Bullet Velocity and Borderlands’ Best Weapons

On my first playthrough I was Roland and I used a Combat Rifles as my main weapon. I wasn’t close to finding any of Borderlands’ best weapons yet, but I remember being amazed when I found a blue AR Stomper with 220 damage. It was about twice as much damage as any Combat Rifle I’d come across and I ended up keeping it for a long time. It fired 3 shot bursts and if I could make all 3 criticals, the target would usually either stumble or just give up. One thing about it seemed odd though – it was often really hard to triple hit things that were far away. I just shrugged it off and assumed I’d just been lucky before…but it turned out I was missing a key piece of info about the Stomper: its slow bullet velocity. With a Stomper you trade bullet velocity for super high damage. Not a bad trade-off but a trade-off nonetheless, and if I knew about it I probably wouldn’t have used it as my primary weapon for so long.
Bullet velocity isn’t mentioned anywhere in the game, but if you’re trying to figure out what Borderlands’ best weapons are for a given situation, bullet velocity is a key factor; it’s often the difference between landing a long shot and throwing an air ball. There are a few mentions of it in the wikia but it’s pretty sketchy. For reference, here’s a list of values pulled out of the editor for reference (thanks to Maxxfury for info and pointing me to this post by L3VIATH4N):

Alright, here’re the properties in DefaultBullet>LightProjectile>Speed for each weapon class:

Assault Shotgun: 20,000.0
Combat Rifle: 22,500.0
Combat Shotgun: 20,000.0
Grenade Launcher: 2,000.0
Patrol SMG: 13,000.0
Repeater Pistol: 15,000.0
Revolver Pistol: 25,000.0
Rocket Launcher: 3,000.0
Scorpio Turret: 8,000.0
Sniper Rifle: 30,000.0
Semi-Auto Sniper Rifle: 30,000.0
Eridian Ballblaster(?): 3,000.0
Eridian Cannon: 1,200.0
Eridian Thunderstorm: 8,000.0
Eridian Lightning: 80,000.0!
Mercurial Blaster(?): 800.0

For me, the first surprise in that list is that repeaters have slightly faster bullets than SMGs. Second – shotguns are faster than both! Snipers are the fastest of course, and then there’s the Eridian Lightning- practically instant hit. Revolvers are not far behind Snipers. Combat rifles are pretty fast, which makes sense given their effectiveness at midrange sniping. The above is not a comprehensive list, but it’s the best I’ve come across.

Bullet Velocity Exceptions among Borderlands’ Best Weapons

There are other special cases [like the Stomper] that should also be mentioned (listed from slowest to fastest, guessing here):

• ‘Cold’ Stalker (a Stalker with the Cold accessory)
• Tsunami
• normal Stalker/’Cold’ machine pistol
• Stomper (about as fast as the scorpio turret maybe?)
• ‘Twisted’ SMG
• the twisty Serpens procs
• Madjack
• Cyclops/Bessie (super fast)

That about does it. One other thing: everything on the list up to Madjack is going to seem kind of slow and the Cyclops/Bessie bullets are going to seem REALLY FAST.

When Bullet Velocity Matters

Obviously, the farther away your target, the more bullet velocity matters. With a Cyclops or a Bessie you can pretty much point and shoot from a snipers’ distance, whereas with an SMG you’ll really have to lead the target. However, when sniping from a peak in Road’s End, even a Cyclops will have to lead a fast moving target like a Cheta Paw. At such EXTREME distances only the Eridian Lightning might not notice. Finally, for Crawmerax, bullet velocity is a big help in precison-nailing crit spots from across the plateau, and it’s another reason why I feel that revolvers are the best overall option for lobster control.

Tags: Borderlands Best Weapons, borderlands bullet velocity, borderlands cyclops, borderlands eridian lightning, borderlands fastest bullets, borderlands slow bullets, borderlands stalker, borderlands stomper