The Warzone Season 5 patch notes have arrived, and deep within their thousands upon thousands of words are some significant nerfs to the game’s most popular weapons and a rather irritating perk.
As detailed by Raven Software, the two dominating guns in the Season 4 Reloaded Warzone meta – the KG M40 and the Armaguerra 43 – are both getting nerfed, alongside other frequently-used weapons like the Marco 5, the H4 Blixen, and the Cooper Carbine.
The severity of nerfs does vary. The Cooper Carbine, for example, has only received some slight recoil control decreases ona couple of attachments, while the KG M40 has been pretty much massacred.
There are also some sweeping buffs or tweaks for certain weapon classes in Warzone Season 5. Snipers have once again had a little boost by decreasing their flinch (11% for heavy snipers, 40% for light snipers). Vanguard Marksman Rifles have also received a 33% flinch decrease, and they will also now utilise AR ammo rather than sniper ammo.
There are specific buffs for some surprising and largely-forgotten weapons too, including the BAR, the Grau, and the Fennec.
You can find all the exact changes to each weapon in the full patch notes here.
Aside from the weapon balancing, two of the battle royale’s perks are getting tweaked as well.
Battle Hardened is getting a buff to help with resistance to Stun and Flash Grenades. When explaining why Raven made this change, it was rather mysterious. “Some Players may wonder why this change is happening now, to which our reply is that there may be a surprise in-store during Season Five that warrants this change.” Your guess is as good as ours.
On the other side of the coin, Serpentine is getting a well-deserved nerf. The rather annoying perk will no longer give you resistance to explosive or burn damage (which is good news for EOD), and later in the season it’ll be getting a second nerf that make it only activate when tactical sprinting, rather than regular sprinting.
It’s a stacked set of patch notes, so expect some interesting meta shifts for what is, to the best of everyone’s knowledge, the final proper season of the original Warzone before the Warzone 2 release date arrives. Check back in with our list of the best Warzone guns in a couple of days to find out how the update has affected things.