Borderlands 3 weapon types

There are a few main Borderlands 3 weapon types. The main weapon types are: pistols, SMG's, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers. Red text allows for wild variations of some of these guns such as lasers.

Pistols

In Borderlands 3, pistols are versatile weapons that usually have low magazine size, medium to high damage per shot, and high fire rate. Not all pistols are created equal however, there are a lot of variants of the pistol that can make them not feel like an ordinary pistol.

SMG's

The SMG's in Borderlands 3 are pretty standard. High fire rate, low damage per bullet, big magazines, and so on. Red text can make some SMG's feel like different categories on weapons, but other than that they're pretty standard usually.

Shotguns

Many of the Borderlands 3 shotguns are powerful weapons, especially in the end game. There are some red text shotguns that break the downfalls of shotguns, such as low fire rate, and make them behemoths when it comes to DPS. Most standard shotguns in Borderlands 3 usually give high damage per shot, slow fire rate, low magazine size. Once players start getting legendary shotguns however, that starts changing.

Assault Rifles

The assault rifles in Borderlands 3 are pretty standard and versatile. They can vary wildly in their stats, and are almost always good all around weapons to use. They're often easy to use and master, and offer a fair amount of damage per second and accuracy at all ranges.

Sniper Rifles

Most sniper rifles in Borderlands 3 offer high single target damage at the cost of low magazine size and low fire rate. There are some exceptions to this sniper stat formula however. Late game there aren't many sniper rifles that can compete with their competing weapon types; however, all the way to max level the sniper rifle can be a powerful tool for an accurate player who can hit the headshots.

Rocket Launchers

The rocket launchers of Borderlands 3 give players some pretty powerful burst damage. With the right class skills, class mods, and artifacts, these weapons can give players an immense amount of burst damage that can hit a large area killing multiple enemies all at once.