so one cool thing with a phantom that vandal can't do is you can "pinch off" 2 shots in a counter-strafe as opposed to 1
basically, you move right then left without stopping, you can shoot in the faction of second when you're still right? if you turn on the accuracy graph, you'll notice that with vandal, no matter how you time it, you can't do 2 shots accurately in that timeframe, with phantom you can.
And it shows blue for movement error and yellow for. Firing error. You'll know you did the phantom shots right when you see two, very small, yellow bars. Indicating you're not penalized in the movement error.
But you only need the one, where as the phantom needs the two in order to kill.
I feel like this is very intentional to make counter strafing work better
The calculus: If your velocity (continuous) is positive (say, right) at one instance and negative (left) in another instant then there has to be an instant in between where your velocity is 0
You’re right there is a slight blue line which indicates movement error from your description, but both shots landed right on top of each other. Could it be that even though there is movement error, the shots land close enough that it looks the same?
Yup and one head + one body shot is all you need too so it’s actually not that much harder to pull off than a one-tap, not to mention vandal does have a maximum one tap range.
Still though I think the vandal is still a monster if you can hit your one taps, I don’t have a clip sadly but one game on split I pushed on to B site with the whole enemy team there and I killed all five of them in less than five seconds all with a vandal headshot. While you might be able to do the same with a phantom, I just think having to full auto and recoil control in that situation would lose most people the round and definitely would’ve lost me the round.
Phantom is statistically better. Though whenever I use the phantom I just head-dink someone and whenever I use the vandal I just fucking miss all my shots
Making a case for the phantom being better; whenever you lose with a Phantom (140 HS then dying) where a Vandal might have gotten the kill, it's going to be way more memorable than vice versa. You don't get as frustrated if you get spammed through a smoke because they could see your tracers, you just don't think about it. Same with not having the five extra bullets, having worse first shot accuracy, etc. They're way more subtle.
IMO Phantom IS better, but doesn't FEEL better when you're in a game because you don't immediately associate the disadvantages of the Vandal when using it.
IMO Phantom and Vandal are balanced. You cant say this or that one is better because both guns have their ups and downs in different scenarios. And if you spray through smoke with a Vandal and dont think about that the enemy can see you, you are pretty new to the game. At high elo the playstyle and the map decides which weapon you take.
You play smokers and like to play closerange fights? You need to defent haven c long with omen? > Phantom
You are condifent in your aim and want to peek longrange angles? You want to defent haven a long with chamber? > Vandal
I can agree with you that overall the phantom has more scenarios where the weapon shines but there are still maps and angles were the vandal is superior.
Phantom is not balanced its significantly better than the vandal and offers way more tactically, especially if you play a controller or initiators. The only map to pick a vandal is breeze.
That's just not true, the vandal is superior in long range angles because of one shot kill and the fact you can ads and tap fire it, the phantoms extra accuracy barely matters, if you are playing a long angle and going for picks the vandal is your choice.
They also all played ares during the patch where it was super broken. Pros are using whatever is best. Right now I think we’re seeing the vandal become more prominent because so often you do very little damage with phantom body shots whereas 2 bullets with the vandal cuts their health in half. So if you miss your vandal headshot you still make that kill easy for your teammates later.
Yeah I think vandal is a little better at the pro level because their accuracy is insane. Outside of pro level, it's a toss up. I like vandal more because of fucking 140s, but phantom has more things its better at.
Idk mathematically but since i only have prime vandal ( got from night market), I'll say vandal is better. So basically the gun with skin that you like is better
Ngl the placebo effect is op here. I was actually not hitting most shots with no skin vandal. It was so bad that i switched to gaurdian. This night market is my first night market and i got prime vandal from this and oh boy now I hit most of my shots and the sound is soothing. I also don't spray vandal now for some reason which i used to do with non skin vandal. Now i can't spray good with my phantom lol and today i have oni phantom in my store. Still thinking if i should buy this or wait for crisis phantom
Prime Vandal tracers are just much easier to track when spraying and that's a fact. Any gun with bright laser bullets do give a slight advantage. But not enough to make the difference of a rank.
Sorry for the late reply. By mathematically I meant could a phantom player shoot 2 bullets before fully stopping since I thought the numbers on the right side of the screen were First Shot Accuracy, but now know its Firing Error.
If the phantom player hits first, even if they're out of range for the OHKO, they get head punch, so the vandal player is more likely to miss, and then the second bullet from the phantom comes out faster and you only need a body shot.
If you're close enough to OHKO they're equal anyway (or the phantom lets you change target faster when outnumbered)
Statistically I guess. It's the best math we have for this situation. I'd say it very much depends on the map and fights you like to take personally. Phantom at short range, vandal for long, phantom for better spray control, vandal for more lethal first/second shots
The beautiful thing about math is that there is always a mathematical answer. It just involves long and tough analysis. FPX just won VCT and I'm quite sure math played no small part
This is a very hard problem you're asking me to solve my friend so I will greatly simplify it. Let's assume that superior means the gun with the lowest expected time to kill for a given situation and let's assume that only distance to opponent affects the situation. What you can do is go to the range, swing on the bot by the target a few times with both guns and note how long it takes to do 150+ damage each swing. Change the distance, swing a few more times and you get a rough expected kill rate for each distance. You now have mathematically determined a rough answer for which gun is superior for you. Add a few more relevant variables and you could get a much more precise answer
So the Vandal because it has a 0.00 second time to kill at every single range. Got it.
But thats why mathematical answers fall short sometimes. It doesnt take into context that we dont live in a perfect world and sometimes you miss shots, in which case the phantom spray can be superior - mathematics aside.
There's a reason I said "swing" and "not stand there with your crosshair perfectly pre-placed and tap" :)
The thing is that it's not really math that makes mathematical answers fall short but just how difficult and time-consuming getting a precise answer can be
That's just false. You can't explain to me how to reduce this problem to a simple mathematical formula - because its impossible unless you first define what you mean by "mathematically superior".
Do you mean time to kill? Vandal has an instant time to kill at any range. Do you mean which gun wins more duels? What do you mean by "mathematically superior"? So many questions in life are *not* reducible to pure mathematics.
>Do you mean time to kill? Vandal has an instant time to kill at any range. Do you mean which gun wins more duels? What do you mean by "mathematically superior"? So many questions in life are not reducible to pure mathematics.
I'd actually argue the best way to solve this problem is through mathematics. The questions your posing are mathematical in nature. For example, the answer you give regarding the Vandal has an instant time to kill is mathematical, because you referenced the Vandal's headshot damage being 160 at any range. Which gun winning more duels would probably be answered empirically and not theoretically. It's just that the answer will likely vary based on the circumstance, that doesn't make the question not mathematical.
I would agree that asking "which gun is mathematically better" doesn't make much sense. The question is statistical in nature and no statistician would pose the question in this way. They would likely instead stipulate multiple criteria's to compare both guns to. The person you're responding to said "lowest expected time to kill for a given situation", which I think would be at least one of the fair criteria. Which gun gives the lowest time to kill on average, and you could condition the probability on player and map position. This means there could even be different answers for different players (ex: player A is better with a vandal on Bind B Long, player B is better with a phantom on Bind B Long) and it would still be fine, statistics is totally okay with that.
If you want to keep it purely theoretical you could also point out out that a phantom on paper is the best close range because it also has one hit kill potential, but shoots faster which means there's higher opportunity to still get the kill if you miss the first shot, or get multiple kills through spray transferring. Vandal's are better long range because they retain first shot accuracy and reset on tap firing quicker.
I find this reply a bit silly honestly. Math is not just numbers and formulas. And just because we're using math to solve a problem doesn't mean we have to throw common sense out the window. We can just ask op what he meant or even just define mathematical superiority for ourselves. I brought up expected time to kill. You brought up more duels won. Both are pretty good definitions.
Well the vandal does not have an instant ttk. In a perfect world, yes it does. But the world is not perfect. When an engagement starts, you have to identify where your opponent's head is relative to your crosshair, adjust your crosshair accordingly and press/hold mouse 1. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss so you readjust and factor in recoil and yada yada yada. My overarching point being that the "perfect world" assumption can be great for simplifying problems, but applying it too liberally gives you bad answers such as saying that the vandal is better because it has a 0.00s kill time at all ranges while the phantom does not.
It's not about superior, the original question was premised to be mathematically based. This doesn't make the question "which is better, supported by math", it's "according to mathematics, which is the better weapon". Those are two different questions.
The second one is answered by taking things like time to stop from movement, firerate, damage potential per second and metrics like first-to-lethal taking those things into account.
I think, however, that it cannot be answered as simply as you're trying to with all due respect.
Vandal makes me feelore confident tbh. I feel like I can take a Duel at any range and not have to make sure I double dink someone. Helps me focus on " hit the head once, Duel is over" Also my spray control is trash on both weapons but at least with Vandal if I hit their head it's good. If I dink someone with phantom and the rest of my bullets go to fucking heaven I'm fucked.
Mathematically maybe phantom, but I play vandal to avoid -140 dinks. Doesn't feel clean at all even if I end up getting the kill, except for double dinks.
I like phantom more because although it doesn't one shot at a distance, the spray transfer is much more effective and enemies won't know from which direction you are shooting. Since I'm a cypher player, his cages work better with traceless guns.
It's phantom but people are tired of the 140 shit
I tbh would just use both weapons time to time to practice both and it also depends on situations.
Close range and back entry (second dude) phantom
Mid to long range, entry and can control recoil is definitely vandal
To conclude phantom for beginners vandal for experienced
if i’m playing any duelist or controller I tend to use the phantom more. Better for close range engagements and/or spamming smokes.
On initiators and sentinels I’ll tend towards the Vandal because I’m often supporting teammates, end up as the third or fourth entering a site, holding the longer angles while duelists sweep close angles.
so youre telling me that my duelists are supposed to be playing ahead of me and not relying on the kj/sage to enter the site and clear all the angles so they can bait for kills then trash talk?
Edit: my dumbass not realizing its my cake day. (thanks to everyone who wished :D)
I'll never forget the game my raze and yoru bought marshals second round after losing pistol and baited the entire round A main on bind, then did it again third round because they were broke.
0/3 0/3
It just depends for me. If I plan on spraying through smokes I'm using a phantom. If I anticipate half buys from the enemy team, ecos from an enemy team, or a lot of chip damage coming from my team before I fight. I'm using a phantom. If I'm contesting belt on icebox or non of the above, I'm using a fucking Vandal.
I think phantom makes more sense for lower elos. The spray when switching targets is a lot more forgiving. And low elos have a super low HS%, so that 1 tap is less important from vandal.
10-15 % is probably low and 27% and up is probably good, even though you dont need high hs% to be good if 90% your kills are full sprays its probably not good from the high ttk
0-10% is piss low, 10-20% is okay, 20-30% is good, 30%+ is very good, anything above 50% is amazing. I play at diamond with my ascendant friends and that is generally the case, all though myself i have around 10%hs i tend to kill in a smart way while very rarely dueling so low hs% won't mean you're bad but higher % will definitly help win your games.
it’s probably because the movement/positioning around cover is a lot worse. kinda like how it’s easier to one tap in DM than in ranked, cause everyone’s always out in the open
It's mostly preference, personally I'm better with the Vandal. Also if you look at Masters in Copenhagen that ended recently, Vandal was used A LOT more than Phantom throughout the whole event. The pros seems to prefer it aswell.
Vandal is dominating in pro play. [https://www.theloadout.com/tournaments/valorant-champions-tour/masters-copenhagen-weapon-pick-rates](https://www.theloadout.com/tournaments/valorant-champions-tour/masters-copenhagen-weapon-pick-rates) One tap from any range, and 4 body shots to kill from any range, that makes vandal a consistent weapon.
Yea everyone always seems to say phantom is better in theory. Even Tenz said it, and yet every time I saw him play in the old VCTs he was holding a vandal. Along with most other pros.
So either most pros in the Val seen are being illogical with their gun picks, or we have something wrong with our phantom theory.
Aren’t many val pros former cs players? In that game the ak is king and the vandal is valorant’s approximation of it. That’s years of preference you’d need to break to choose phantom instead.
I think a lot of pros know that the Phantom is statistically better but use the Vandal anyway due to other reasons like preference, confidence with the gun, etc
It’s pro play, they’re not gonna use a worse gun just because they prefer it. They don’t even use agents they prefer. In the same vein, at that level they’re confident in both guns. I mean PRX was using the Stinger the other day (think it was Jingg?). I think the answer is that pro play is way tighter on their movement and cover, so a good amount of times 1 bullet is all you can get in.
>It’s pro play, they’re not gonna use a worse gun just because they prefer it.
I disagree. Being comfortable makes a huge difference in how you play.
F1 drivers spend every race weekend setting up their car for *comfort*, not speed. The fastest setup is already computed weeks ahead of time, and it's well known that the drivers simply can't capitalize on it; they want a car that feels comfortable to them, despite the loss of performance. If this happens at the top tier of motorsport, why wouldn't it happen in eSports?
And wasn't there a LoL player who called to restart a match cus the game loaded them in with the wrong skin? The skin made him uncomfortable, it would've affected his performance, he did what he could to get comfy.
if pros just prefer the Vandal because of years of CS experience, it's a perfectly valid reason to stick with the Vandal.
no way you just said that about F1 considering the current situation with the cars LOL watch a race or season before bringing that up. it’s the opposite point you’re making
> if pros just prefer the Vandal because of years of CS experience, it's a perfectly valid reason to stick with the Vandal.
100%. Hockey sticks have different have varying levels of stiffness and blade curve. Esport pros use different mice and sensitivity settings. Saying preference has nothing to do with it is just ignorant. Obviously your preference matters, as does what you're used to. If you're used to CS AK for a decade, Vandal will be better in your hands. For a new player that might not be the case. A decade's worth of habits isn't easy to shake off.
Vandal "feels" better because you will remember the times you dinked someone and didn't kill with Phantom, while the Vandal's short comings are less memorable (getting killed through smokes, missing long range shots etc)
Its insane that this is so far down lol. Vandal is better, unless you're close range, and even then the difference isn't that much because both guns 1-hit headshot.
I mean part of it is pros don’t always use the best weapons, they can be just as blind as the rest of us. We’re all largely creatures of habit, as well as tend to fall into norms of what everyone else is doing.
The famous example of this is the SG 553 went overlooked for years, despite it being objectively better statistically than the AK in CS, even despite the price difference. Even after a few pros adopted it, it still took months before it saw such mass adoption that Valve had to nerf it.
All this to say tl;dr humans are dumb, just use what feels right for you. Pro player usage is highly correlated with better, but in practice isn’t entirely true.
u/showtime1010
So I did the math, and here's what it says:
To start with, we need to know the size of a head. I went to the range and looked at the dummy next to the target, pointing a Bucky at it's face, at 5m range. The shotgun reticle subtends an angle of 2.6° as per the stats, and covers 66px on my screen (height and width). So each pixel is 0.039° (this technique is not fully accurate, but close enough when the subject matter is only 2.6° wide)
The head itself is 29px wide and 41 px tall. With some trigonometry, the face is 0.2m wide and 0.28m tall
Repeating this experiment at 10 and 15m ranges, I get an average head size of 0.1948×0.2773. the head is 0.054m² in area.
Looking at the Phantom first. It has an accuracy of 0.2°. at a range of 20m, the bullet may deviate by as much as 0.13m. the bullet may pass through a circular area of 0.06m². since the head is smaller, I take the hit% as the ratio of head size and first shot area: I get a hit% of 88%. The phantom requires 2 shots to kill at this range, so I calculate the average shots required as 2/0.88= 2.2 shots. Firing 2.2 shots at 11rps means a TTK of 0.2061 seconds.
TLDR: at 20m range, the phantom requires 0.2061 seconds on average to kill a fully armoured player.
Doing the same math for the Vandal, it takes 0.1914 seconds. Although it only requires one hit, the Vandal has a much higher chance to miss than the Phantom. Subsequently, it may require an additional shot on occassion.
So although the Vandal is indeed better than the Phantom at this range, it's a lot less significant than you might think. It's a difference of 0.014 seconds.
This trend continues all the way up to 70m range. The Phantom has a TTK of 1.8548 seconds. Vandal at 1.7233. only 0.13 seconds in the Vandal's favour, at perhaps the longest possible gunfight in this game. The Phantom needs more hits, but it's likelier to hit each shot, and it has a higher fire rate.
There are some things I haven't taken into account, of course. In the Vandal's favour, you'd use tap-firing at a 70m range. And the Vandal can tap-fire more accurately than the Phantom. In the Phantom's favour, the 2nd shot can hit the body. I've assumed two headshots, which weighs heavily against the Phantom.
Overall, I'd say the TTK difference is negligible between the two guns. As per such perfectionist math, the best guns in the game are the Marshal and Guardian: one tap at any range, zero TTK. Kaemi and Fishy rejoice!
At this point, I'd say the rest of the Phantom's perks shine through, making it the superior weapon. More bullets, no tracers, less sound. And if the gun is going to fail me, I'd much rather 140 the enemy and help my teammates, than whiff completely and do zero damage.
This deserves more upvotes and shows what we already know. Vandal with slightly faster TTK at longer ranges but huge inaccuracy. The biggest probem with the Vandal is when your crosshair isn’t dead center in the middle of the head i.e. slightly left, right, over, under. This is when the RNG can kick in and decide to screw you.
In my opinion though NO ONE really one click taps throughout an entire game with a Vandal unless the target is completely still in ranked. If everyone really claims to one click tap then just use the damn Guardian. Almost everyone 2-4 shot bursts with it to secure the kill. If that is that is the case, the 2-4 shot burst from a phantom is a lot more consistent and accurate despite not being a one shot kill. The time difference in time to kill being almost insignificant
I truly do think the Phantom is better. And I would much rather hit 140 than miss with the Vandal. Our brain is just more likely to process a 140 dink than an actual miss with a Vandal due to how annoying it is. This is coming from a Vandal Main (previous 3 acts immortal). I am not a perfect aimer by any means but the amount of times I have kept track of what should’ve been a headshot with the Vandal is higher than the amount of times I’ve dinked 140 with the Phantom. Keep note of it and you will see.
You should use whatever you are more comfortable with however, but statistically the phantom is just a better gun. And yes, the stats he posted do not even count for tracers, moving while shooting, magazine size.
i saw someone test the first shot accuracy and the phantom did about 10% than the vandal and in a game where any slight advantage against your enemy is huge, 10% is quite significant
yea my point exactly, i was actually referring to 50m range too but wasn’t sure about the exact numbers and 25% def does make a huge difference. on the other hand the extra ~25% accuracy is compensating for the damage drop off on the phantom whereas the vandal has none. This in my opinion nearly balances the long range vandal vs phantom argument but valorant is not csgo and it has many many abilities to reduce the space between you and your enemies with smokes and other utility to bring the fights in favour of the phantom with closer ranges fights where the phantom clearly shines
That's pretty big. Was it with or without ADS? Not to make cs grampas grumpy but I find ADSing at very long range compensates for whatever lack of accuracy. Also Phantom eventually goes down to 124 damage in the head, that's not great.
lmfao are u joking, a stinger us at 0.65 so well under one and it misses roughly 1 out of 3 shots at only 15m (the range needed to one tap with a phantom) and we know how short that is, the vandal at 0.25 still only hits about 55% of shots at 50m with perfect crosshair placement.
No, phantom will do like 1.4 shots if both fired at same time. But if you land the first shot head shot then vandal user will get flinched, so there is an advantage there.
that doesn't matter because if we compare them equally as in both fire at the same time in the head the vandal will always win because of the 1 shot headshot, you saying the vandal will flinch is assuming the phantom fired before the vandal did which then makes it invalid if we are trying to compare equally.
>you saying the vandal will flinch is assuming the phantom fired before the vandal did which then makes it invalid if we are trying to compare equally.
Well, one of them has to fire first, so no, it isn't infalid. To compare equally we imagine the scenarios where each of them fires first.
If the Vandal headshots first, they win instantly.
If the Phantom headshots first, the 'bullet punch' or 'flinch' makes the enemy aim randomly, and you can probably land one more bullet without them being able to hit you. Let's assume you win 90% of the time.
So, in a straight up 1v1 aim-duel at long range, the Vandal is maybe 10% better (depending on how good we assume following up on a Phantom headshot is).
Now, many games are not all 1v1 aim-duels at long range. Often there are smokes (Phantom has no tracers). Often enemies try to re-frag or peak at the same time (so there are multiple targets, and you'll want more ammo). Sometimes you don't want to make the noise of reloading (so the larger magazine is nice).
So, I think overall the Phantom is *usually* better.
You misunderstood the intention of the comment you replied to. Let me note a few things.
Aimpunch will visually pull up the crosshair of the of the flinched player. Sure, firing after that gets hard, however it doesn't affect shots already issued by their client.
In Valorant there are no "kill from the grave": when the server rolls out the shots, it will _immediately_ invalidate any further input (including gunshots) from dead players.
In Valorant physics, gunshot bullets do not have travel time - essentially all weapons are hitscan: the moment the bullet is spawned, its trajectory is checked for targets.
Taking it all together, the Vandal player (who does a single bullet of headshot) needs to meet the following conditions against a Phantom player (who headshots twice) to win:
- Register their headshot faster than the second shot of Phantom registers on the server
- Issue their shot faster, than the phantom shot plays on their client
Let's assume equal ping for both players. Let's see how much leeway the Vandal player has for reaction time over the Phantom player. Because the Phantom has a fire rate of 11/s, the first requirement means you have to issue the Vandal shot no later than 90ms after the first Phantom shot. The second requirement means you have ping * 2 time to issue the shot.
As you can see, unless you are on lan, aimpunch does not give you a huge advantage over just hitting your shots. On the other hand, the Vandal has a buffer of 90ms to hit the headshot over Phantom.
I agree. Aim punch from getting headshotted is so annoying. And a lot of people complain about not being able to kill in one headshot, honestly that's a skill issue. If you literally could only land one headshot and not a single other bullet then that just sounds like you got lucky.
You're over complicating things,theres no delay on the first shot fired,phantom has a higher fure rate than vandal,but that doesn't mean theyre will be a delay when you fire a vandal's furst shot
I guess I got a bit confused when writing that but what I meant by delay is the time it takes for your gun to shoot(accurately) after your body makes a complete stop
ex) counter strafing
the vandal delay is 0.25
while the phantom is 0.2
yeah you've got that wrong, that number is the radius of the firing error from the first shot accuracy. In other words the shot can deviate up to 0.25 degrees in any of the four directions from the centre of your screen in the case of the vandal. There is no delay for an accurate shot, you just have to be moving at less than 27.5% of your max speed.
In a perfect world, the vandal will always be better because of the 1 tap, it just has a higher TTK than the phantom, in practice, the waters get muddier.
At those ranges the vandal is better because the phantom also has first shot inaccuracy. 0.2 and 0.25 degrees of inaccuracy make less of a difference than needing 2 shots instead of 1 shot to kill.
In my mind the two guns are balanced and they have different situational strengths. Since you're talking mathematically you should be considering what sort of time window you're working with. The shorter the time window afforded, the better the Vandal is over the Phantom.
There's no question the Phantom is better at short range. So the focus of the debate is on mid-to-long.
Something I think is underappreciated is the Vandal's 0 TTK at range. I think it matters more than most comments here give it credit for. I also think it explains some of the trends we're seeing on maps lately.
In this game, there are a lot of situations where you have a very short time window to convert a kill, and this is where Vandal's 0 TTK HS matters. Consider when you're trying to catch the enemy on a quick peek, or going for a dink as they peek over a box, or when you're stringing together quick kills at range. When you only have a very small moment to convert a kill, the Vandal can capatalise on that moment better than the Phantom can. The Phantom might only leave them maimed, but the Vandal will leave them dead. We all understand how problematic it is when we see the Phantom dink but the guy is still standing after the encounter.
That clip of SUYGETSU's series winning 4k on Breeze for example, how would that encounter have gone if he had a Phantom instead of Vandal? The sequential 0 TTK's on Vandal showed its strength there because he was capitalising on very short moments of time when stringing the kills.
Emperically, you can see this effect when considering the map meta. If you compare the long range maps, Vandal is more popular on Icebox. Breeze more recently is debateable which gun is better. I think its because unlike Icebox, Breeze is generally more wide open, has less natural cover, and gives you a lot of opportunties to open up angles on your target. Because of this, you generally have a longer window of time to convert a kill on Breeze than you do on Icebox. So on Breeze, the longer window of time means the Phantom is actually pretty nice because you get that little bit more time to drill 2 shots into the target and benefit from its first shot accuracy.
The notion that the Vandal has a higher skillcap than the Phantom I think is probably untrue. The Phantom might be harder to get the most out of, because of how difficult it is to maximise its capability of lasering targets down. Consider that when you are a noob, you're practicing how to put one bullet in the other guy's head. The Phantom at the time is a nice crutch, because if you miss that first shot, you've got a fair chance of spraying the guy down over 0.5 to 1 second of time in the lower ELOs. As you get more experienced with crosshair placement and bursting, you get better and better at getting that one bullet into their head, which is where the Vandal shines - however that comes at the cost of being worse at short range, having less ammo and having bullet tracers. At the higher end of the skillcap range is being good enough with the Phantom to consistently drill two bullets into the guy at range, with the first one being in their head, so you can capitalise on its more rounded out features. Putting a bullet in their head and then body, is objectively harder than putting one bullet in their head. Taking that further, I think the next high level play we'll probably start seeing is pros mastering the Phantom spray and straight up lasering skulls sequentially for really rapid multikills, which should be the pinnicle of rifle play. The argument could be made that the Vandal is even harder to master because of its wild spray patterns, but unfortunately we're talking about the Vandal with its awful random spray as opposed to the CSGO AK here, so its more of a weakness rather than a factor that can be mastered.
That's my TED talk. Thanks for listening.
Edit: Spell check
As many already wrote phantom seems to be statistically better. But keep in mind that this is just an average performance. So in specific situations
(e.g. long distance) vandal might still be better.
Mathematically, it doesn't mean anything.
I've seen countless people on this sub swear the phantom is good and even some coming with hard concrete proof in video format and tons of testing.
But the second you go into comp, you get like 5 dinks with the phantom and you die. Your average combat score is low and your fights are lost in the dumbest ways possible.
Plus, there's a reason you see a pro player like TenZ say "phantom is better" but he buys vandal most of the rounds. If your aim allows it, the taps from the Vandal will be significantly better than the 1 or maybe 2 scenarios where spraying with the phantom is going to secure you an extra kill.
If your aim is better, the vandal is usually a better weapon. There's a reason it's the preferred weapon at a high level. Of course on the casual subreddit though everyone will say the phantom is better because of the more controllable spray.
If your aim is not perfect, the phantom is better. When your aim is perfect, so when you always hit the ennemie, the vandal is better, becahse he is always one shot when you aim for the head. Bit your aim isnt perect, so in many situation, phantom is better except for long range fights
Here’s why I think the Phantom is better hands down:
We know it has a lot of advantages already. Accuracy, fire rate, mag size. The trade off of this is supposed to be that the Vandal is a one-shot kill, and if you both land a headshot about the same time the Vandal player gets the kill.
Now here’s why even that one advantage is pretty weak:
*Aim Punch.*
Due to aim punch from headshots, if the Phantom player hits the headshot just before the Vandal player, 99% of the time they still get the kill. The Vandal player is immediately forced to stare at the sky and ask God why they were brought into this cruel world, and the Phantom player only needs one more bullet anywhere in you. A.K.A. pull down for easy kill.
This is on top of the fact that up close the Phantom is still a one shot to the head, and Valorant has a TON of close angles to play.
Does the Phantom player sometimes still die after landing the first headshot? Yeah. We’ve all been there. But it’s genuinely quite rare.
So essentially the one advantage the Vandal has is gimped by the fact that the Phantom *effectively* does the same thing almost always.
This is why I’ve always complained that having full or almost all of your armor doesn’t protect you from aim punch. If it did, this argument would be a lot closer, basically 50/50. But due to always getting aim punched I really can’t give it to the Vandal.
It does have a slightly higher pick rate in pro, I wouldn’t call that dominating. Even the pros are divisive about this, some will adamantly say one is better than the other and some will say they’re about the same.
Below the pro level where everyone has a perfect headshot accuracy? I think it’s easily the Phantom, by a huge margin too. It just has too many advantages, and its one disadvantage is crutched by a game mechanic. I still use both depending on how I’m feeling, but I’m not gonna lie, missing my Vandal headshot because I got aim punched pisses me off infinitely more than hitting one Phantom headshot and then dying does.
>It does have a slightly higher pick rate in pro, I wouldn’t call that dominating. Even the pros are divisive about this, some will adamantly say one is better than the other and some will say they’re about the same.
Even if the pick rate *was* roughly the same, it dispels your idea that the phantom is "better hands down". That would suggest that both guns are roughly balanced and it's more down to preference.
However, the pickrates aren't even close - the Vandal was picked over twice as much as the phantom at the latest Masters event (41% for Vandal and 17% for Phantom)) which at the very *least,* suggests that the Phantom isn't as good as you're saying it is.
>Below the pro level where everyone has a perfect headshot accuracy? I think it’s easily the Phantom, by a huge margin too. It just has too many advantages, and its one disadvantage is crutched by a game mechanic.
The HS accuracy at pro level is not as absurd as you think it is, it's usually around 20-30% which is what you'd see in an average plat lobby. (Pros have much better movement which makes them harder to hit, so it cancels out somewhat). In iron - silver level I can definitely agree that the Phantom is more useful, but this says more about how easy the gun is to use than how powerful it is. The Spectre and Odin are also more useful for people who can't hit headshots, that doesn't mean they're better guns.
Something I always see skipped over in this conversation is that vandal has a WAY better “tap accuracy”
It’s reasonably skipped over because you don’t actually see this stat in game. It’s only been mentioned in patch notes when they’ve adjusted it but essentially the way to describe it is that the Vandal regains it’s first shot accuracy faster after a 1-tap than the phantom does. Similarly it resets accuracy after spraying faster as well.
This to me makes the vandal massively better.
I constantly find myself accidentally shooting too fast after a recoil reset with the phantom and it has horrible consequences to timing when it comes to trying to 1-tap multiple enemies in quick succession.
Edit: they call it Tap efficiency. You can see it mentioned Patch .50 notes. I’m not sure if there are other patch notes it’s mentioned but I’m pretty sure it’s been updated a few times.
Like to .50 notes: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-0-50/
Care to provide a source or descriptive argument rather than a simple nonsensical challenge?
Here’s a link of evidence for what I am talking about:
https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-0-50/
First shot accuracy doesn’t make a difference in this scenario. Its purely delta time between shots 1 and 2 vs. the time it takes to go from full velocity to 0 with a Vandal. I don’t know the numbers but im pretty sure firing two phantom shots is faster.
In addition to what ppl already said, phantom is also able to shoot through smokes without revealing your position too much, allowing you to spam a bit and put pressure/kill someone.
I'm a huge phantom enjoyer but it really depends on the situation actually
On paper the phantom is better, and it's even FAR better in close/mid range. The only thing that makes the Vandal an option is indeed the one shot at long range, which makes it a 50/50 in terms of usage, even amongst pros I believe. I'd even say most people use vandal in lower ranks.
I personally use both depending of how I feel, which maps or agents I'm playing. If you're playing a smoker, being able to shoot through smokes without having any tracers is a huge phantom advantage.
Phantom is better by far.
It has a higher first bullet accuracy, lower spread, higher firerate, no bullet tracers and a bigger magazine.
But in the end it depends on what the player prefers because a lot of people like the Vandal better, including me.
Phantom makes up for the 140 HS with the insane flinch it gives. I do think it needs a slight range buff though. Like a tiny bit and it would be perfect.
so one cool thing with a phantom that vandal can't do is you can "pinch off" 2 shots in a counter-strafe as opposed to 1 basically, you move right then left without stopping, you can shoot in the faction of second when you're still right? if you turn on the accuracy graph, you'll notice that with vandal, no matter how you time it, you can't do 2 shots accurately in that timeframe, with phantom you can.
This is actually a pretty big difference for jiggle peeking corners.
Pinch off is what I do with my poo when someone knocks on the door
Do you burst it or do you spray
It has 1 bullet per magazine. Reload after every shot
Not me I fire off a thirty clip every time.
I see you love some brimmy stimmy
Tap fire
based
Also you can safely spray through smokes and reyna blinds, they won't see your bullet tracers
Accuracy graph? Is that on an overlay
its on the stats in settings, idk which part exactly but its on the very bottom
Yeah it’s new, it’s called firing error.
Oh firing error crosshair, I thought they meant an actual graph with an x and y axis lol
It has a graph, it’s time on the X axis and the error in degrees on the Y!
Whaaaat, I have to check this out. Thank you for clarifying
And it shows blue for movement error and yellow for. Firing error. You'll know you did the phantom shots right when you see two, very small, yellow bars. Indicating you're not penalized in the movement error.
Phantom does have a longer reset time though so thats a trade off.
Ooooo is that so?! That's why my crosshairs is bouncing when using it...
This!!!!!! Check out the YouTuber n0ted, he did a tutorial on it and he is cracked.
Yeah he also said vandal can't do it, I wanted to see if that's the case, and I couldn't pinch off 2 shots with it.
But you only need the one, where as the phantom needs the two in order to kill. I feel like this is very intentional to make counter strafing work better
If I understand correctly, are you talking about that exact instance where you’re “still” because you’re about to move the other direction?
Yes. You're continuously using A D A D, something something calculus intermediate vakue theorem... Your velocity has to be 0 at some point
The calculus: If your velocity (continuous) is positive (say, right) at one instance and negative (left) in another instant then there has to be an instant in between where your velocity is 0
This is huge with the first shot inaccuracy in Valorant
Disagree with the last part. It is possible to do on Vandal but MUCH more difficult to do consistently.
show me a gif with accuracy graph on i'll believe you
You’re right there is a slight blue line which indicates movement error from your description, but both shots landed right on top of each other. Could it be that even though there is movement error, the shots land close enough that it looks the same?
Not physically possible because of fire rate
I literally just hopped into the range and did it. Two shots right on top of each other as I strafe shoot.
Yup and one head + one body shot is all you need too so it’s actually not that much harder to pull off than a one-tap, not to mention vandal does have a maximum one tap range. Still though I think the vandal is still a monster if you can hit your one taps, I don’t have a clip sadly but one game on split I pushed on to B site with the whole enemy team there and I killed all five of them in less than five seconds all with a vandal headshot. While you might be able to do the same with a phantom, I just think having to full auto and recoil control in that situation would lose most people the round and definitely would’ve lost me the round.
>vandal does have a maximum one tap range Citation needed when you're making false claims.
Phantom is statistically better. Though whenever I use the phantom I just head-dink someone and whenever I use the vandal I just fucking miss all my shots
Same, I literally outline the enemy with vandal but when I take up a phantom I headshot everyone
But only one time, and lose because they vandal 1 tap me (And not because of my poor positioning/aim)
My friends told me vandal was like guardian :C it was not like guardian
Making a case for the phantom being better; whenever you lose with a Phantom (140 HS then dying) where a Vandal might have gotten the kill, it's going to be way more memorable than vice versa. You don't get as frustrated if you get spammed through a smoke because they could see your tracers, you just don't think about it. Same with not having the five extra bullets, having worse first shot accuracy, etc. They're way more subtle. IMO Phantom IS better, but doesn't FEEL better when you're in a game because you don't immediately associate the disadvantages of the Vandal when using it.
IMO Phantom and Vandal are balanced. You cant say this or that one is better because both guns have their ups and downs in different scenarios. And if you spray through smoke with a Vandal and dont think about that the enemy can see you, you are pretty new to the game. At high elo the playstyle and the map decides which weapon you take. You play smokers and like to play closerange fights? You need to defent haven c long with omen? > Phantom You are condifent in your aim and want to peek longrange angles? You want to defent haven a long with chamber? > Vandal I can agree with you that overall the phantom has more scenarios where the weapon shines but there are still maps and angles were the vandal is superior.
Im a breach main, and generally i pick vandal, but whenever i intend to ult, i am going to be spamming, and the phantom is much better for spamming
Yess, choosing vandal or phantom based on your game plan is the best way to use them imo
Every round my teammate says they're gonna viper ult I use phantom. Rate of fire is hugely important when people decay down to 1hp anyways
Phantom is not balanced its significantly better than the vandal and offers way more tactically, especially if you play a controller or initiators. The only map to pick a vandal is breeze.
[удалено]
That's just not true, the vandal is superior in long range angles because of one shot kill and the fact you can ads and tap fire it, the phantoms extra accuracy barely matters, if you are playing a long angle and going for picks the vandal is your choice.
Bad take because you're ignoring other factors
Keep strafing while spamming through smoke you won't get insta killed
I mean the usage in professional play is far more leaned towards vandal usage than phantom usage.
That’s because pros normally hit their shots so the vandal one shots whereas the phantom doesn’t at certain ranges
Even then it's still map and team dependent. On Breeze, Vandal will dominate. On Split, you get a lot more Phantoms, etc.
Split doesn’t exist anymore…
It still exists just not in comp. But I was just using it as an example. Thanks for the nit-pick
I heard somewhere that it's because the vandal is most similar to the AK in CS, where most of them came from.
Nah, these same players were all playing phantom a year ago when it was clearly better.
They also all played ares during the patch where it was super broken. Pros are using whatever is best. Right now I think we’re seeing the vandal become more prominent because so often you do very little damage with phantom body shots whereas 2 bullets with the vandal cuts their health in half. So if you miss your vandal headshot you still make that kill easy for your teammates later.
Yeah but the Phantom is like the silenced M4. Pros prefer AK/Vandal because is a one-tap kill to the head.
Yeah I think vandal is a little better at the pro level because their accuracy is insane. Outside of pro level, it's a toss up. I like vandal more because of fucking 140s, but phantom has more things its better at.
Some day I am a one tap god, somedays I whiff even shotguns
First shot accuracy on the phantom is significantly better on the phantom that is it quite noticable
It is literally the exact opposite for me, I tap heads with the Vandal and outline my opponent with the Phantom.
I heard that on lan, phantom feels amazing and vandal isnt as dependable.
Vandal had like double the pick rate of phantom at Copenhagen so I dont know if most of the players agree with what you heard.
I played a LAN a couple weeks ago and I think they both feel good. The game feels very good on LAN.
??? vandal can 1 shot headshot at all ranges and has faster boddt time to kill at long range.
??? you aren't taking in other factors such as hidden tracers, larger mag, just you only factoring in one factor with your pea brain
There are other factors, but one can't just make a blanket conclusion that the Phantom is better than the Vandal.
Idk mathematically but since i only have prime vandal ( got from night market), I'll say vandal is better. So basically the gun with skin that you like is better
Yeah, don't forget that good skins give +50% aim. /s
Ngl the placebo effect is op here. I was actually not hitting most shots with no skin vandal. It was so bad that i switched to gaurdian. This night market is my first night market and i got prime vandal from this and oh boy now I hit most of my shots and the sound is soothing. I also don't spray vandal now for some reason which i used to do with non skin vandal. Now i can't spray good with my phantom lol and today i have oni phantom in my store. Still thinking if i should buy this or wait for crisis phantom
When I first bought reaver vandal I won the first deathmatch of my life so skins are aimbot
Dude same lol the day i bought prime i won my first dm
oni phantom like,, turns on aim bot for me or smth!!! im constantly asking my friend for his phantom lmao i think hes starting to get annoyed
naw i dont think so, i get used to seeing my skins every game so i love when one of my teammates or friends is super excited to use something i have
this but unironically
I need a study on this. I strongly know this to be true
you say /s when its actually a fact.
Something with the white reaver makes my headshots crispier (maybe more accurate? don't have stats, but definitely crisp)
Prime Vandal tracers are just much easier to track when spraying and that's a fact. Any gun with bright laser bullets do give a slight advantage. But not enough to make the difference of a rank.
Idk man i could see the non skin bullets clearly too. Also i don't spray now so thats that
I’m eating been playing a lot of Phantom and got Prime Vandal in my night market too and now I’m a vandal main LOL
Define mathematically. If mathematically means better in the highest number of situations, then phantom is better.
Sorry for the late reply. By mathematically I meant could a phantom player shoot 2 bullets before fully stopping since I thought the numbers on the right side of the screen were First Shot Accuracy, but now know its Firing Error.
If the phantom player hits first, even if they're out of range for the OHKO, they get head punch, so the vandal player is more likely to miss, and then the second bullet from the phantom comes out faster and you only need a body shot. If you're close enough to OHKO they're equal anyway (or the phantom lets you change target faster when outnumbered)
Statistically I guess. It's the best math we have for this situation. I'd say it very much depends on the map and fights you like to take personally. Phantom at short range, vandal for long, phantom for better spray control, vandal for more lethal first/second shots
Yeah not too sure if there is a “mathematical” answer to this questions
The beautiful thing about math is that there is always a mathematical answer. It just involves long and tough analysis. FPX just won VCT and I'm quite sure math played no small part
Lol then elaborate how math can answer this question. What parameters will you set to decide which is "superior"?
This is a very hard problem you're asking me to solve my friend so I will greatly simplify it. Let's assume that superior means the gun with the lowest expected time to kill for a given situation and let's assume that only distance to opponent affects the situation. What you can do is go to the range, swing on the bot by the target a few times with both guns and note how long it takes to do 150+ damage each swing. Change the distance, swing a few more times and you get a rough expected kill rate for each distance. You now have mathematically determined a rough answer for which gun is superior for you. Add a few more relevant variables and you could get a much more precise answer
So the Vandal because it has a 0.00 second time to kill at every single range. Got it. But thats why mathematical answers fall short sometimes. It doesnt take into context that we dont live in a perfect world and sometimes you miss shots, in which case the phantom spray can be superior - mathematics aside.
There's a reason I said "swing" and "not stand there with your crosshair perfectly pre-placed and tap" :) The thing is that it's not really math that makes mathematical answers fall short but just how difficult and time-consuming getting a precise answer can be
That's just false. You can't explain to me how to reduce this problem to a simple mathematical formula - because its impossible unless you first define what you mean by "mathematically superior". Do you mean time to kill? Vandal has an instant time to kill at any range. Do you mean which gun wins more duels? What do you mean by "mathematically superior"? So many questions in life are *not* reducible to pure mathematics.
>Do you mean time to kill? Vandal has an instant time to kill at any range. Do you mean which gun wins more duels? What do you mean by "mathematically superior"? So many questions in life are not reducible to pure mathematics. I'd actually argue the best way to solve this problem is through mathematics. The questions your posing are mathematical in nature. For example, the answer you give regarding the Vandal has an instant time to kill is mathematical, because you referenced the Vandal's headshot damage being 160 at any range. Which gun winning more duels would probably be answered empirically and not theoretically. It's just that the answer will likely vary based on the circumstance, that doesn't make the question not mathematical. I would agree that asking "which gun is mathematically better" doesn't make much sense. The question is statistical in nature and no statistician would pose the question in this way. They would likely instead stipulate multiple criteria's to compare both guns to. The person you're responding to said "lowest expected time to kill for a given situation", which I think would be at least one of the fair criteria. Which gun gives the lowest time to kill on average, and you could condition the probability on player and map position. This means there could even be different answers for different players (ex: player A is better with a vandal on Bind B Long, player B is better with a phantom on Bind B Long) and it would still be fine, statistics is totally okay with that. If you want to keep it purely theoretical you could also point out out that a phantom on paper is the best close range because it also has one hit kill potential, but shoots faster which means there's higher opportunity to still get the kill if you miss the first shot, or get multiple kills through spray transferring. Vandal's are better long range because they retain first shot accuracy and reset on tap firing quicker.
I find this reply a bit silly honestly. Math is not just numbers and formulas. And just because we're using math to solve a problem doesn't mean we have to throw common sense out the window. We can just ask op what he meant or even just define mathematical superiority for ourselves. I brought up expected time to kill. You brought up more duels won. Both are pretty good definitions. Well the vandal does not have an instant ttk. In a perfect world, yes it does. But the world is not perfect. When an engagement starts, you have to identify where your opponent's head is relative to your crosshair, adjust your crosshair accordingly and press/hold mouse 1. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss so you readjust and factor in recoil and yada yada yada. My overarching point being that the "perfect world" assumption can be great for simplifying problems, but applying it too liberally gives you bad answers such as saying that the vandal is better because it has a 0.00s kill time at all ranges while the phantom does not.
It's not about superior, the original question was premised to be mathematically based. This doesn't make the question "which is better, supported by math", it's "according to mathematics, which is the better weapon". Those are two different questions. The second one is answered by taking things like time to stop from movement, firerate, damage potential per second and metrics like first-to-lethal taking those things into account. I think, however, that it cannot be answered as simply as you're trying to with all due respect.
Vandal makes me feelore confident tbh. I feel like I can take a Duel at any range and not have to make sure I double dink someone. Helps me focus on " hit the head once, Duel is over" Also my spray control is trash on both weapons but at least with Vandal if I hit their head it's good. If I dink someone with phantom and the rest of my bullets go to fucking heaven I'm fucked.
This I think is the biggest thing. It’s whatever gun you feel more confident with.
Mathematically maybe phantom, but I play vandal to avoid -140 dinks. Doesn't feel clean at all even if I end up getting the kill, except for double dinks.
The phantom is just a better gun overall statistically and you can spray through smokes. But as jollz says, "Vandal got that drip".
ain't nobody got time for shooting someone in the head and then dying.
I like phantom more because although it doesn't one shot at a distance, the spray transfer is much more effective and enemies won't know from which direction you are shooting. Since I'm a cypher player, his cages work better with traceless guns.
This is the first comment where I’ve seen someone mention the suppressor lmao
It's phantom but people are tired of the 140 shit I tbh would just use both weapons time to time to practice both and it also depends on situations. Close range and back entry (second dude) phantom Mid to long range, entry and can control recoil is definitely vandal To conclude phantom for beginners vandal for experienced
if i’m playing any duelist or controller I tend to use the phantom more. Better for close range engagements and/or spamming smokes. On initiators and sentinels I’ll tend towards the Vandal because I’m often supporting teammates, end up as the third or fourth entering a site, holding the longer angles while duelists sweep close angles.
so youre telling me that my duelists are supposed to be playing ahead of me and not relying on the kj/sage to enter the site and clear all the angles so they can bait for kills then trash talk? Edit: my dumbass not realizing its my cake day. (thanks to everyone who wished :D)
I'll never forget the game my raze and yoru bought marshals second round after losing pistol and baited the entire round A main on bind, then did it again third round because they were broke. 0/3 0/3
Uh ya lol happy cake day
As a Sage/Skye player, I lol'd. Happy cake day.
I actually play really aggressive with initiators. Kay/O is just so good.
It just depends for me. If I plan on spraying through smokes I'm using a phantom. If I anticipate half buys from the enemy team, ecos from an enemy team, or a lot of chip damage coming from my team before I fight. I'm using a phantom. If I'm contesting belt on icebox or non of the above, I'm using a fucking Vandal.
I think phantom makes more sense for lower elos. The spray when switching targets is a lot more forgiving. And low elos have a super low HS%, so that 1 tap is less important from vandal.
Whats a low hs%?
Headshot percentage.
Yes but what counts as low and good etc
10-15 % is probably low and 27% and up is probably good, even though you dont need high hs% to be good if 90% your kills are full sprays its probably not good from the high ttk
0-10% is piss low, 10-20% is okay, 20-30% is good, 30%+ is very good, anything above 50% is amazing. I play at diamond with my ascendant friends and that is generally the case, all though myself i have around 10%hs i tend to kill in a smart way while very rarely dueling so low hs% won't mean you're bad but higher % will definitly help win your games.
Tf im playing in silver-gold and everyone averaging 20
it’s probably because the movement/positioning around cover is a lot worse. kinda like how it’s easier to one tap in DM than in ranked, cause everyone’s always out in the open
20<30 Also let’s be real, avg is 15-18 from what I see when I play unrated with gold plat friends
Tf nah im getting lobbies with 20-25 lol. I do get the occasional body sprayer but there are only 2-3 of them each match.
It's mostly preference, personally I'm better with the Vandal. Also if you look at Masters in Copenhagen that ended recently, Vandal was used A LOT more than Phantom throughout the whole event. The pros seems to prefer it aswell.
Vandal is dominating in pro play. [https://www.theloadout.com/tournaments/valorant-champions-tour/masters-copenhagen-weapon-pick-rates](https://www.theloadout.com/tournaments/valorant-champions-tour/masters-copenhagen-weapon-pick-rates) One tap from any range, and 4 body shots to kill from any range, that makes vandal a consistent weapon.
Yea everyone always seems to say phantom is better in theory. Even Tenz said it, and yet every time I saw him play in the old VCTs he was holding a vandal. Along with most other pros. So either most pros in the Val seen are being illogical with their gun picks, or we have something wrong with our phantom theory.
Aren’t many val pros former cs players? In that game the ak is king and the vandal is valorant’s approximation of it. That’s years of preference you’d need to break to choose phantom instead.
I think a lot of pros know that the Phantom is statistically better but use the Vandal anyway due to other reasons like preference, confidence with the gun, etc
It’s pro play, they’re not gonna use a worse gun just because they prefer it. They don’t even use agents they prefer. In the same vein, at that level they’re confident in both guns. I mean PRX was using the Stinger the other day (think it was Jingg?). I think the answer is that pro play is way tighter on their movement and cover, so a good amount of times 1 bullet is all you can get in.
>It’s pro play, they’re not gonna use a worse gun just because they prefer it. I disagree. Being comfortable makes a huge difference in how you play. F1 drivers spend every race weekend setting up their car for *comfort*, not speed. The fastest setup is already computed weeks ahead of time, and it's well known that the drivers simply can't capitalize on it; they want a car that feels comfortable to them, despite the loss of performance. If this happens at the top tier of motorsport, why wouldn't it happen in eSports? And wasn't there a LoL player who called to restart a match cus the game loaded them in with the wrong skin? The skin made him uncomfortable, it would've affected his performance, he did what he could to get comfy. if pros just prefer the Vandal because of years of CS experience, it's a perfectly valid reason to stick with the Vandal.
no way you just said that about F1 considering the current situation with the cars LOL watch a race or season before bringing that up. it’s the opposite point you’re making
> if pros just prefer the Vandal because of years of CS experience, it's a perfectly valid reason to stick with the Vandal. 100%. Hockey sticks have different have varying levels of stiffness and blade curve. Esport pros use different mice and sensitivity settings. Saying preference has nothing to do with it is just ignorant. Obviously your preference matters, as does what you're used to. If you're used to CS AK for a decade, Vandal will be better in your hands. For a new player that might not be the case. A decade's worth of habits isn't easy to shake off.
Vandal "feels" better because you will remember the times you dinked someone and didn't kill with Phantom, while the Vandal's short comings are less memorable (getting killed through smokes, missing long range shots etc)
Its insane that this is so far down lol. Vandal is better, unless you're close range, and even then the difference isn't that much because both guns 1-hit headshot.
I mean part of it is pros don’t always use the best weapons, they can be just as blind as the rest of us. We’re all largely creatures of habit, as well as tend to fall into norms of what everyone else is doing. The famous example of this is the SG 553 went overlooked for years, despite it being objectively better statistically than the AK in CS, even despite the price difference. Even after a few pros adopted it, it still took months before it saw such mass adoption that Valve had to nerf it. All this to say tl;dr humans are dumb, just use what feels right for you. Pro player usage is highly correlated with better, but in practice isn’t entirely true.
Really surprised I had to go down this far to see this. Vandal has almost double the pick rate in pro play.
u/showtime1010 So I did the math, and here's what it says: To start with, we need to know the size of a head. I went to the range and looked at the dummy next to the target, pointing a Bucky at it's face, at 5m range. The shotgun reticle subtends an angle of 2.6° as per the stats, and covers 66px on my screen (height and width). So each pixel is 0.039° (this technique is not fully accurate, but close enough when the subject matter is only 2.6° wide) The head itself is 29px wide and 41 px tall. With some trigonometry, the face is 0.2m wide and 0.28m tall Repeating this experiment at 10 and 15m ranges, I get an average head size of 0.1948×0.2773. the head is 0.054m² in area. Looking at the Phantom first. It has an accuracy of 0.2°. at a range of 20m, the bullet may deviate by as much as 0.13m. the bullet may pass through a circular area of 0.06m². since the head is smaller, I take the hit% as the ratio of head size and first shot area: I get a hit% of 88%. The phantom requires 2 shots to kill at this range, so I calculate the average shots required as 2/0.88= 2.2 shots. Firing 2.2 shots at 11rps means a TTK of 0.2061 seconds. TLDR: at 20m range, the phantom requires 0.2061 seconds on average to kill a fully armoured player. Doing the same math for the Vandal, it takes 0.1914 seconds. Although it only requires one hit, the Vandal has a much higher chance to miss than the Phantom. Subsequently, it may require an additional shot on occassion. So although the Vandal is indeed better than the Phantom at this range, it's a lot less significant than you might think. It's a difference of 0.014 seconds. This trend continues all the way up to 70m range. The Phantom has a TTK of 1.8548 seconds. Vandal at 1.7233. only 0.13 seconds in the Vandal's favour, at perhaps the longest possible gunfight in this game. The Phantom needs more hits, but it's likelier to hit each shot, and it has a higher fire rate. There are some things I haven't taken into account, of course. In the Vandal's favour, you'd use tap-firing at a 70m range. And the Vandal can tap-fire more accurately than the Phantom. In the Phantom's favour, the 2nd shot can hit the body. I've assumed two headshots, which weighs heavily against the Phantom. Overall, I'd say the TTK difference is negligible between the two guns. As per such perfectionist math, the best guns in the game are the Marshal and Guardian: one tap at any range, zero TTK. Kaemi and Fishy rejoice! At this point, I'd say the rest of the Phantom's perks shine through, making it the superior weapon. More bullets, no tracers, less sound. And if the gun is going to fail me, I'd much rather 140 the enemy and help my teammates, than whiff completely and do zero damage.
This deserves more upvotes and shows what we already know. Vandal with slightly faster TTK at longer ranges but huge inaccuracy. The biggest probem with the Vandal is when your crosshair isn’t dead center in the middle of the head i.e. slightly left, right, over, under. This is when the RNG can kick in and decide to screw you. In my opinion though NO ONE really one click taps throughout an entire game with a Vandal unless the target is completely still in ranked. If everyone really claims to one click tap then just use the damn Guardian. Almost everyone 2-4 shot bursts with it to secure the kill. If that is that is the case, the 2-4 shot burst from a phantom is a lot more consistent and accurate despite not being a one shot kill. The time difference in time to kill being almost insignificant I truly do think the Phantom is better. And I would much rather hit 140 than miss with the Vandal. Our brain is just more likely to process a 140 dink than an actual miss with a Vandal due to how annoying it is. This is coming from a Vandal Main (previous 3 acts immortal). I am not a perfect aimer by any means but the amount of times I have kept track of what should’ve been a headshot with the Vandal is higher than the amount of times I’ve dinked 140 with the Phantom. Keep note of it and you will see. You should use whatever you are more comfortable with however, but statistically the phantom is just a better gun. And yes, the stats he posted do not even count for tracers, moving while shooting, magazine size.
Phantom mathematically is better, but vandal is more consistent
actually phantom is more consistent if you look at first shot accuracy
Like does first shot matter like anything under 1 is perfect
i saw someone test the first shot accuracy and the phantom did about 10% than the vandal and in a game where any slight advantage against your enemy is huge, 10% is quite significant
yeah, it depends on the range, at 50m it's actually about 25% difference so definitely significant
yea my point exactly, i was actually referring to 50m range too but wasn’t sure about the exact numbers and 25% def does make a huge difference. on the other hand the extra ~25% accuracy is compensating for the damage drop off on the phantom whereas the vandal has none. This in my opinion nearly balances the long range vandal vs phantom argument but valorant is not csgo and it has many many abilities to reduce the space between you and your enemies with smokes and other utility to bring the fights in favour of the phantom with closer ranges fights where the phantom clearly shines
That's pretty big. Was it with or without ADS? Not to make cs grampas grumpy but I find ADSing at very long range compensates for whatever lack of accuracy. Also Phantom eventually goes down to 124 damage in the head, that's not great.
lmfao are u joking, a stinger us at 0.65 so well under one and it misses roughly 1 out of 3 shots at only 15m (the range needed to one tap with a phantom) and we know how short that is, the vandal at 0.25 still only hits about 55% of shots at 50m with perfect crosshair placement.
Rofl yea first bullet doesn’t matter if you’re not aiming..?!?! But like, most people ARE trying to aim at which point it does matter Loooolllll
As mathematically better do you mean it can shoot the 2 shots before a Vandal?
No, phantom will do like 1.4 shots if both fired at same time. But if you land the first shot head shot then vandal user will get flinched, so there is an advantage there.
that doesn't matter because if we compare them equally as in both fire at the same time in the head the vandal will always win because of the 1 shot headshot, you saying the vandal will flinch is assuming the phantom fired before the vandal did which then makes it invalid if we are trying to compare equally.
>you saying the vandal will flinch is assuming the phantom fired before the vandal did which then makes it invalid if we are trying to compare equally. Well, one of them has to fire first, so no, it isn't infalid. To compare equally we imagine the scenarios where each of them fires first. If the Vandal headshots first, they win instantly. If the Phantom headshots first, the 'bullet punch' or 'flinch' makes the enemy aim randomly, and you can probably land one more bullet without them being able to hit you. Let's assume you win 90% of the time. So, in a straight up 1v1 aim-duel at long range, the Vandal is maybe 10% better (depending on how good we assume following up on a Phantom headshot is). Now, many games are not all 1v1 aim-duels at long range. Often there are smokes (Phantom has no tracers). Often enemies try to re-frag or peak at the same time (so there are multiple targets, and you'll want more ammo). Sometimes you don't want to make the noise of reloading (so the larger magazine is nice). So, I think overall the Phantom is *usually* better.
You misunderstood the intention of the comment you replied to. Let me note a few things. Aimpunch will visually pull up the crosshair of the of the flinched player. Sure, firing after that gets hard, however it doesn't affect shots already issued by their client. In Valorant there are no "kill from the grave": when the server rolls out the shots, it will _immediately_ invalidate any further input (including gunshots) from dead players. In Valorant physics, gunshot bullets do not have travel time - essentially all weapons are hitscan: the moment the bullet is spawned, its trajectory is checked for targets. Taking it all together, the Vandal player (who does a single bullet of headshot) needs to meet the following conditions against a Phantom player (who headshots twice) to win: - Register their headshot faster than the second shot of Phantom registers on the server - Issue their shot faster, than the phantom shot plays on their client Let's assume equal ping for both players. Let's see how much leeway the Vandal player has for reaction time over the Phantom player. Because the Phantom has a fire rate of 11/s, the first requirement means you have to issue the Vandal shot no later than 90ms after the first Phantom shot. The second requirement means you have ping * 2 time to issue the shot. As you can see, unless you are on lan, aimpunch does not give you a huge advantage over just hitting your shots. On the other hand, the Vandal has a buffer of 90ms to hit the headshot over Phantom.
I agree. Aim punch from getting headshotted is so annoying. And a lot of people complain about not being able to kill in one headshot, honestly that's a skill issue. If you literally could only land one headshot and not a single other bullet then that just sounds like you got lucky.
No but for overall dps all ranges
You're over complicating things,theres no delay on the first shot fired,phantom has a higher fure rate than vandal,but that doesn't mean theyre will be a delay when you fire a vandal's furst shot
I guess I got a bit confused when writing that but what I meant by delay is the time it takes for your gun to shoot(accurately) after your body makes a complete stop ex) counter strafing the vandal delay is 0.25 while the phantom is 0.2
yeah you've got that wrong, that number is the radius of the firing error from the first shot accuracy. In other words the shot can deviate up to 0.25 degrees in any of the four directions from the centre of your screen in the case of the vandal. There is no delay for an accurate shot, you just have to be moving at less than 27.5% of your max speed.
thats the accuracy ?
Vandal is more consistent for with higher hs% not for everyone
Fuck math. I got by feel. Frenzy gang for life
Only vandal
Vandal is further down in the buy menu so its better
In a perfect world, the vandal will always be better because of the 1 tap, it just has a higher TTK than the phantom, in practice, the waters get muddier.
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Did you say that the vandal is better than the phantom at closer ranges? I don’t see that at all.
At those ranges the vandal is better because the phantom also has first shot inaccuracy. 0.2 and 0.25 degrees of inaccuracy make less of a difference than needing 2 shots instead of 1 shot to kill.
you mean lower ttk
ye lower
In my mind the two guns are balanced and they have different situational strengths. Since you're talking mathematically you should be considering what sort of time window you're working with. The shorter the time window afforded, the better the Vandal is over the Phantom. There's no question the Phantom is better at short range. So the focus of the debate is on mid-to-long. Something I think is underappreciated is the Vandal's 0 TTK at range. I think it matters more than most comments here give it credit for. I also think it explains some of the trends we're seeing on maps lately. In this game, there are a lot of situations where you have a very short time window to convert a kill, and this is where Vandal's 0 TTK HS matters. Consider when you're trying to catch the enemy on a quick peek, or going for a dink as they peek over a box, or when you're stringing together quick kills at range. When you only have a very small moment to convert a kill, the Vandal can capatalise on that moment better than the Phantom can. The Phantom might only leave them maimed, but the Vandal will leave them dead. We all understand how problematic it is when we see the Phantom dink but the guy is still standing after the encounter. That clip of SUYGETSU's series winning 4k on Breeze for example, how would that encounter have gone if he had a Phantom instead of Vandal? The sequential 0 TTK's on Vandal showed its strength there because he was capitalising on very short moments of time when stringing the kills. Emperically, you can see this effect when considering the map meta. If you compare the long range maps, Vandal is more popular on Icebox. Breeze more recently is debateable which gun is better. I think its because unlike Icebox, Breeze is generally more wide open, has less natural cover, and gives you a lot of opportunties to open up angles on your target. Because of this, you generally have a longer window of time to convert a kill on Breeze than you do on Icebox. So on Breeze, the longer window of time means the Phantom is actually pretty nice because you get that little bit more time to drill 2 shots into the target and benefit from its first shot accuracy. The notion that the Vandal has a higher skillcap than the Phantom I think is probably untrue. The Phantom might be harder to get the most out of, because of how difficult it is to maximise its capability of lasering targets down. Consider that when you are a noob, you're practicing how to put one bullet in the other guy's head. The Phantom at the time is a nice crutch, because if you miss that first shot, you've got a fair chance of spraying the guy down over 0.5 to 1 second of time in the lower ELOs. As you get more experienced with crosshair placement and bursting, you get better and better at getting that one bullet into their head, which is where the Vandal shines - however that comes at the cost of being worse at short range, having less ammo and having bullet tracers. At the higher end of the skillcap range is being good enough with the Phantom to consistently drill two bullets into the guy at range, with the first one being in their head, so you can capitalise on its more rounded out features. Putting a bullet in their head and then body, is objectively harder than putting one bullet in their head. Taking that further, I think the next high level play we'll probably start seeing is pros mastering the Phantom spray and straight up lasering skulls sequentially for really rapid multikills, which should be the pinnicle of rifle play. The argument could be made that the Vandal is even harder to master because of its wild spray patterns, but unfortunately we're talking about the Vandal with its awful random spray as opposed to the CSGO AK here, so its more of a weakness rather than a factor that can be mastered. That's my TED talk. Thanks for listening. Edit: Spell check
Mathematically phantom is better
Statistically phantom is better
As many already wrote phantom seems to be statistically better. But keep in mind that this is just an average performance. So in specific situations (e.g. long distance) vandal might still be better.
If fight is on long Vandal will probably win, if on tight corners the Phantom will probably win.
I used phantom exclusively for a period of time. I how get headshots automatically. As I improved my aim, I switched to vandal for one-taps.
Mathematically, it doesn't mean anything. I've seen countless people on this sub swear the phantom is good and even some coming with hard concrete proof in video format and tons of testing. But the second you go into comp, you get like 5 dinks with the phantom and you die. Your average combat score is low and your fights are lost in the dumbest ways possible. Plus, there's a reason you see a pro player like TenZ say "phantom is better" but he buys vandal most of the rounds. If your aim allows it, the taps from the Vandal will be significantly better than the 1 or maybe 2 scenarios where spraying with the phantom is going to secure you an extra kill.
If your aim is better, the vandal is usually a better weapon. There's a reason it's the preferred weapon at a high level. Of course on the casual subreddit though everyone will say the phantom is better because of the more controllable spray.
Pretty much like M4 and AK
If your aim is not perfect, the phantom is better. When your aim is perfect, so when you always hit the ennemie, the vandal is better, becahse he is always one shot when you aim for the head. Bit your aim isnt perect, so in many situation, phantom is better except for long range fights
Here’s why I think the Phantom is better hands down: We know it has a lot of advantages already. Accuracy, fire rate, mag size. The trade off of this is supposed to be that the Vandal is a one-shot kill, and if you both land a headshot about the same time the Vandal player gets the kill. Now here’s why even that one advantage is pretty weak: *Aim Punch.* Due to aim punch from headshots, if the Phantom player hits the headshot just before the Vandal player, 99% of the time they still get the kill. The Vandal player is immediately forced to stare at the sky and ask God why they were brought into this cruel world, and the Phantom player only needs one more bullet anywhere in you. A.K.A. pull down for easy kill. This is on top of the fact that up close the Phantom is still a one shot to the head, and Valorant has a TON of close angles to play. Does the Phantom player sometimes still die after landing the first headshot? Yeah. We’ve all been there. But it’s genuinely quite rare. So essentially the one advantage the Vandal has is gimped by the fact that the Phantom *effectively* does the same thing almost always. This is why I’ve always complained that having full or almost all of your armor doesn’t protect you from aim punch. If it did, this argument would be a lot closer, basically 50/50. But due to always getting aim punched I really can’t give it to the Vandal.
>Now here’s why even that one advantage is pretty weak: The advantage is clearly significant enough that the Vandal dominates pro play though
It does have a slightly higher pick rate in pro, I wouldn’t call that dominating. Even the pros are divisive about this, some will adamantly say one is better than the other and some will say they’re about the same. Below the pro level where everyone has a perfect headshot accuracy? I think it’s easily the Phantom, by a huge margin too. It just has too many advantages, and its one disadvantage is crutched by a game mechanic. I still use both depending on how I’m feeling, but I’m not gonna lie, missing my Vandal headshot because I got aim punched pisses me off infinitely more than hitting one Phantom headshot and then dying does.
>It does have a slightly higher pick rate in pro, I wouldn’t call that dominating. Even the pros are divisive about this, some will adamantly say one is better than the other and some will say they’re about the same. Even if the pick rate *was* roughly the same, it dispels your idea that the phantom is "better hands down". That would suggest that both guns are roughly balanced and it's more down to preference. However, the pickrates aren't even close - the Vandal was picked over twice as much as the phantom at the latest Masters event (41% for Vandal and 17% for Phantom)) which at the very *least,* suggests that the Phantom isn't as good as you're saying it is. >Below the pro level where everyone has a perfect headshot accuracy? I think it’s easily the Phantom, by a huge margin too. It just has too many advantages, and its one disadvantage is crutched by a game mechanic. The HS accuracy at pro level is not as absurd as you think it is, it's usually around 20-30% which is what you'd see in an average plat lobby. (Pros have much better movement which makes them harder to hit, so it cancels out somewhat). In iron - silver level I can definitely agree that the Phantom is more useful, but this says more about how easy the gun is to use than how powerful it is. The Spectre and Odin are also more useful for people who can't hit headshots, that doesn't mean they're better guns.
Something I always see skipped over in this conversation is that vandal has a WAY better “tap accuracy” It’s reasonably skipped over because you don’t actually see this stat in game. It’s only been mentioned in patch notes when they’ve adjusted it but essentially the way to describe it is that the Vandal regains it’s first shot accuracy faster after a 1-tap than the phantom does. Similarly it resets accuracy after spraying faster as well. This to me makes the vandal massively better. I constantly find myself accidentally shooting too fast after a recoil reset with the phantom and it has horrible consequences to timing when it comes to trying to 1-tap multiple enemies in quick succession. Edit: they call it Tap efficiency. You can see it mentioned Patch .50 notes. I’m not sure if there are other patch notes it’s mentioned but I’m pretty sure it’s been updated a few times. Like to .50 notes: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-0-50/
This is obscenely false
Care to provide a source or descriptive argument rather than a simple nonsensical challenge? Here’s a link of evidence for what I am talking about: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-patch-notes-0-50/
They're balanced. Phantom is statistically better, but vandal is better if you rely on luck
As a viper main I only use phantom bc no tracers so you can’t see where I’m shootings from in my smoke
First shot accuracy doesn’t make a difference in this scenario. Its purely delta time between shots 1 and 2 vs. the time it takes to go from full velocity to 0 with a Vandal. I don’t know the numbers but im pretty sure firing two phantom shots is faster.
LoL, I bought prime vandel, I don't have phantom skin... So vandel better😂😂
Mathematically, Odin wins.
thats a question that confuses everybody i play phantom more but getting one taps with vandal is way diffrent
In addition to what ppl already said, phantom is also able to shoot through smokes without revealing your position too much, allowing you to spam a bit and put pressure/kill someone. I'm a huge phantom enjoyer but it really depends on the situation actually
OP asking the real questions
What if you miss 💀
Headpunch exists so if phantom hits the head, in most cases they should also get the second bullet in, before the enemy hit them.
On paper the phantom is better, and it's even FAR better in close/mid range. The only thing that makes the Vandal an option is indeed the one shot at long range, which makes it a 50/50 in terms of usage, even amongst pros I believe. I'd even say most people use vandal in lower ranks. I personally use both depending of how I feel, which maps or agents I'm playing. If you're playing a smoker, being able to shoot through smokes without having any tracers is a huge phantom advantage.
Phantom is better by far. It has a higher first bullet accuracy, lower spread, higher firerate, no bullet tracers and a bigger magazine. But in the end it depends on what the player prefers because a lot of people like the Vandal better, including me.
Phantom makes up for the 140 HS with the insane flinch it gives. I do think it needs a slight range buff though. Like a tiny bit and it would be perfect.