now, and much better ADSed accuracy.
• The Autoloading 8 has a 50m 2BTK, and then drops off to 3 BTK. The left side gives you a RoF upgrade from 180 to 200 RPM. Use this side.
• The Bren got a decent buff between the Beta and launch, and is now usable in hipfire. Still not a worthwhile pick, in my opinion.
• The Erma EMP is still a great SMG that’s very versatile, but its low velocity holds it back a bit. Not a bad pick, but not a top one either. Left side gives you really good hipfire up to 20m. Right side is more consistent in 20+m ADSed fire.
• The FG42 got good buffs. Use this gun.
• The Gewehr 1-5 has a damage model and RoF similar to the AL8 .25 from BF1. The left side of the tree gives you good hipfire. Use this gun, it competes well against SMGs and assault rifles.
• The Gewehr 43 is extremely good now, getting its rate of fire bumped up from 257 in the Beta to 300. DICE basically made the Beta G43’s RoF buff standard. The left side of the tree gives you solid hipfire. Use it, since SLRs have 100% hitrate for a killing burst out to 140m.
• The KE7 is very good now. The left side gives you good hipfire and a RoF upgrade from 568 RPM to 635 RPM, and the right side is basically the ADS-maxed Beta StG. USE THIS GUN, with upgrades from the either side. This is what the StG should’ve been.
• The Lewis Gun is a decently accurate big mag option. Not bad, but not amazing.
• The M1 Carbine isn’t a good weapon unless you’re good with headshots, which turn it into an extremely good weapon. Otherwise just use the Turner. It requires you to consistently click at 450 RPM to make good use of it, and that’s hard for even good PC players to do. It gets much better hipfire now though.
• The M1907 might be one of the best guns in the game. It has the highest RoF and best damage model out of all the assault rifles, but is a bit trickier to use. USE THIS GUN.
• The Thompson is a very good pick. It gives up a little bit of damage output compared to the Suomi for a bit more accuracy. I’d pick it over the Suomi, since it still kills very fast. You have a 900 RPM smallmag or 720 RPM bigmag option. Both are great, but I’d spring for the bigmag option, since you can still kill pretty fast at 720 RPM.
• The MG34 and MG42 are pretty much unusable hipfiring off the bipod. You’re legitimately better off trying to melee your opponent than you are hipfiring them. These stats assuming non-bipod “ADS” hipfire, where your hipfire box tightens like the BF1 Sentry Elite. The MG34 has 670 and 770 RPM options, and the MG42 has 981 and 1200 RPM options, with big and small mags, respectively for the two. I’d go with the big mag options, since you’re more accurate and can cheese people at range. These are best used on the bipod. Spraying is not optimal off the bipod, but can be done.
• At 670 RPM, the MP28 is probably the best all-rounder SMG.
• At 514 RPM, the MP34 is a joke of a submachine gun, and is a great option if you enjoy losing close quarters fights. It’s got great accuracy for ranged use, and you can actually hit people at 100m decently well with single shots or bursts, but at 4-7BTK, you’re hardly melting at range. It’s the best long range SMG in its class, but in my opinion, not versatile enough for actual SMG use.
• At 540 RPM, the MP40 has actual usable CQB DPS, and can still hit people at 100m. Use this instead of the MP34 or Sten.
• At 180 RPM, the RSC is similar to the Autoloading 8, with the same 2BTK range. Since the Autoloading 8 has a RoF upgrade option, I’d rather use that.
• Use the left side upgrade on the 1916. At 225 RPM, it hardly keeps up, so it needs the 257 RPM granted by left side upgrades. You won’t miss the accuracy buffs from the right side until past 140m.
• The Sten is a bad MP40. See above. The lower vertical recoil and slower vertical recoil acceleration make it an easier pick for new players, but the MP40 does everything better.
• The Sturmgewehr 1-5 and StG-44 were hit hard. Both are okay midrange options, but are pretty much bad weapons now. They were already worse than SMGs up close back when they had a 4BTK minimum, but they now can’t keep up with SMGs or LMGs up close. Give them their 4BTK minimum back, especially now that SMGs have better hipfire and can cleanly beat them. Support LMGs (with bipods) and semi-automatic weapons also cleanly beat these guns at range. RIP StG, these guns just aren’t worth using at all.
• The Suomi is still the best CQB DPS hose in the game. While the MG42 technically out-damages it, it’s harder to do so. Like the Beta, pick between 981 RPM smallmag or 770 RPM bigmag options. I’d rather have the Thompson, which gives up a bit of RoF for better accuracy.
• The Turner is another star of the assault class. Now at 360 RPM standard, it cleanly out-damages the StG-44 and Sturmgewehr 1-5. USE THIS GUN.
• The ZH-29 gets a base RoF buff from 138 RPM in the Beta to 150 RPM, and has the same RoF buff up to 163 RPM. Don’t snipe, use this 2-2 BTK monster instead. Unless you’re Stodeh and can consistently hit heads, there’s no reason to choose a bolt action over the ZH-29 if you want to win.
• The winners of BFV Launch balancing was certainly the semi-automatic weapons, with near-universal RoF buffs, and the Support guns, with solid accuracy and hipfire buffs. The losers were the assault rifles, which aside from the M1907, can’t even attempt to compete with SMGs up close, and SMGs, which no longer have a 4BTK range long enough to consistently kill fast from across a room.
• Weapon balance as a whole is better than Beta, but not significantly. There are still a few duds, and the specialization trees create imbalance issues of their own that I may go into one day.

Note that these are based on launch build stats, and given DICE always tunes its games, there’s bound to be changes on the meta data at some point in the future.

In other Battlefield V news, go check out the list of known issues and bugs with the game to see if DICE knows about any issue you might have with the game. You can also check out the super comprehensive day one patch to know what changes were made.