Warzone players dread ‘unbearable’ close-range, shotgun-heavy metagame

Warzone YouTuber JGOD opened Pandora’s box yesterday by revealing evidence that points toward shotguns dominating Season One Reloaded, terrifying community members.

Season One Reloaded blew Warzone’s close-range meta wide open by nerfing the ISO 9mm and buffing the Striker 9 and AMR9. Then, the WSP Swarm’s near, mid, and far damage values suffered a significant blow a few days later. The dust wasn’t settled yet either, as the CoD devs returned and gave the AMR9 a surprise buff last week, resulting in the SMG becoming Warzone’s most popular gun according to CoD stats tracker WZ Ranked. Despite that, JGOD has recently made the controversial case for a different class outshining SMGs.

JGOD recently tested the time-to-kill speeds for every close-range meta weapon in Warzone and discovered how powerful shotguns are. The YouTuber revealed the Haymaker is capable of three-shot killing an enemy up to five meters away in 480 milliseconds.

Meanwhile, the Riveter is a fully automatic shotgun that can kill an enemy anywhere between 300 milliseconds to 750, depending on range. Finally, the Lockwood 680 requires a lot of skill as the pump-action shotgun punishes players for missing. But if you can land your shots, the devastating shotgun can kill an enemy in two shots and 684 milliseconds up to eight meters away. All signs point to the Lockwood 680 being the best shotgun to use, and community members agree, as the gun currently sits in 10th place on the WZ Ranked popularity rankings.

Warzone creator ModernWarzone posted an image of JGOD’s video on X and stirred up community members, with many admitting they fear the emergence of this new meta—and some are even leaving the game over their concerns. “Uninstalling until we ban shotguns. Vondel apartments are just coinflip shotgun fights on stairs,” one frustrated player responded. A second fan added: “Shotgun metas are so annoying, no skill.”

For comparison, the AMR9 kills in 576 milliseconds and the HRM-9 clocks in at 612 milliseconds. SMGs will always outclass shotguns in any engagement past 10 meters. Still, community members fear they will see a lot more shotguns in Warzone after JGOD revealed his findings to everyone.

If you want to get ahead of the curve and beat everyone else to the punch, check out our guide on all the best shotgun builds in Warzone season one.