Valorant added the Bandit pistol in Patch 12.00, serving as an in-between for the Ghost and the Sheriff, offering one-shot capabilities against heavy armour up to 10 meters and light armour up to 30. And that is a problem.

That makes it, as many people have pointed out, Valorant’s answer to Counter-Strike’s Five-SeveN, a pistol optimised for short-range combat that also doesn’t suffer at mid to long range.

The writer of this article typically makes Counter-Strike content, so he knows all about the Five-SeveN’s mildly OP nature in CS, but Valorant isn’t CS, and that will make the Bandit even stronger in the Riot game.

In fact, once the pro meta adopts it and it bleeds down into the casual playerbase, it will probably be so broken that the game becomes unplayable. 

Valorant doesn’t need a Five-SeveN

Although many people are happy to see a midpoint between the Ghost and the Sheriff enter the game, anyone who plays CS enough will tell you that the Five-SeveN is OP. In fact, it’s so OP that the only real balancing point for it that currently exists is the Tec-9, but even that pales in comparison to the Five-SeveN’s ridiculous nature at close range.

At least there are some extra balancing factors in Valorant. Unlike in CS2, where neither M4 can one-shot people with head armour, the Phantom can at close range. The Bandit also has 12 fewer bullets in its magazine, which is a huge factor in limiting its multi-kill potential alongside its reasonably high recoil after the first few shots. It also offers an extra option for the Attacking side on low-buy or eco rounds, one that was lacking previously compared to the Defending side, and admittedly, is a welcome addition.

But none of that matters, because if Counter-Strike isn’t really designed for the Five-SeveN, Valorant certainly isn’t designed for the Bandit.

The big difference between Valorant and Counter-Strike isn’t the gunplay or the map design, it’s not even the fact that Valorant has agents. It’s what the kits those agents have actually mean for the way rounds play out.

While agents now get more varied utility, there is still less utility on a Valorant team than in Counter-Strike. In CS, each player has access to a smoke, a HE, a flashbang, and a molotov, but the same can’t be said for Valorant. This means using utility to efficiently clear angles is even more important in Valorant, since there are many angles to clear in the game.

The lack of utility in Valorant is a significant advantage for the Bandit. There’s a far greater likelihood that the player utilising the Bandit won’t be cleared out and instead get to take a gunfight without being flashed, mollied, or stunned, and that means that good aim and/or poor spacing can easily add that multi-kill potential back in. 

Then there’s the fact that it can one-shot light armour. That makes it vastly superior to the Ghost on pistol rounds, and alongside the Outlaw, also makes it so buying light armour or regen shields is now a risk that just isn’t worth taking.

The final problem is that it costs just 600 credits. While that will stop Sage mains from buying it on pistol rounds due to the inability to get a wall, it won’t prevent other players who would otherwise have bought utility from sacrificing that utility for the ability to one-shot the players with light armour. Less utility is never a good thing, especially in a tac fps. 

BANDIT… pic.twitter.com/H97TimtG57

— LEV tunaso (@Tvnaso) January 6, 2026

How to Balance the Bandit

No one likes a force-buy meta. Counter-Strike’s experiences with the UMP, MP9, Five-SeveN, and Tec-9 are enough evidence for that. Thankfully, though, the nerfs for the Bandit are actually quite easy to figure out.

The most obvious one is to make it so it can’t one-shot heavy armor, because no pistol outside of the Sheriff needs to be able to do that. The fact that the Sheriff can makes it a high-skill weapon, but there’s far less skill involved when it comes to headshotting players as they come around a corner at close range. 

The second change should preserve the game’s utility value. By increasing the cost of the Bandit by 50 or 100 credits, much more of the utility in the game becomes unable to be purchased on pistol rounds, as well as making the extra cost of the gun more of a question mark on low-buy rounds, if it may then have a knock-on effect on the full-buy.

As the usage of the gun increases in pro play, both in terms of efficiency and frequency, the need for these changes will soon become apparent. If they don’t come, much like they haven’t with the Five-SeveN in Counter-Strike, too many rounds will be decided by the fact that a 600 credit gun can do what guns with far greater value can’t do, and that should never happen.