Call of Duty: Black Ops Weapons Breakdown - Which is the best?

Call of Duty fanatic, Den Kirson, has released a detailed spec sheet for all of the weapons for Call of Duty: Black Ops. Kirson maps out each weapons’ statistics based on the code found within the game to give an accurate picture of each weapons’ pros and cons. What he found was quite startling. To find out which weapons are best for your play style check out his chart below.

Here is Kirson’s weapons stat chart. He has been compiling stats of this sorts for many big name shooters including: Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Medal of Honor, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and more, so he’s had his practice with this sort of thing and can be trusted as an accurate source of information.

Call of Duty forum poster Brodersen has analyzed the data and came to some startling conclusions. Here are his findings:

That’s laz[y] ass work right there Treyarch.
Look at this crap!
How someone was allowed to do such a **** job on a blockbuster game like CoD is beyond me.

It’s remarkable how once again, someone was hired to sit down and make up fake in-game weapon statistice that clearly doesn’t resemble what Treyarch wrote in the game code. How stupid do they think we are? So casual/new players will look at these in-game stats, trying to make out the differences of the weapons, not knowing that they are faked.

A few staggering notices in this chart:

Of the SMG’s, the Mac 11, UZI, PM63, MPL, Spectre and Kiparis ALL GOT THE EXACT SAME DAMAGE AND RATE OF FIRE. Just wow, speaking of copy/pasting!
The Spectra appears to be the best here, with 30 mag clip (some have only 20), and low recoil. All the other ones could just as well be removed from the game as they suit no purpose.

The Skorpion is unique (YEAH weapon differences FTW!), it has very low recoil and is the only SMG that can 2 hit kill. HOWEVER, the range at which it can do that is almost melee lunge range, making that benefit almost useless. Outside melee range it requires 5 hits to kill and with lower rate of fire than the previous mentioned SMG’s, makes it basically a piece of crap. Plus it has only a 20 round magazin.

The MP5 and AK74u in constast to the other SMG’s mentioned, also has a slightly lower rate of fire. HOWEVER it do 40 damage instead of 30 max damage at the same range, making them 3 hit kills. What sets the two apart however is that the AK74u simply is better in every way. It has less recoil, which already there makes the MP5 a weapon to ignore and no reason to have it in the game, it suits no purpose that the AK74u doesn’t do better.

And now the fun part: Behold, the AK74u has a Grip Attachment, making it very very precise. So precise actually that you can put a Grip AND Rapid fire on it and still be very precise. It makes all the other SMG’s pointless and useful only to idiots who havent read this or like their looks/sound.

Of the Assault Rifles, to make things short, and for mostly the same overservations as above, the FAMAS is the best full auto AR (AUG is close, but worse recoil, otherwise again exactly the same copy/paste stats). Remarkable is it that Treyarch decided to give the FAMAS the same high Rate of Fire, as the highest RoF SMG’s in the game. And with it’s low recoil the other full auto assault rifles could just as well be removed from the game as they suit no porpose or benefits and only seems balanced to idiots that likes their looks/sound and havent read this.
The FAMAS fires so fast and has so manageable recoil, that it could just as well be used as an SMG. Give it Steady Aim and extended mags, and you have possibly the best QCQ weapon in the game. Woudl you belive it, the FAMAS!

But lets quickly move on to the burst firing AR. The G11 here is BY FAR the best burst weapon, usually doing 1HK’s with it’s super precise laser beam.. Fun thing here is that Treyarch lowered this assault rifles max damage from 40 like the others, to just 35. What this means is…nothing. It’s still 3 hit kill (3 rounds in a burst). Only reason to have some weapons do 35 dam, and others do 40 dam, is if you have Stopping Power in the game, since that would make 40 dam do 56 dam (2 hit kill as players has 100hp), but 35 dam would become just 39 dam, still requiring 3 hits to kill regardless of Stopping Power. This was one of the key factors that made the UMP in MW2 so good, as it didnt rely on SP as much as other weapons.

Shotguns = useless.

LMG’s the Stoner 63 is best, though anyone really care? The FAMAS does the same damage (also 3 hit kill) (except at veeery long range), fires just as fast, has same magazin size, but you run faster, ADS faster, reload faster, dont have to equip grip (free’s up attachment which could be used on better sight, extended mags or faster reload with double mag or whatever. No reason to use the LMG’s in this game, they could just as well be removed. In MW2, they had uses and could spray death to an area or hallway for sustained periods of time due to large mag sizes.

Snipers, well overall useless. When you spot someone far away you will have to zoom in and wait up to 3-4 seconds before you are 100% sure that you’ll hit where the crosshair is. In all that time, the enemy can easily aim at you and fire precision shots within a second, at your head sticking out. Yes, thats right! Treyarch implemented a new feature that makes the snipers not hit where the crosshair is (until you wait long enough before firing).

Also noticeable, is that ALL SNIPERS, nomatter if you shoot them in the face CAN NOT KILL IN ONE SHOT WITH A SILENCER. There goes that playstyle.
With that said, what Sniper is the best. OMG here we actually have a CHOICE (meaning one is not obviously best). The L96A1 is the best at doung 1 hit kills, as it can kill with hits everywhere except the legs and lower arms. However it has only 5 rounds per mag and total 20 bullets before you have to find a new weapon. This makes the Dragunov and WA2000 preferable, as they have 40 rounds total ammunition to start with. The Dragunov has 10 round mags and the WA2000 has 6 round mag but also, and more importantly, the best recoil of all Snipers for firing second shots.
The PSG-1 even though some think it looks cool and it’s the last one you unlock, is a piece of crap, and could just as well be removed from the game.
It has all the worst things from the others, only 20 rounds total, only a 5 round mag size, more recoil than the Dragunov and WA2000. But then it has something special to take notice of. On the lower body hit zone the Dragunov and WA2000 has a 1.0 damage multiplier, meaning they do only 1.0×70 damage, not enough to kill in one shot. However the PSG-1 instead has a 1.1 damage multiplier. Fun fact though, this makes absolutely no difference, as it still requires 2 hits to kill. But if Stopping Power was still in the game, it would actually just make a difference (why some snipers in MW2 had 1.1 multipliers!).

Funny how 3 of the snipers show different damage stats in-game, but in reality they have EXACTLY the same damage, which is 1 hit kill from the upper chest and head, otherwise 2 hit kills. Imagine how people not reading this are going to experiement with the weapons using the faked in-game stats to figure out what makes the weapons different.

Oh and I just noticed, almost all AR’s and SMG’s have either 750 RPM or 937,5 RPM, probably because most was just copy/pasted, and nobody cared about giving them different fire rates to make them more distinct/feel different to each other. In MW2 the SMG’s was unique by their high rate of fire but low range. In Black Ops the FAMAS is shooting at 937,5 RPM same as the highest RPM SMG’s in the game, how sad.

Pistols. No reason to go through them, as they are all crap and something you will want to replace ASAP. The Python seems like the best though. Fun fact here. The 1911 is a copy/paste from the Makarov, but the fake in-game stats again shows something different.

Nuf said. I dont think Treyarch will make the weapons unique to each other as they where in MW2. It is obvious that they did not have balance testers before this game was launched (or didn’t listen to them). It is also obvious that they care little for this, and are indeed not big CoD fans as many of us here complaining on this forum. Anyone with pasion to the CoD franchise would have been able to do a better job on these numbers, with just 1 day of work. Hell even I could do that. Only a week after launch, this game is already filled with only AK74u and FAMAS users (because G11 is unlocked late). It makes the battlefield seem boring.
BO is a downgrade to at least MW2 (minus UMP) in regards to weapon strategies, making the weapon system in this game seem flat and boring (no wonder, when most weapons have been copy/pasted). Only good thing worth mentioning is the visual customization, though purely aesthetics.

Multiplayer, the most important aspect of the game, and they didn’t even care to use more than what seems like half a day of work for one guy to fill in some interesting and well thought out numbers to make all the weapons unique and balanced.

Why did I write this? Because I know how much better, more interesting and creative this games multiplayer could be.
And because I’m shocked at how such a game, in such a famouse franchise, know most for it’s multiplayer experience, a multimillion project, and yet we see a final product where the time spend on how the weapons behave, seems like something that was calculated and decided during a quick lunch break.

How do you guys feel about all of this? The facts are pretty clear that Treyarch didn’t differentiate the majority of the weapons in Black Ops. Should they have?