Warzone patch buffs long-suffering Modern Warfare weapons

The latest patch for Call of Duty: Warzone has arrived, and Season 4 Reloaded brings some welcome news for Modern Warfare fans, as weapons from that game are getting more viable.

The viability of Modern Warfare weapons has been a sticking point for some time, ever since Black Ops Cold War’s weapons took over the meta. Some players (opens in new tab) went as far as calling the Modern Warfare weapons “unplayable” in the wake of more viable alternatives originating in Cold War and Vanguard.

But the latest patch shifts the balance significantly, as Charlie Intel (opens in new tab) notes. Vanguard’s powerful NZ-41 has been nerfed hard, with less recoil control, range, and damage potential. (The NZ-41 had recently gotten a fairly substantial buff.) The devs have some broad balance changes in mind for the assault rifle category.

“As it stands, the best performing builds are ones that result in the least amount of recoil,” the devs explain on the official site (opens in new tab). “It’s high time we take a pass at some of the major outliers so that Vanguard assault rifles are less likely to devolve into pin-point accurate lasers.”

That change comes on top of some direct buffs for Modern Warfare weapons. The CR-56 AMAX, Kilo 141, and M13 all have more damage potential, and the Kilo in particular no longer has its mid-range damage drop-off.

Those changes are already proving popular among players. “Honestly, best looking update I’ve seen since the day the game launched,” aminnesotabro69 writes on Reddit (opens in new tab). “Shows that Raven is actually really trying to find a gun balance and not just have Vanguard guns rule all.”

For more of the best battle royale games, you can follow that link.

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He’s been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.