Best ARC Raiders Weapons in 2026: Tier List

Most ARC Raiders tier lists you’ll find are running a patch or two behind. Plenty of them still rank against 1.33 or earlier, and the game has moved through 1.26, 1.29, 1.33, 1.36, 1.39, 1.42, 1.45 and now Frozen Trail (2.0) since April. More importantly, almost all of them rank weapons while ignoring the change that actually reshaped what’s worth carrying: rarity now decides how long your gun lasts. Here’s the tier list current to Frozen Trail, and the durability maths you should be building around.

First: rarity stopped being cosmetic

The Riven Tides update (1.26.0, 28 April 2026) reworked durability, and it’s the most consequential thing to happen to ARC Raiders loadouts this year:

• Durability loss now scales by rarity. A legendary takes roughly 85% less durability damage per shot than a common.
• Average durability on a spawned weapon dropped from 50 to 30.
• Knockdown durability loss was halved, from 30% to 15%.
• Upgrading at the Workshop restores 25% of max durability on top of the upgrade itself.

Read those together and the conclusion is uncomfortable for tier lists: a legendary of an A-tier weapon will often serve you better than a common of an S-tier one, because it survives raids the common doesn’t. Tier ranks the gun. Rarity ranks how many times you get to use it.

The practical rule this produces: bring commons to raids you expect to lose, and legendaries to raids you intend to extract from. Contesting a hot drop with your best gun is now a materially worse idea than it was in March.

What Frozen Trail changed

Frozen Trail (2.0, 8 October 2026) is the biggest update since launch, but most of it is a new map, new enemies and new gadgets. For weapons:

• The Anvil moved from uncommon (green) to rare (blue). Embark says it was outperforming weapons at and above its rarity, and that its power is unchanged. It also lost its Tech Mod slot (the Anvil Splitter is now an upgrade for the Amplified Anvil), and Tian Wen no longer sells it: it’s now in the weekly Nomadic Envoys rotation.
• Jupiter: a bug that applied its damage twice to ARC parts behind the target is fixed. Embark says that makes it stronger against armour and slightly weaker against weak spots, but didn’t publish figures.
• Explosive damage against ARC was reworked. Weapons like the Hullcracker do over 50% more damage to armour plates and around 30% less to fragile parts.
• Two new weapons. The Bantam is a heavy-ammo snub-nosed revolver with a hip-fire ability, and takes over the Anvil’s old role as the uncommon hand cannon. The Stiletto is a light-ammo battle rifle, cheap to craft, pitched as an early-game alternative to the Renegade.
• Amplified Weapons. A late-game upgrade path at the Outpost’s new Research Workstation, rolling out to 15 weapons. Embark’s examples include a fully automatic Burletta, a Renegade with a scope and a Rattler with incendiary rounds and a 64-round drum.

Embark hasn’t published stats for the Bantam, the Stiletto or the Jupiter change, or the full list of Amplified weapons, so none of it moves a tier yet. This list will move once there are figures.

Before Frozen Trail, the three live updates since 1.36 left the tiers alone too: 1.39.0 (28 July) fixed inconsistent damage on the Seeker and Wolfpack grenades, 1.42.0 (18 August) made the Photoelectric Cloak work against Turbine lightning and Matriarch missiles, and 1.45.0 (8 September) reduced weapon sway on the Aphelion without published figures.

S tier — current to Frozen Trail

Anvil. The closest thing to a consensus best weapon in the game. Enormous single-shot damage and strong armour penetration, and it works in PvP and PvE alike, which almost nothing else here does. Worth noting that not every community tier list agrees — a few rank it a tier lower on the grounds that it punishes missed shots harder than anything else in the roster. That’s a fair criticism and an accuracy question, not a power question. Since Frozen Trail it’s a rare (blue) weapon rather than uncommon, so by the rarity logic above it wears more slowly but costs more to lose, and you can no longer simply buy one from Tian Wen.

Bettina. The biggest mover of the year. Riven Tides raised its base damage from 14 to 16, increased damage against ARC armour by 33%, cut per-shot dispersion by roughly 40% and improved dispersion recovery by 30%. Update 1.29.0 then raised its fire rate from 235 to 250. That’s a lot of buffs in one direction — it went A-tier to S-tier and is now both the best general-purpose AR and the correct answer for boss fights.

Renegade. The battle rifle that punishes anyone caught crossing open ground between points of interest. Consistent, and the least demanding of the S-tier picks.

Dolabra. Energy shotgun. Ends close-quarters fights and interiors decisively.

Venator. A hand cannon with similar logic to the Anvil, and slightly more forgiving.

Vulcano. Semi-auto shotgun, and the pick if the Dolabra’s handling doesn’t suit you.

A tier — and often the right call anyway

Given the durability rework, this tier deserves more attention than it usually gets: an A-tier gun you can afford to run at high rarity beats an S-tier one you’re carrying at common.

Ferro. Battle rifle, and the best performance-per-coin weapon in the game. The default for anything you expect to lose.

Jupiter. The sniper option when your squad wants to open fights from outside contact range.

Aphelion, Osprey, Tempest, Bobcat. All entirely usable. None are the reason you lost a raid.

Stitcher. SMG, and the other half of the budget bracket alongside the Ferro. Cheap, effective in interiors, and expendable by design.

Not yet ranked: Bantam and Stiletto. The two Frozen Trail additions. The Bantam is the new uncommon hand cannon, and the Stiletto is a cheap light-ammo battle rifle, which puts it in the Ferro’s budget territory. Embark hasn’t published their stats, so they go on the list once there are figures to compare.

Building the gun

Two things worth knowing:

• Extended Barrel had its velocity bonus raised from 25% to 30% in 1.29.0, which makes it a stronger pick on the Renegade and Ferro than it used to be.
• Upgrading is now partly a repair. Since Workshop upgrades restore 25% of max durability, upgrading a weapon you already like is more efficient than it looks on paper — you’re buying stats and raid-time in the same transaction.

Loadouts that work

• All-purpose: Bettina + Anvil. Covers ARC, players, and the awkward middle distances where most raids are decided. Now that the Anvil is rare and out of Tian Wen’s shop, it’s a bigger loss when it goes down with you.
• Contest / expendable: Ferro + Stitcher, both common. Built to be lost without it mattering.
• Boss runs: Bettina, as high a rarity as you can field. The 33% ARC armour damage increase is the reason.
• Long-range squad: Jupiter + Renegade, with a shotgun on the third raider for when it inevitably closes.

The part no tier list covers

Here’s what’s actually ending most of your raids: it isn’t your gun. It’s getting third-partied at an extraction, or a squad that scatters when contact starts, or nobody carrying the loot that mattered. ARC Raiders is a trio game with an economy attached, and a coordinated three with B-tier guns beats three strangers holding Anvils more or less every time.

Random fill won’t teach you that, because random fill dissolves the moment the raid ends. What fixes it is running with the same two people often enough that the callouts get short and someone always has the revive.

That’s what PaxJax is for:

• Filter ARC Raiders players by region and playstyle — contest-heavy or quiet extraction runs
• See who’s online and looking right now, and send an Invite to Play
• Save a standing trio with a Looking-for-Team profile, so your squad reassembles for the next descent
• Keep the raiders worth keeping instead of losing them to your friends list

Find Your ARC Raiders Squad

Keep it in perspective

Learn one primary properly rather than chasing every patch. The durability rework means the most valuable habit right now isn’t gun selection at all — it’s matching the rarity you bring to the risk you’re taking. Run cheap when you’re contesting, run legendary when you plan to walk out, and put your energy into a trio that extracts together.

Want raiders who cover the extraction? Find ARC Raiders players & squads on PaxJax →