Warzone outdoes itself with another broken close-range gun
It seems Warzone's development team is slowly turning the battle royale shooter hardcore.
Overnight, just as players were starting to enjoy Warzone again post the AUG nerf, an even more overpowered weapon entered the scene. Unfortunately, as we've come to expect from the battle royale mode, the weapon's release doesn't appear to have been planned.
Warzone players discovered that the Sykov, a Modern Warfare pistol that's been sitting unreleased in the game files for months, has now emerged. You couldn't unlock the Sykov before, but some managed to level it up by randomly finding it in Warzone, and sometimes in multiplayer or co-op. Nevertheless, the Sykov wasn't a real problem because it was simply out of reach for most.
It now looks like Warzone developer Raven may be planning to finally release the Sykov pistol into the game with the upcoming launch of Season 3. This hasn't actually been announced, but the studio did confirm fixing the issue preventing some from unlocking, so I guess that's as good a confirmation that the release is intentional as anything.
Nevertheless, many are now running the Sykov, some even had earned some of its levels back when it was briefly accessible.
As YouTuber JGOD explained on Twitter, the Sykov's statistics make it extremely deadly in close-quarters, considerably more than the FFAR assault rifle currently dominating engagements at those ranges. Making matters worse, the Sykov pistol can equip an 80-round drum mag, and fire in full auto at an RPM of 880.
And, like all pistols, can also be used in Akimbo. Meaning you're essentially dual-wielding two fast-firing mini-SMGs.
JGOD's analysis of the damage model revealed that the Sykov does 35 damage to the chest and head within 11 meters, and to 29 damage out to 20 meters. The multiplier is lower for stomach and limbs, which get 27 damage within 11 meters, and 23 within 20 meters.
At a rate of fire of 880 in full auto, the Sykov achieves a time to kill between 477ms and 614ms in close quarters. This drops to a ridiculous 239ms-307ms with Akimbo.
These numbers could make the Sykov overtake the FFAR as the close-range king, even without bringing Akimbo into the mix, according to JGOD.
Raven will likely end up nerfing it, assuming it doesn't pull the thing down altogether. But you have to wonder why this keeps happening when the developer should have learned from the Diamatti and the Renetti before that. To say nothing of all the Black Ops Cold War weapons that continue to get nerfed, with the AUG being the most recent target.