Axe

The most useless weapon in Quake. Only resort to using this if you are totally out of ammo for other weapons or want to humiliate an opponent.

Boomstick (BS)

This is the weapon you have when you respawn. This weapon can be lethal in good hands.

Double-Barreled Shotgun (SSG)

This is an extremely good weapon for close range combat. This weapon accompanied with quad can be devastating.

Nailgun (NG)

This is a rather useless weapon in my opinion. It doesn't do much damage. I'd take a shotgun or super shotgun over this weapon any day.

Super Nailgun (SNG)

This weapon can do some damage very fast, and especially with quad. This weapon is much stronger than the Nailgun.

Grenade Launcher (GL)

This is an extremely useful weapon. It can be used to lay down grenades to kill someone chasing you, spam an area, to spam respawn points for easy kills, etc. This weapon is often associated with "spamming".

Rocket Launcher (RL)

This is by far the most used weapon in Quake. It does a ton of damage, especially when you have quad. Most people you come across on the Internet strictly use this weapon. They don't know what to do when they don't have this weapon.

Lightning Gun (LG)

This is an extremely devastating gun when in good hands (especially when you are an LPB). This gun does 285 damage per second without quad, and 1,140 damage per second with quad. This is my favorite weapon. Most players on the Internet can't seem to aim this weapon well, which is a shame.