The best Halo Infinite weapons

BR75 "Battle Rifle"

With precision bursts and the ability to skirmish at any range, the Battle Rifle is still the king of Halo. But with Infinite's faster movement and other weapons stepping up for more specialised roles, it doesn't quite dominate the meta as severely as previous games—and the game is healthier for it.

That said, there's a reason the Halo community has converged on this burst-fire killer. It's a 3-burst kill and accurate at all ranges. Most maps have at least one lying around, and you'll want to lock it down as soon as possible. 

M41 SPNKR "Rocket Launcher"

The good ol' fashioned Rocket Launcher is the ultimate choice for when you just want to erase someone from the match entirely. Sure, it reloads slowly and only sports 4 shots, but it's a one-hit-kill so long as you land your shot on roughly the same continent as your target. 

The one downside? Having to listen to your personal AI call it a "Spanker".

MA40 Assault Rifle

Yes, you heard right—the humble starting Assault Rifle is great, actually. With the loss of Halo 3's SMGs and the classic shotgun, the AR is one of your best options for close-range engagements, and it can punish effectively enough at medium distances. In Ranked play with BR starts, it's well worth picking one of these up as a secondary option.

Energy Sword

Incredible in Arena, practically useless in Big Team Battle, the iconic Energy Sword benefits massively from the lack of a classic shotgun to counter its lunges. Getting caught out of range is a death sentence with this thing, so use grappling hooks, active camo, sprinting or good old fashioned sneaking to close distance before you start slicing and dicing.

Gravity Hammer

The hammer suffers from being even more unweildy to use than the sword, with a hefty wind-up and no lunge. But when it hits, it hits hard, and a single swing of this thing can wipe out an entire team if they're foolish enough to stand together. 

Pair with the grappling hook and start your swing mid-air for maximum carnage.

S7 Sniper

The venerable Halo Sniper feels a little unweildy this time around which, combined with the faster pace of Infinite's movement, makes it a little harder to hit shots. But if you're confident in your aim, this thing will tear through skulls like nothing else.

Mangler

A heavy pistol with dramatic falloff, the Mangler can prod well enough at medium ranges. But with all Banished weapons sharing increased melee damage combined with the fast smacking speed of a Sidekick, the Mangler is brutal in close range. 

Give 'em the old 1-2-punch with a shot to the chest and a smack to the head for a quick kill.

MK50 Sidekick

A worthy sidearm for any Spartan, the Sidekick is a great mid-range option to have on spawn. You'll want to trade up to a Battle Rifle as soon as you can, but deciding whether to ditch the AR or the Sidekick is a tough call you'll have to make based on what the situation demands.

Shock Rifle

The weirder, more electrifying Battle Rifle, the Shock Rifle fires a straight lightning bolt that ticks three times. Get all three ticks on a head, and it's a one-hit-kill. It lacks the reliability of the BR, but the Shock Rifle also has the nifty side-effect of disabling vehicles in two shots and its electric will occasionally arc between players.

If you're a galaxy-brain player, you can even use the arcing electricity in combination with dropped weapons or equipment to hit targets around corners.

Skewer

Unweildy in Arena, essential in Big Team Battle, the Skewer is a slow-firing, slow-to-reload beast that punts a railroad spike across the map at high speed. It's a one-hit-kill against Spartans, but the difficulty of landing a shot plus the slow reload speed make it a hinderance in close-quarters.

The Skewer shines as an anti-vehicle weapon, and a single shot will demolish a Ghost, Wasp or Mongoose, and even heavily damage Scorpion tanks.

Heatwave

A better shotgun than the actual shotgun, the heatwave's gimmick is the ability to toggle between horizontal and vertical spread patterns. The vertical spread will deal far more damage per-hit, but a sneaky horizontal shot might catch out a low-health opponent. Use the Heatwave's richocheting shots to catch out baddies behind corners.

CQS48 Bulldog

The classic shotgun has been replaced with a fast-firing auto-shotty more akin to Apex Legends' EVA-8 than the traditional Halo boomstick. It'll kill with 2-3 shots in close range, but don't rely on it stopping a lunging sword user in a pinch.

Stalker Rifle

A solid mid-to-long range marksman like the BR75 and Shock Rifle, the Stalker unfortunately lacks the reliability of the former or the utility and one-hit potential of the latter. It can zoom in further than either, making it an effective prodding tool in BTB, but otherwise the Stalker fails to stand out amongst its peers.

Sentinel Beam

A straight-up laser beam that overheats quickly and doesn't quite do as much damage as you'd like, the Sentinel Beam is nevertheless great for tracking and punishing foes at mid-ranges. Watch out for your energy draining a little faster than you might expect.

Disruptor

A truly bizarre pistol, the Disruptor shares the Shock Rifle's electrical rounds, disabling vehicles and dealing damage over time against unshielded foes. But it simply doesn't pack enough of a punch to win most straight-up fights.

Plasma Pistol

Tragically, the Plasma Pistol's utility as a quick way to disable vehicles has been given over to the Disruptor and Shock Rifle. That said, the lowly alien blaster's charged shots are still the fastest way to disable enemy shields—just make sure you have a Sidekick or BR75 on hand to follow up with a headshot.

Hydra

For a rapid-fire rocket launcher, the Hydra doesn't quite do enough damage per-shot to feel great against Spartans. That said, its secondary fire lets it fire weaker homing shots that are best served to smack Wasps out of the sky on Big Team Battle matches.

Needler

Maybe one of the best Needlers in Halo history, Infinite's shard-spitter fires fast, tracks well, and still bursts foes after a dozen or so hits. Nevertheless, it's hard-countered by the sheer speed at which Infinite's Spartans can whip themselves around the map.

Scorchshot

The Scorchshot is a weapon that dares to ask: what if the Hydra was much, much harder to use? It'll deal more damage on hit and sports a more punishing blast radius, but those bouncing rounds can be a nightmare to land, and the fly-by-wire secondary mode doesn't feel as useful as it should.

Give it your time and learn its quirks, however, and this thing can be a beast. 

Ravager

The Ravager should be a beast, a rapid-fire grenade launcher with a charge shot that lays down a sizeable pool of burning plasma. Unfortunately the Ravager was hit hard by nerfs after the tech tests, and in the current game it simply doesn't punch hard enough to justify its slow fire rate.

VK78 Commando

I want to love the Commando. Its audio packs a punch, and the gun fills an interesting role between the Assault and Battle Rifles at slightly longer ranges. But after the first flight 343 nerfed this thing hard, upping it to 8 shots to kill on a fully shielded opponent with a recoil that's harder to control than anything else in the game.

Its shots may sound beefy, but give this one a miss.

Pulse Carbine

On paper, I love the Pulse Carbine as a weirder alien analogue to the Battle Rifle, a more interesting weapon than Halo 3's Covenant Carbine by far with burst-fire plasma rounds that track targets. 

In practice, however, it just doesn't pack the punch it needs. Like the Commando, the Pulse Carbine was hit hard with downgrades following the tech tests, with shots now doing less damage per-hit and no longer tracking foes as efficiently. Shots rarely hit at any range, and deal minimal impact when they do.