On the game’s subreddit, yet another discussion started about the Deagle. The topic starter says shotguns are unnecessary in the current meta as they allegedly can’t compete with this pocket gun.
That’s a strong statement. Today, the CS.MONEY blog is going to check it with some disinterested math and give a definite answer to the burning question: is the Deagle in itself a balance issue or not?
The great & terrible Desert Eagle
The media culture knows few guns that boast an iconic status similar to that of the Desert Eagle. The Colt Peacemaker has been a symbol of the Wild West for a hundred years. Walther pistols have been firmly associated with the character of agent Bond for half a century. The Desert Eagle has been the ultimate weapon for a tough guy since the mid-eighties.
The gun is featured in numerous video games, notably in our favorite Counter-Strike series. Huge and expensive, with its damage and recoil off the charts, the Desert Eagle is a truly formidable weapon when wielded by a skilled player. Or maybe you don’t even need so much skill, because nowadays, many believe this gun is too easy to handle.
Damage & accuracy
The Desert Eagle is the most expensive pistol in the game. It ranks second in terms of damage per shot and first in terms of accuracy. It also boasts the best armor penetration. Only the AWP and the SG 553 handle the latter task better.
Those advantages are balanced by the aforementioned price, limited magazine, and sizable recoil. If you spam your fire, the first shot hits a head from 25 meters, and the second one — to the body — can fly past it from half the distance.
There’s also a not-so-obvious disadvantage. Every 500 units of distance the bullet flies until it reaches the target, it loses 20% of its damage. Even the Glock-18 loses damage slower!
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Playing at point-blank range
On paper, everything looks pretty balanced. If you want to kill, just shoot in the head and flaunt your skill. You can only shoot at point-blank range, and the chances are better if you stand still or even crouch down. In practice, it’s a bit more complicated though.
Let’s start with the damage. At the ten-meter mark, the Deagle won’t be able to kill with two shots if there’s armor. To simplify the calculations, let’s assume the distance is nine meters. That doesn’t seem plausible, does it? Yet it is. Any map from the current competitive set offers plenty of spots where firefights can happen at distances of less than ten meters.
On Inferno, for example, it’s the boiler, the stairs in the house at A Site, the spot between the CT boost and the pass to B Site, and a couple of other positions. Even on Dust 2, which is quite open, there are a lot of narrow spaces! Bottom line: a skilled player with a Deagle will find a place to spam fire on any of the competitive maps. That does look like a problem!
Competitor’s solution
The developers of Valorant came to an analogous conclusion. The game’s equivalent of the Desert Eagle is a revolver called SAR-6 Sheriff. It’s exactly the same: it kills in the head with one shot at close and medium range, its ammo is very limited, and it has a monstrous recoil.
The main difference is that the SAR-6 Sheriff always needs at least three shots to the body to kill. In addition, the revolver doesn’t boast the best damage at range. Beyond the 30-meter mark, the damage is no longer enough for a one-tap.
Now the SAR-6 Sheriff is on the border of the top 10 popular weapons in the game. Approximately at the level of the local counterpart of the USP-S, the Ghost. All in all, the situation is similar to that in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The main difference: the lower the player’s rank, the less often they buy the SAR-6 Sheriff.
So the Deagle is a problem?
It’s a tricky question. On the one hand, the Desert Eagle kills very quickly. The gun’s TTK amounts to 0.23 seconds, which is an extremely low value. The AK-47 needs a third of a second, and the MAC-10 almost half a second! This means that at point-blank range, the Desert Eagle will take down an opponent in the blink of an eye, and you won’t need to aim at the head.
On the other hand, there are only seven rounds in the magazine. When spammed, already the fourth bullet is very inaccurate. All those bottlenecks on Inferno that we listed above turn out to be too spacious for it. As a result, a player with a Deagle won’t be able to fend off several players at once. They will face a lack of either accuracy or rounds. Obviously, we’re not counting the scenario with five headshots in a row.
Besides Valve, part of the community sees no problem about the current state of the Desert Eagle either. For example, the authors of SlothSquadron’s CS:GO Weapon Balance Mod left this gun almost unchanged. They even noted that the gun occupies its rightful place in the game meta.
We are of the same opinion. The Desert Eagle is an expensive and effective gun that’s an inalienable element of the Counter-Strike series. By no means does it displace shotguns from the meta. After all, the MAG-7 is capable of making a frag with just one shot.
Skins can help you emphasize the expensive and deadly nature of the Desert Eagle. There are 32 different skins for this gun, from Japanese motifs to wood textures. And there are plenty of industrial guns to choose from as well.
You can purchase the coolest skins quickly and safely from us, at CS.MONEY. Be sure to check out our selection, and don’t forget to read the recommended articles. Here they are, on the right.
