Apex Legends Weapon Tier List: Best Guns After Cipher

Apex Legends Season 31: Cipher landed on November 3 and rewired the gun meta from the ground up. Respawn didn't just add a weapon — it handed the Wingman a second barrel, pulled the Hemlok Burst AR back out of retirement, and took a scalpel to the Prowler after a season of it dominating almost every engagement range. If you haven't touched your loadout since launch week, half of what used to work is now a trap.

This is an opinion ranking built entirely from Respawn's own Season 31 Designer's Notes and the official Cipher patch notes, cross-checked against the follow-up hotfixes through November 10. No invented numbers, no guessed time-to-kill math — just what the developer actually shipped and what that means for your drop.

Here's where every weapon that moved lands, S through D, plus the mainstays Respawn left untouched.

01What Changed in Season 31: Cipher

Cipher's headline weapon change is the Akimbo Wingman: loot a second one and you automatically dual-wield, trading the single Wingman's one-shot headshot threat for sustained, burst-fire pressure at close and mid range. To make room for it, Respawn moved the Wingman off Sniper Ammo entirely — it now runs on Heavy Ammo and takes Heavy Magazines, which changes what you should be picking up for it from the very first drop.

The season also brought back the Hemlok Burst AR after a stretch on the shelf, added an Akimbo Mozambique to the Care Package rotation, and buffed the Peacekeeper's fire rate. On the nerf side, the Prowler Burst PDW lost its Selectfire Hop-Up and got noticeably harder to control, the L-STAR EMG was cut down hard on floor loot, and the Nemesis Burst AR picked up extra vertical recoil. You can read the full Cipher patch notes for every attachment and Hop-Up swap, but the rankings below focus on what actually moves the needle in a fight.

Loot has shifted too. New Stronghold structures now airdrop near mid-game alongside Care Packages, and capturing one rewards a mix of rare loot and Care Package-tier guns — which means fights over map control matter more for weapon upgrades than they did last season. Two Care Packages still drop as Round 1 closes, but Round 2's closing drop now splits between a single Care Package and a Stronghold, so squads that skip the fight for the structure are leaving a guaranteed weapon upgrade on the table.

02S-Tier: Akimbo Wingman and Peacekeeper

The Akimbo Wingman is the clear standout of the patch. Doubling the magazine and adding a quick one-after-the-other burst when you pull the trigger gives it far more forgiving close-range output than the single pistol ever had, even with its base damage trimmed from 50 to 45 and its akimbo headshot multiplier knocked down to 1.25x. The catch is ammo: it now eats Heavy Magazines and spawns at Heavy Ammo Arsenals instead of Sniper Ammo ones, so you need to loot differently to keep it fed once you find a second copy.

The Peacekeeper earns its S-tier spot for a quieter reason: Respawn raised its base rate of fire and made Shotgun Bolt attachments improve both rechamber speed and fire rate together, instead of just one or the other. That stacks cleanly with a shotgun that was already a top pick, and it didn't cost the gun anything in return.

03A-Tier: Hemlok Burst AR and Akimbo Mozambique

The Hemlok Burst AR returns to the floor as a burst-and-single-fire rifle, with its Elite automatic and Breach Charge variants retired for this rotation and its integrated silencer removed. Burst weapons across the board, including the Hemlok, the Prowler and the Nemesis, now support tap-fire queuing, so holding the trigger through consecutive bursts feels far less sluggish than it used to. That alone makes the Hemlok a legitimate mid-range pick again, not just a novelty.

The Akimbo Mozambique joining the Care Package rotation is a sleeper pick. Per-pellet damage is up from 17 to 18, it carries a tightened blast pattern, and its new Executioner Hop-Up heals 15 shields per second on hit — a real sustain tool in close-quarters fights, even with a slower reload than the standard Mozambique.

04C-Tier and Below: Prowler, L-STAR and Nemesis Take the Hit

Respawn was explicit about why the Prowler Burst PDW got nerfed: it was out-competing both SMGs and ARs at ranges it had no business winning at. The fix is a straightforward recoil increase and the removal of its Selectfire Hop-Up, which together push it back toward a close-range-only weapon instead of the do-everything pick it had become. It still kills fast up close; it just can't bail you out at distance anymore, which is enough to drop it out of the top tier.

The L-STAR EMG took the heaviest hit on paper. Base damage falls from 21 to 19, it overheats after 22 shots instead of 28, its stockpile size is more than halved, and the Redline Hop-Up that used to extend its sustained fire is gone entirely. It's floor loot again rather than a Care Package weapon, and the numbers reflect that demotion — treat it as an emergency pickup, not a plan.

The Nemesis Burst AR only lost vertical recoil control, which sounds minor next to the Prowler and L-STAR changes, but it's enough to push the gun from a top-tier laser back into the solidly average pack. It still rewards good recoil control; it just doesn't forgive bad control the way it did before Cipher.

05Attachment Changes Worth Knowing

A few attachment swaps matter more than their short patch-note entries suggest. The EVA-8 Auto lost its Double Tap Trigger entirely and picked up Disruptor Rounds as a locked Hop-Up, unlockable for 375 points — a straight trade of burst-fire potential for shield-shredding damage that changes how the gun should be played at close range. On the sniper side, the Rapid Sniper Stock's rate-of-fire bonus was trimmed from 1.2x down to 1.1x across the board on the G7 Scout, Longbow DMR and Triple Take, a small but deliberate tap on the brakes for marksman weapons that were firing a little too fast for their damage class.

None of these changes are large enough on their own to move a weapon between tiers, but they're worth knowing before you spend points unlocking a Hop-Up that no longer does what it used to.

06Holding Steady: Guns the Patch Didn't Touch

Cipher's patch notes don't mention the R-301 Carbine, the Flatline, the Spitfire or the R-99, and that silence is worth noting on its own. With the Prowler reined in, expect lobbies to lean back on these untouched all-rounders as the safe, flexible picks they've always been while the new weapons settle into the meta. None of them got better this patch — they just got relatively stronger by comparison, since the one SMG that was consistently out-pacing them just got slower to use well.

The same logic applies to Legend picks built around aggressive drone and ability uptime. Crypto, Lifeline and Revenant all received tactical and ultimate cooldown reductions this season — Crypto's drone now runs on a rechargeable battery instead of a cooldown, Lifeline's Tactical dropped from a 25-second to a 15-second cooldown, and Revenant's Tactical and Ultimate both got faster. None of that changes a gun's place in this ranking directly, but it does mean you'll see more ability usage per fight, which favors weapons like the Peacekeeper and Akimbo Wingman that reward quick, decisive engagements over sustained spray.

07How to Loot the New Meta

Knowing the tier list doesn't help if you don't know where to find any of it. Here's a practical loot order for your first few drops under Cipher, built around the ammo and attachment changes above.

Early Loot Priorities for the Cipher Meta

1. 1Loot Heavy Ammo Arsenals first if you want a second Wingman — the akimbo pickup needs Heavy Magazines, not the Sniper Mags it used before Cipher.Early game
2. 2When a Stronghold and a Care Package land close together, contest the Stronghold — it drops a Care Package weapon plus gold guns and amps once captured.Mid-game
3. 3Its Executioner Hop-Up heals 15 shields per second, making it a strong sustain pick inside buildings and close corners.Care Package rounds
4. 4The Hop-Up that made the L-STAR's sustained fire viable is gone — don't waste time looking for it.Any loot phase
5. 5With Selectfire removed and recoil increased, treat the Prowler as a close-range-only weapon and pair it with a longer-range backup.Loadout swap
6. 6Its burst-and-single-fire pattern now supports tap-fire queuing, so it rewards a different trigger rhythm than before — get a feel for it in a safe pocket of the map.First engagement

08Final Word: This Ranking Will Move

Every tier list built off day-one patch notes is a snapshot, not a verdict. Respawn has already hotfixed Crypto twice since Cipher launched on November 3, and weapon balance tends to get the same treatment once enough ranked data comes in. Treat S-tier as "loot this first," not "this is permanent," and expect at least one more pass before Season 31 wraps.

Respawn's Cipher Gameplay Trailer, posted October 29 ahead of the November 3 season launch.