So you find yourself walking down Catwalk, Hivemind Vandal in hand as you infiltrate the enemy lines; passing Cubby, you manage to get the perfect timing to slither into Garden and wait for that Sage anchoring A site. She doesn’t stand a chance. The kill gets a lot more special as you see a gorgeously yellow Prime Vandal standing by her dead body; so you greedily bunny hop for it, going in and out of Garden in a split second. Now equipped with the perfect skin, you finally take your time to look at your precious.

However, it is not happiness that shines in your eyes, and only disappointment can be seen in your face as you realize that the owner of the skin committed a fashion war crime putting a toaster buddy on it... And as you play, the only thing that comes to your eyes is the damned gun buddy. So, not being able to concentrate on your precise aim, you die miserably trying to hold your position as your team rotates from B…

In my thousands of hours playing FPSes, I can confidently tell you that a lot of my stupidest deaths were related to finding the most hyped weapon skin on the ground and going for them. I just can’t help it! Yet, it was through those miserable deaths that I realized the importance of having a nice set of skins. Not only does a nice set of skins boost your credibility when you join a new team, but it also gives you that ego boost, permitting you to swagger around clicking heads. Now, applying this in Valorant, you will normally think about the best finishers, reload and equip animations… there are a lot of important pieces while judging a skin. But there is one piece of decoration that can bring all this swagginess to a whole new level - or burn it to the ground, making you the sage in the little story above - and that is the Gun Buddy.

But pKay, then how do I choose the perfect buddy?

Well, fear not, because in this article I will show you what you need to look after while choosing the perfect gun buddy. Never again will another player say, “Cringe” or laugh after picking your weapon from the ground as only thoughts of “Damn that looks cool” will occupy their minds.

The First Pillar and the Zeroth Law: Looking at the Body of Your Weapon/Skin

The first thing you need to pay attention to while choosing a gun buddy is the weapon that you pretend to equip it with. Now, this does sound redundant, but being the foundation of the whole combination, and the very thing that we are striving to make look better, it is necessary to specify what you should look after when analyzing your skin.

First, look at the general form of the weapon: is it bulkier? Maybe it is on the slimmer side? As a rule of thumb, leaner weapons are easier to combine with since they may look like a blank canvas; in a bulkier one, you’ll need to deal with the extra volume of the gun. What you need to observe here, however, is that, while the structure of said weapon doesn’t change from skin to skin, the location of the details that each skin brings to the gun gives the impression of differences in its proportions.

The next step in the analysis is to note where said details are more prominent. In this step, I like to classify the skins into two different categories: the top-oriented and the bottom exclusive.

The top-oriented gets its name by how the details point your sight to the upper part of the weapon, making your attention flow through the gun until you find yourself looking at the barrel.

On the other side, the bottom exclusive goes by this name because the details of the skin work on the opposite side of the top-oriented ones; here you’ll see one bigger adornment that takes the limelight for itself in the bottom part of the gun. The flow it creates makes your eyes go in an up and down motion on your way to the barrel of the gun.

Now, why do we need to do all this work? To explain this, we need to understand the zeroth law of choosing a gun buddy: at the end of the day, what needs to shine is your weapon, not the buddy. To achieve this we need to complement or improve the harmony of the gun - in this case, you may see the gun buddies just like any fashion accessory you may put in your outfit.

But what if I just can’t see the ‘harmony’ that you talk about? Here is where our previous analysis comes to hand. Normally, these skin landmarks, such as the wolf in the prime Vandal or the giant circle of the origin Vandal, are closely bound to say harmony of the gun; they’ll be your allies in choosing your gun buddy. Try not to stray from the attention flow said details structure in your weapon and the harmony will maintain itself.

The Second Pillar: Looking into the Gun Buddy

Now that we know all the most important features of our guns, it is time to put our hands in the gun buddies. Here, the pivotal element that you need to pay attention to is the geometry of the buddy, being four the number of types of geometry for gun buddies:

• the longer
• the bulkier
• the smaller
• the pendulum format

Thinking in the longer geometry, you’ll find buddies like the Mic Drop and the Bullet buddy, while the bulkier ones are best represented by the Jack o’ Lantern and the Ancient Mysteries Revealed, or Octopus, buddies. The smaller type is quite easy to spot, considering their tiny size, this makes Potato Aim the best example here; also note that Coin type buddies will fit in this category - even if they’re a little bigger in comparison to the other buddies of the tag, their lean body makes their effect over the weapon resemble any other smaller buddy. At last, we have the pendulum format, which is the most common and irregular type of geometry, being a mix between the longer and bulkier ones; think of the Immortal Rose and Salmon Nigiri buddies.

In the image below you can see, from left to right, a bulkier, longer, pendulum format, and smaller geometry respectively.

Each geometry will have an effect while equipped on the gun - here is where the attention flow can be broken or complemented. You can see these effects and possible pairing combinations in the table below:

Just remember that the pairing column of the table should be used as a guideline since it is not an immovable truth. By analyzing the buddy by its shape, you can avoid making weird combinations and blow the harmony of your skin. However, at the end of the day, it is not only the geometry that will make it look good on the weapon. Each buddy is unique and you always need to pay attention to its details when committing to use it.

The Link: Colour

Now, at this point, you already know most of the dos and don’ts in choosing a gun buddy. Yet, there is one last thing that needs to be discussed, a really important one nonetheless: the colour palette of a said gun buddy. Intuitively we always look after similar colour palettes - basically analogous colours for those who understand the colour theory - between gun and buddy while choosing combinations in our skins, it is the easier way of knowing it will not have a garbage look after all.

I believe, however, that colour is not the single most important thing in the selection of a gun buddy, it is, actually, the place where we can better express ourselves. Just like when you pick your clothes, sometimes two strong colours can make a better whole than lots of hues of one single colour. Working in these colour variations can make you find the perfect spot to make your personality shine through your weapon. This also makes the selection of colour the perfect piece to link the form of the weapon and the gun buddy. Just remember that this possibility does not represent a free pass for you to put on any buddy without thinking it through.

Conclusion

Although the act of choosing a gun buddy can be hard, by following this analysis you will find yourself a much less daring task. If you don’t want to follow the analysis, though, just remember the zeroth law because, at the end of the day, as long as it looks cool, you're fine. I hope that with the help of this guide, you can swag your way up the ranks, making chins, and heads, hit the ground with your awesomeness.