Getting Value out of Sasori Ranged Puppet

Hello! Getting back into the game after some time away and was super thrilled to see they added Sasori, as I love puppets and him a ton! Im struggling to figure out how to use his weapon though. It feels like i wanna take advantage of his close ranged attack, because his ranged option feels weird with that cone pattern. Is there something I'm missing?

Im using Thousand hands and flash slice with it atm, but im fine with using whatever to make best use of the weapon since I cant pull for the defense puppet 😭