Modern Warfare & Warzone update nerfs Akimbo .357 pistols: patch notes

Infinity Ward have rolled out a new update for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on May 7 – one that’s finally nerfed the highly-overpowered .357 Snake Shot pistols that had been terrorizing Warzone in recent weeks.

On its own, the .357 handgun is one of the worst guns in Modern Warfare, but when equipped with the Akimbo weapon perk and Snake Shot attachment, the dual wield became arguably the strongest setup we’ve seen so far in Warzone.

However, those days might now be in the past, as Infinity Ward released a patch on May 7 that implemented a “damage rebalance” to the Snake Shot aspect of the pistol.

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While the exact details of these balancing changes were not revealed, expect the magnums to no longer pack the same punch, especially since the patch also addressed a bug that was causing the Snake Shots to do too much damage at long-range.

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On the flip side, IW did reduce the fire delay on both the Lightweight and Match Grade trigger attachments on the .357s, which means that they could be shot at a faster rate.

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One other important note is that this patch has tuned the smoke challenges to be “a bit more forgiving,” so the recently-added Bruen MK9 LMG should be a lot easier to unlock.

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Modern Warfare & Warzone May 7 update patch notes

• Tuning all smoke challenges to be a bit more forgiving. This includes the challenge to unlock the Bruen MK9
• Fix to help prevent vehicle exploits
• Various exploit fixes, including Ground War Infected
• GameBattles: Fix for a few issues where players might not be able to join a new match
• Reduced fire delay on the Lightweight and Match Grade trigger attachments on all .357 calibers
• .357 Snake Shot damage rebalance
• Fixed a bug where the damage on the .357 Snake Shot was too high at longer distances

Now the question becomes whether or not the Akimbo .357 Snake Shot setup is still viable in multiplayer and Warzone, which only time will tell at this point.

Early reactions to Infinity Ward’s announcement suggested that the guns still get a lot of one-shot kills, so if they’re still reliable enough, players will undoubtedly be hesitant to move away from them.

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However, if they’re no longer great, then there’s speculation that the meta could shift towards the Akimbo Renetti, the free new pistol in MW that was added at the start of Season 3.

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There’s also a chance we could see the Akimbo handgun trend get largely abandoned following this update; a lot of people won’t mind going back to the meta-strategy of using the MP7 or MP5 as a secondary since both SMGs still shred in Warzone.

As always, make sure to follow us on Twitter @DexertoINTEL for all the latest Modern Warfare and Warzone news, updates, guides, and more.