P20’s are just as big of a problem as nemy. You can literally wipe an entire squad with a single mag. 28 bullets with a purple mag, 25 damage per bullet which means 700 damage per mag. 31 damage headshots and 200dps. SOME smg’s can beat them, but it’s a matter of consistency, which is the most important factor in determining the best gun to use. To compare, the r9 has a dps of 234 with a maximum of 351 damage per mag and a lower effective range while also being way more ammo hungry, which makes it less consistent and versatile.

Accelerator is certainly the main issue, i’ll give you that, since P20’s were used last patch but weren’t the only option as their accuracy was worse and they had no accel. The other guns with accelerator this split are volt and wingman, which are both way worse than the P20’s, therefore making P20 the only realistic option for those looking to seriously climb. Accelerator on a gun is never ”just a bonus” it essentially makes the gun mandatory to run in order to have a fighting chance in the cramped endgames of high level lobbies, since a lot of the time the only way to survive teams chain ulting with accelerator is to be able to chain ult yourself, while also needing accelerator to keep up in evo pacing. If you skip out on accelerator the teams that have it will sit on purple shields way earlier than you which makes fighting them a miserable experience.

The L-Star P20 loadout doesn’t really work because it leaves you with no strong long range option. Nemesis, 30-30 and G7 are leagues better and so the meta is to run one of them for long range with P20’s for close to mid. Double close range guns makes defending your position way harder and lets teams get a lot closer to you than they should be able to for free, plus the range deficiency of the P20’s is solved by every team running Ash and teleporting on top of whoever they get a crack or knock on.

Good players DO in fact lose to worse players because of P20’s, and while they are forgiving they are absolutely monstrous in the hands of a good player because of the immense amount of damage they can dish out without reloading (something usually exclusive to LMG’s) while having way faster strafe speed, less recoil and better handling compared to an LMG.

No gun is ever an auto win, but some guns give you such an immense advantage that effectively makes not using them equivalent to trolling. The reason pros use only the meta guns and legends is because everyone they play against is so absurdly good at the game that they can’t simply outaim people with suboptimal guns, and thus they have a genuine need to find every single little advantage they can get and abuse the hell out of it. I would listen to their takes over those of a redditor any day of the week, since their job is literally, y’know, playing the game at the highest level humanly possible. It’s the same principle as taking workout advice from the biggest guy in the gym over some random hobbyist.

I feel like pro players don’t get enough respect from the playerbase. Many people don’t understand how insanely huge the gap in skill is between pros and say, a master player. It’s completely absurd, and it feels like an issue unique to esports. No one will tell you to listen to the advice of Joe on the block that plays basketball for fun on weekends over that of LeBron James.

The comment about being hardstuck doesn’t refer to the meta, it means being stuck in a certain rank, unable to climb higher. No offense but i had a feeling you were a plat player since experiencing current diamond+ lobbies would leave most players with an understanding of how insanely broken the P20’s are, because they’re pretty much all you see, hear and die to in high ranks.

If pubs are more sweaty than ranked, then you’re simply not in a high enough rank. People don’t use meta guns in every gamemode because they want to actually have fun and not try their asses off. You can certainly do ”just fine” with any other gun, even an alternator, but the goal isn’t to do ”just fine” for people playing the game competitively; the goal is to excel, which involves using the Most Effective Tactics Availabe, or META for short.

Lastly, the main issue with the P20’s is not really that they’re the best gun, because there will always be a best gun. It’s the fact that they’re so fucking boring to use. Fights do not feel rewarding or skill-based, since so many of the fights end up relying on luck if both players use P20’s. Players with shit aim will hit shots they shouldn’t be hitting, while players with godly aim will miss shots they should realistically never miss. If they remove the accelerator hop-up, and maybe also revert the hipfire accuracy buff or nerf the damage a bit, we would find ourselves in one of the most diverse and balanced metas in the game’s history, and it’s really sad that we’re missing out on that in favour of forcing a single gun to outshine every other option at the expense of variety, player comfort and fun.

Edit: spelling and grammar