Massive weapon damage nerfs hit Warzone in an effort to increase overall time-to-kill

Raven is rolling out some major changes to the Warzone meta for Season 4 Reloaded, part of a plan to increase the game's time-to-kill.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Warzone Season 4 Reloaded arrives today, and Raven is introducing some fairly drastic changes to the game to celebrate the occasion.

Many assault rifles have been hit with quite severe nerfs to torso and headshot multipliers, meaning it's going to take players longer to kill with those weapons on average.

LMGs, meanwhile, are a more mixed bag; some will see headshot damage multipliers increased whereas others will see similar nerfs to the assault rifles. Submachine guns get slight buffs for the most part, and tactical rifle headshots are fairly similar (though headshot multipliers are down a touch).

"It is important to note that these Weapon adjustments were not made in a vacuum. When evaluating an individual change, some may seem quite drastic, but they were made holistically and in a way that supported a lock-step increase in average TTK across multiple Weapon categories," said Raven.

So, basically, all these weapon changes have been made to reflect each other and as of the update going live, the intended effect is that there's a level playing field between all weapon types. But we'll see how that works in the field.

"Torso Multipliers were a considerable focus of these changes with how often they would act as flat damage increases given how consistently that location could be hit. With reductions to these multipliers, we are placing a bigger emphasis on precision — a move which we feel is ultimately healthy for the game," the developer added.

Raven knows that the way meta in a live-service game works means that there'll always be a popular weapon – it's just trying to prevent a broken favourite dominating the game (which we've seen happen so many times in the past).

"We will take great care to ensure that the ‘best weapon’ never overstays its welcome and has effectiveness that scales with the skill of the handler," Raven noted.

"We will continue to compress outliers, both over and underperforming, until each weapon is viable at the very least. We do not want players to feel they are at a distinct disadvantage for not conforming to the generally accepted ‘best weapon’."

Raven added it'll be monitoring the situation going forwards, and will enact any changes to ensure "the game is in a healthy state following the biggest balance update in the history of Warzone".

It's going to be an interesting few days on the battlefield. You can see the full list of changes at the link.