Los Santos and Blaine County — Michael, Trevor, and Franklin's three-protagonist masterclass.
GTA V's weapon catalogue is huge, but in practice every Los Santos player ends up cycling through the same handful of weapons across every mission and every free-roam session. The list below is the working loadout: the assault rifle you'll keep stickied to your D-pad, the sniper for every distance fight, the explosives the game funnels you toward on every flight mission, and the sidearm worth picking over the boring default Pistol. Ranked by usefulness in actual play, not catalogue specs.
The Special Carbine is the GTA V assault rifle anyone who plays seriously ends up using. Faster fire rate than the Assault Rifle, better recoil control, and a magazine that drains slower than its damage profile suggests. The default mid-range pick for both single-player heists and Online's busier missions.
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The Heavy Sniper is the second-tier scope rifle that quietly outperforms anything else at distance. Eight-round magazine, the punchiest single-shot damage in the regular catalogue, and the only practical pick for taking down attack helicopters from across the map. The MK II upgrade adds explosive rounds for the players who want to break the meta entirely.
GTA V's pragmatic sidearm. The Combat Pistol has a larger magazine than the default Pistol, better recoil, and more than enough damage to clear a 5-star wanted level if that's where you're heading. It is the gun the game arms you with by default at the Ammu-Nation tutorial for a reason: it punches above its tier.
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The Heavy Revolver hits like a small rifle and one-shots the kind of enemies a Combat Pistol would need three rounds for. Slow fire rate and small mag make it situational, but it's the sidearm that turns hostage missions into a single trigger pull. Pair it with melee for a satisfying close-quarters loadout.
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The default Pump Shotgun remains the close-range king in GTA V. One-shot kills inside ten metres, fast pump cycle, and reliable in every interior mission the game throws at you. It is also the shotgun the police use, which says everything about how universally the engine treats it as the right weapon for the job.
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The RPG is the rocket launcher the game leans on for every helicopter, every armoured vehicle, and every five-star police pursuit. Slow reload but high splash damage, and one of the few weapons that genuinely solves problems other weapons can't. Carry one in every free-roam session and you'll find a reason to fire it within five minutes.
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The Micro SMG is the drive-by king. Compact enough to fire from inside a car, fast fire rate, large magazine, and accuracy that holds up surprisingly well at mid range. The default Online weapon for sourcing missions and the only SMG worth keeping on the wheel for vehicle combat.
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The Marksman Rifle is the semi-automatic sniper that splits the difference between scope rifle and assault rifle. Use it in missions where a proper sniper is overkill but the Combat Pistol cannot reach. Excellent for the bunker defence and convoy interception missions where mid-range precision wins the fight.
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The Minigun is the chaos weapon. Heavy, slow to spin up, a magnet for police attention, and the only weapon in the game that makes an attack helicopter feel survivable when you're on foot. Not a serious mission pick, but the most GTA V weapon in the catalogue by a wide margin.
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The plain Assault Rifle is the AK-47 starter weapon every player owns first. It is outclassed by the Special Carbine in every metric except magazine size and price, but it remains the workhorse rifle of early-game playthroughs and the gun the police use in late-game chases. The reason it's last here is also the reason it's iconic: it is the GTA V rifle most people picture when they think of the game.
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