Best practices for using animation blueprints (shooter game)

Development Character & Animation
1

I’m building a 3rd person shooter game.

The character can fight with multiple types of weapons. In terms of animations, there are 3 primary categories (each category has its own unique movement, attack, reload animations):

  1. Unarmed (punch to attack)
  2. Pistol
  3. Rifle

As for animation blueprints. What’s the best practice to implement these 3 categories? Should I have 3 animation blueprints, one for each primary category, and switch between them depending on the weapon the player has equipped? Or should I have just 1 big animation blueprint that encompasses everything?

2

1 Bp and IK properly set up to habdle weapons.