One of Warzone’s most popular meta weapons gets major nerf as part of balance update

The latest Call of Duty patch prominently features the necessary updates and content for the Shadow Siege event, effectively setting the stage for the Modern Warfare 3 reveal event on Thursday, Aug. 17. But before the game gets closer to switching over the MW3, some changes to Warzone weapons could shake up the meta first.

The Aug. 16 patch includes a number of weapon changes that apply to Warzone only, which includes DMZ, and the result is a wave of buffs across multiple weapon categories. But two of the game’s most well-known and commonly used weapons got nerfed instead, just a day before the MW3 reveal.

The TAQ-V battle rifle, one of the most heavily used weapons in Warzone, got absolutely hammered by nerfs, receiving decreases to its maximum, close-mid, and minimum damage values, in addition to its multipliers for neck damage, limb damage, and torso multiplier. Only the TAQ-V’s head damage multiplier appears to remain untouched.

This is a major change to one of the game’s more relied-upon weapons. On the Warzone stats database WZRanked, the TAQ-V is listed as an S-tier weapon and is searched for the most when looking up loadouts. After the Aug. 2 update drastically nerfed the Cronan Squall BR, the TAQ-V rocketed back up the charts.

Related: The best TAQ-V loadout in Warzone

The Signal 50 sniper rifle also got nerfed but much less dramatically, receiving a decrease to its neck damage and upper torso damage multiplier. Overall, the weapon changes outlined in today’s patch notes are buffs to some of the game’s less-used weapons.

Under assault rifles, the Chimera, Lachmann-556, and M16 all received straight-up buffs, with both the Chimera and M16 receiving both damage and body part multiplier increases. The FR Avancer, which was introduced this season, got increases to close-mid damage and all its body part multipliers, but also got a maximum damage reduction.

A handful of shotguns and battle rifles also received similar buffs, as did the Lockwood MK2 marksman rifle and the Fennec 45 SMG.