Call of Duty: Warzone Season 4 Reloaded patch was the "biggest balance update in the history of Warzone"

And Raven isn't kidding.

The latest patch for Call of Duty: Warzone went live yesterday, bringing Season Four Reloaded (read more about that here) as well as a whole range of balance changes and bug fixes. But, this isn't just any kind of balance update, as this is Raven Software's first step in increasing the time-to-kill (TTK) in Warzone, a feature that should make combat less punishing. However, getting to that point requires a lot of tweaks, and hence the "biggest balance update in the history of Warzone" has been delivered.

I won't pick apart the patch notes because it is very, very long (you can read them here however), but in the notes, Raven did give a short explanation as to why they are making the changes.

"The following changes are our first major step towards increasing the average Time-to-Kill within Warzone," reads the statement. "It is important to note that these Weapon adjustments were not made in a vacuum. When evaluating an individual change, some may seem quite drastic, but they were made holistically and in a way that supported a lock-step increase in average TTK across multiple Weapon categories. Torso Multipliers were a considerable focus of these changes with how often they would act as flat damage increases given how consistently that location could be hit. With reductions to these multipliers, we are placing a bigger emphasis on precision — a move which we feel is ultimately healthy for the game."

Raven has also mentioned that there will always be a "best weapon" and that is just the nature of the game, but that the team intends to ensure one weapon "never overstays its welcome". The developer also stated that it is doing its best to provide a range of competitively viable weapons with these changes, which explains why some of the balance tweaks may seem a little extravagant.

As Warzone is quite a large game with a lot of moving parts, don't expect this patch to be the answer to the TTK conversation, as Raven did also note that it "will be closely monitoring Weapon performance to ensure the game is in a healthy state" following the update.