News - Massive Season 1 Balancing Patch Details. Warzone 2 Buffs & Nerfs
There is a lot going on here, so that's going to be the primary focus of today's article, but I will also mention some of the other changes that came with this update, keeping in mind that everything I mentioned here is focused on multiplayer.
Smg hipfire buff
And diving right in, the first thing they mentioned is that they decrease the hip fire spread penalty when firing and moving with SMGs.
And this was meant to apply across the board to the SMGs, and unfortunately I wasn't able to detect any difference here while firing and moving, as you can see I'm going to fade from prepatch to post patch pay really close attention to the hipfire indicator and as you can see nothing changed there and I did test this with all of the Modern Warfare 3 SMGs I'm not going to bore you with every single one of them but it was the same result every time so that's a bit unfortunate at least with my testing method I wasn't able to detect any difference here whatsoever perhaps something did change here and it's just not something that I can detect with this particular method of testing , however let's get into the next thing which was with the MTZ 556.
Mtz-556 nerfs
They nerfed the hip fire across the board, so this is well standing, well crouching, and well moving while firing. Essentially, all these values are reduced between 4 and 10%, so in general, you'll notice the MTZ 556 isn't quite as good at hip firing. Next, a couple of the specific attachments for the MTZ 556 were nerfed.
The first one is the MTZ n heavy short barrel, and with this, they mentioned a decrease in the hitfire spread benefit by 5%. So previously, it gave you a 15% benefit. Now it only gives you a 10% benefit, but I also noticed they adjusted the downsides with this as well, and it's actually going to harm your damage range and your recoil values a little bit more than pre-patched.
Similarly, the Breu and Thunder v9 stock on the MTZ 556 also got nerfed a little bit, and it was a similar story here: pre-patched, our Hipfire spread Max would be reduced by 21.2%. Post-patch, it's now just 15%.
Bas-b semi-auto buffs
Mill seconds all the way down to 230 milliseconds, which is really, really fast for this game, so semi-auto on the BBY is definitely viable now, and that's nice to see because this was the one broken one in semi-auto.
Sidewinder buffs
Next, let's get into The Sidewinder, and the first thing they did with The Sidewinder was they just cut down the aim-down sight time from 2 180 milliseconds down to 265.
Milliseconds, and then on top of that they adjusted The Recoil values for three of the attachments the first one is the tempus Predator Precision barrel with this they mentioned they increased the gun kick recoil control benefit by 5% and here's your prepatch versus post patch honestly you won't see too much of a difference in the actual recoil plots themselves next we have the Huntsman series R integrated suppressed barrel and with this they increased The Recoil gun kit control benefit by 7% on The Sidewinder, again looking at it prepatch versus post patch I'm not seeing a huge amount of difference here but then finally we have the RB Borealis rear grip and they increase the recoil gun kick control benefit by 5%.
And you can see pre-patch versus post-patch there, and unfortunately, that's all they did with the Sidewinder personally. I still think this gun could use some more improvement in general, but at least with that improved aim-down sight speed, it'll be a little bit better post-patch compared to.
Striker buffs
Next, let's get into SMGs, and we saw some really nice handling improvements, especially with various SMGs. The first one is with the 45 Striker.
The aim-down sight time was sped up from 230 milliseconds down to 215 milliseconds, and our sprint-out time was reduced from 110 milliseconds down to 100 milliseconds.
Wsp swarm buffs
So that combined with the previous buff to the striker I think makes this a pretty solid choice I think these were appropriate Buffs for this gun then with the wsp Swarm they improved the aim down sight time from 190 milliseconds down to 175, milliseconds that is an insanely fast aimd down sight time and not only that our Sprint out time was improved from 110 millisecs, down to 88 milliseconds which again is a very fast Sprint out time and I think these are nice improvements to the wsp Swarm and then finally for the SMG category with the striker 9 we saw some similar improvements our aim down sight time was improved from 225 milliseconds, down to 205 milliseconds and our Sprint out time was reduced from 110 Mills down to 100 milliseconds.
Striker 9 buffs
With this one unfortunately I don't think this makes up for how bad they nerfed this with the previous weapon balancing updates I still think the striker 9 is not a very good choice for you but this will at least make it feel a little bit better than it did before this update, and unfortunately that's all we saw to the SMG category honestly I was kind of hoping for a few more improvements to all of the SMGs to be honest aside from maybe the Rival 9 I think that one's in an okay state but that's just my opinion on that now let's move on to the riot shield adjustment I don't want to say Nerf or buff cuz it was a little bit of both, the first thing they did with this is they improved our melee damage from 50 up to 75.
Shield adjustments (buff & nerf)
Which means instead of being a three-hit kill, it's a two-hit kill, so if you're using that riot shield as your primary, this is a net buff to the riot shield. However, now that you have the riot shield on your back, you're going to get a flat 10% reduction in your movement speed, which is quite noticeable, and this applies when you're sprinting or just walking, or when you're strafing in a gunfight.
And I'm personally really happy to see this. This is literally the only weapon in the game that gives you an active benefit when it's stowed, and it's not even in your hands, so I think this downside is very appropriate.
Lockwood 680 tac stance?
After that, let's circle back to the Lockwood 680 shotgun. While most of their patch notes are very clear, and I really appreciate that they provide actual values, this one was very confusing, and I don't quite understand it.
They mentioned that this stance will no longer reduce the damage pellet count. And I'm not sure what damage pellet count means, but I checked pre-patch to see if your pellet count was any different when in tact stance versus when hip firing, for instance.
