JGOD explains why landing headshots rarely matters in Warzone Season 4

Season 4 made obvious changes that impact Warzone’s meta but, underneath the surface, also weakened SMGs, and no one is talking about it.

Warzone Season 4 increased base operator health from 100 to 150, bringing maximum health up to 300 for a player that is fully armored. This means it requires more shots to eliminate an enemy, which slightly slows down the game’s time-to-kill speed.

On paper, the update makes it slower for every weapon to down enemies and puts more onus upon the player to land all of their shots. However, Season 4 indirectly nerfed and buffed specific weapon classes in a way you won’t find on any patch notes.

JGOD unearthed a secret nerf to the entire SMG class after the most recent seasonal update.

SMGs indirectly nerfed in Warzone Season 4 update

Using statistics provided by TrueGameData, JGOD used Lachmann Sub (MP5) TTK stats to prove that the SMG class received a stealth nerf in Season 4.

Usually, in FPS titles, headshots deal the most damage. However, at point-blank range, the max armor damage for the Lachmann Sub is 30. JGOD explained that this number used to be in around the 40s for SMGs.

So, no shot does more than 30 damage, irrelevant of what extremity they hit with a shot. Bullets deal the same amount of damage to the head, body, arms, and legs.

“No matter where you are shooting at somebody in the first damage range, headshots will not matter.”

Even from 8.9 meters away, Lachmann Sub headshots only do a maximum of 30 damage compared to 23 for lower extremities. It’s a significant difference, but JGOD believes it still diminishes the return of hitting difficult shots.

“Headshots do matter, but not quite as much as they were before.”

It doesn’t also doesn’t help SMGs that the KV Broadside saw its 12 Gauge Dragon’s Breath attachment close-range damage increase slightly in Season 4. The buff vaulted the controversial weapon back into relevance.

“Because SMGs got nerfed quite a bit as a result of this, shotguns have closed the gap.”

JGOD reassured SMG users that only one or two shotguns are “really good,” but none are “super broken,” and the class still suffers from range limitations.

It will be worth keeping an eye on if players stick with SMGs or start going back to shotguns over the course of this season.