This is the second article in a series of three, if you would like to read about the M4a4 VS. M4a1-s click here! The Cz75-auto VS. P250 article is coming soon!

The p2000 and USP-S hold many advantages over eachother which are crucial for winning one of the most important rounds - the pistol round, which, if played right give a 3 round boost over your opposition. The majority of players take a likeness to either the P2000 or the USP-S and dislike the pistol they don't use. From experience I've seen that the USP-S is much more popular than the p2000, but gut feeling tells me this is all down to mostly nostalgia and the fact that the USP-S is a recurring pistol in the Counter-strike franchise, appearing in both Counter-strike 1.6 and Counter-strike: Source. As a result I feel the P2000 ends up getting neglected almost instantly and isn't given enough chance among Counter-strike users.

The choice between these two weapons is very difficult because making the wrong choice can potentially put you three rounds down from your opponent, and you end up blaming yourself wishing you had picked the other weapon, but it is not an easy choice to make as both of these pistols are very effective and situational. Though I would like to point out that both of these pistols slip up when facing armoured opponents and the better alternative is to grab either a P250/Cz75-auto. However I will say this:

Removing a silencer of the USP-S makes it the worst choice of all three options, do not remove it.

The biggest decider for most players is the ammo count and accuracy of the pistols as these are the two most important factors for pistol rounds with instantly killing headshots, so it is important to land those headshots. Logically the most accurate pistol of the two should be the automatic winner, but it's never that easy:

Accuracy:

To do this test I fired 20 bullets of each pistol at a wall and then screenshotted it - these were the results:

(USP-S VS P2000)

As you can see there is some significant difference, with the P2000 having more vertical recoil than the USP-S which would mean that the USP-S is slightly more accurate, meaning those all important headshots are easier to make.

Ammo count:

To me, this is the most important factor when looking at the P2000 against the USP-s because the pistol round is the round that Terrorists are most likely to rush on. The USP-S only has 36 bullets in total while the P2000 has 65, almost double the USP-S. This is important because there has been many rounds where a player is holding a location with the USP-S such as ramp on de_nuke, as it is narrow and close quarters 5 glocks automatically over-power the USP-S as the player has to go for the head on 5 individual players while worrying about ammo conservation. With the P2000 ammo conservation is less of a worry and it allows players to spam their firing button to make a quick retreat.

You can see that players using the P2000 are less cautious with their ammo count and will just try to land the shots on the Terrorists, even just body shots because they have the ammo to do so. This is where I feel the USP-S falls down, as a player without very good aim will easily get slaughtered by 5 glocks while trying to go for the heads where they could've just spammed the 5-man rush with a p2000. While they still would have probably died, their death would not be in vain as they would have probably dealt some damage, even if it's 30 damage to 3 seperate players it can make all the difference in the pistol round.

I personally feel like ammo is more important than accuracy when faced with a 5-man rush. The P2000 also gets an extra bullet in the magazine but I feel like this is almost irrelevent as most players have reloaded before their last bullet anyway.

The Silencer:

The scenario with the silencer is identical to the scenario with the silencer within the M4a4 VS M4a1-s debate. The silencer can allow you to make 1 or 2 easy kills if you come up behind the enemies as they will not hear your shots and it will take them a second or two to catch on to your location, if this is used well it can easily save a round, whereas coming up behind enemies with the P2000 is far more difficult as after the first shot they will more than likely all turn around and you will be gunned down by several glocks.

One important factor to definitely remember is that you are far EASIER to spot with a silencer which can make attempting to ninja in a corner faulter beceause the silencer sticks out! A lot of players forget this and it can lead to them dying unnecessarily!

Miscellaneous factors:

The damage is identical, the penetration power is identical and the rate of fire is identical. The silencer and accuracy are the only two real factors that should affect your decision on a practical level. However on an unpractical level of decision making, the USP-S looks much sexier than the P2000, this isn't to say that the P2000 isn't a good gun, it just looks really ugly and a lot of the skins for the P2000 are relatively ugly too, whereas I find that the USP-S skins are amazing:

(Appearance is entirely personal preference!)

The Summary:

Accuracy: P2000 - USP-S - USP
Ammo: P2000 - USP-S - USP
Damage: P2000 - USP-S - USP
Magazine size: P2000 - USP-S - USP
Rate of fire: P2000 - USP-S - USP
Reload speed: P2000 - USP-S - USP
Silencer: P2000 - USP-S - USP
Size of the gun in hand: P2000 - USP-S - USP

So which weapon do you personally believe is better out of the two? Of course it is always down to personal preference and performance, no two players are identical, each weapon has it's positives and it's negatives and you should always choose the weapon that you play best with, regardless of what others say or do. Comment below or on the Facebook page what your favorite is and why!