Your weapon gives you up to three skills, and they are not all available from the start. The wiki states the unlock rule plainly: every weapon’s primary skill is unlocked at any tier, secondary skills unlock at copper tier, and tertiary skills unlock at iron tier.
That means the weapon you pick in the first hour only has one skill, and the weapon’s real identity does not appear until you have the metal to forge it. All data below comes from the V Rising Wiki’s Weapon Skills page and each weapon’s own page.
All 14 weapons, ranked by combo DPS
| Weapon | Skills | Combo DPS |
|---|---|---|
| Twinblade | Primary, Javelin, Sweeping Strike | 83.3% |
| Pistols | Primary, Fan The Hammer, Explosive Bullet | 76.7% |
| Spear | Primary, A Thousand Spears, Harpoon | 75.58% |
| Reaper | Primary, Tendon Swing, Howling Reaper | 73.81% |
| Greatsword | Primary, Great Cleaver, Death From Above | 73.33% |
| Daggers | Throw Dagger, Rain of Daggers, Release Daggers | 69.57% |
| Longbow | Primary, Multishot, Guided Arrow | 68.57% |
| Axes | Primary, Frenzy, X-Strike | 68.72% |
| Mace | Primary, Crushing Blow, Smack | 68.06% |
| Sword | Primary, Whirlwind, Shockwave | 64.71% |
| Crossbow | Primary, Rain of Bolts, Snapshot | 64.52% |
| Slashers | Primary, Elusive Strike, Camouflage | 54.55% |
| Whip | Primary, Aerial Whip Twirl, Entangling Whip | not listed |
| Claws | Primary, Lunge, Skewering Leap | not listed |
Twinblade has the highest combo DPS in the game at 83.3%, and Slashers the lowest at 54.55% — a gap of nearly 30 percentage points between the top and bottom of the list. Whip and Claws do not have a combo DPS figure published on their pages.
What the numbers mean, and what they do not
Combo DPS measures the damage output of the primary attack chain alone. It says nothing about the second and third skills, which is where most of a weapon’s actual identity lives.
The clearest example is the Sword. Its combo DPS is a middling 64.71%, but its two unlocked skills are both strong: Whirlwind deals 175% physical damage over 1.1s with increased movement speed during the spin, and Shockwave deals 100% physical damage while launching the target into the air for 1.6s, with a recast that teleports you to the target and strikes three times for 20% each.
That teleport-recast is the reason the Sword remains popular despite average primary damage: mobility plus a gap closer plus a burst, all on one weapon.
The tier gate is the real progression
Because secondary skills need copper and tertiary skills need iron, a weapon’s kit arrives in three stages:
- Any tier — primary attack only. Every weapon is a one-skill weapon here.
- Copper tier — your second skill arrives, and the weapon becomes recognisable.
- Iron tier — your third skill arrives, and the weapon reaches its full kit.
This is why “best skills early game” has a narrower answer than “best skills” overall: in the early game you are comparing 14 primary attacks, and combo DPS is the main differentiator. Twinblade, Pistols and Spear lead that comparison.
Picking a weapon by what you need
- Highest sustained primary damage — Twinblade (83.3%), Pistols (76.7%), Spear (75.58%).
- Mobility and gap closing — Sword, whose Shockwave recast teleports you to the target.
- Ranged — Longbow (68.57%) for primary damage, Crossbow (64.52%) for a different skill set, Pistols (76.7%) for the highest ranged combo DPS.
- Control — Mace (Crushing Blow, Smack) and Whip (Entangling Whip) both lean on disrupting enemies.
- Stealth and repositioning — Slashers, whose Elusive Strike and Camouflage are the reason to accept the lowest combo DPS in the game.
- Summon-adjacent and Unholy synergy — Reaper, which pairs with skeleton-based builds, and whose Legendary Artifact Mortira’s Lament consumes skeletons for power.
The two ranged weapons run on resources, not just cooldowns
Longbow and Crossbow look weak on a DPS table, but both carry a stacking resource that the table does not show. Longbow’s primary is a hold-to-charge shot dealing 60%-120% physical damage that grants Focus, stacking up to 3 times; a fully charged shot pierces up to 2 enemies, and each later hit deals 50% of the previous hit’s damage. Multishot fires 5 piercing arrows for 100% damage and consumes Focus, launching one extra arrow per stack at 20% bonus damage each. Guided Arrow deals 120% with a 2s fading snare, then turns to hit the same target again for 50%, and each Focus stack adds one more turn.
Crossbow works differently: its primary consumes Marked for 25% bonus damage and +7% attack speed for 10s, stacking up to 3 times — so up to 21% attack speed if you keep the mark up.
In both cases the combo DPS figure is the floor, not the ceiling. A player who charges Longbow shots and spends 3 stacks of Focus is doing noticeably more than 68.57% suggests, which is exactly why the raw ranking should not be read as “never play Longbow”.
How skills interact with the rest of your kit
Weapon skills are only half your loadout. You also carry one travel spell, two basic spells and one ultimate, and those come from the spell schools rather than the weapon — see best spells for that half.
The interaction is where Legendary Artifacts matter: each Artifact rewrites two of its weapon’s skills. The Gravecaller modifies Whirlwind and Shockwave, Hand of Winter modifies the Mace’s skills, Mortira’s Lament modifies the Reaper’s, and so on. If you like a weapon’s skills, its Artifact makes them stronger; if you dislike them, the Artifact will not save it. See best legendary weapon for all fifteen.
One universal rule worth internalising: all skills and actions can be cancelled early with the default X key. Cancelling a skill animation to dodge is a core combat technique and applies to every weapon in the game.
For combat fundamentals see the combat guide, for gearing the items guide and best items tier list, and for the enemies you will use these on the enemies guide.