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On August 3rd, we all were surprised by a new weapon balancing that impacted the Warzone meta. They decided to nerf again the NZ41, Marco, Blixen and more. Full details on the nerf here. The goal of this article is to go through the stats of the main meta contenders and to understand what is the true absolute meta for long range.
Table of Content
Let’s focus on the long range meta, and review the most important stats for it: Time To Kill, Average Down per mag and Muzzle Velocity. I will not include in this article recoil patterns, but i will definitely factor that in my final ranking.
For Long Range, i will compare the following guns: KG M40, Cooper Carbine, UGM-8, Kilo 141, M13, Bruen Mk9, Automaton and the Vargo 52. There are others that cool be included, but as we are looking for the absolute meta, we don’t need to focus on the other top tier viable weapons that will in the end not make the cut. Full long range meta available here.
Average Time To Kill
Let’s first focus on the average time to kill of the main meta contenders. The lower the time to kill at range is, the better! We need to focus on +40 meters ttk and the different damage drop offs.
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As mentioned, we are looking at the time to kill for long range, so anything under 30 meters is really not interesting for this analysis. And if we look at Time To Kill only, we have few guns that stands out of the pack:
- Bruen Mk9 has the best time to kill, with a 793ms at range. This is a killing machine and the Bruen MK9 is a little bit disgusting right now!
- M13 and Kilo 141 also kill insanely fast, but only until 45-47m. This is making those two guns excellent choices for small maps like Fortunes Keep or Rebirth Island.
- Vargo 52 and Cooper Carbine have almost the same time to kill at range: 851ms for the Cooper and 854ms for the Vargo 52.
- UGM-8 does not have an damage drop with a steady 913ms time to kill, no matter the range.. just saying.
KG M40 is surprisingly the worst of all those guns, when we look only at time to kill. We’ll see that the KG M40 will stand out in the other criteria that are crucial for long range meta. Time to kill is important, but not the only factor to take into consideration.
Average Downs Per Mag
If you are not playing solos, then another extremely important statistic is the average number of enemies that you can down with one single mag.
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And would you look at the UGM-8 with this crazy 10.42 average down per magazine. Of course the UGM-8 is an LMG so this is as expected, but the comfort of not having to reload ever is great.
Then let’s look the other guns, where two groups are emerging behind the UGM-8.
- Bruen, Automaton and KG M40 are leading the pack with 5.5, 5.36 and 5.07 respectively. This means that even on quads, you’ll still have 1 down of buffer in case you miss some shots or want to finish a down.
- Kilo, M13, Vargo and Cooper are a little bit behind with 4.33 average downs for the best of them. With all those guns, you’ll feel that you are running through ammo too quickly and might be not consistent enough for quads!
Other stats: Muzzle Velocity and Reload time
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This category, and especially the muzzle velocity is crucial for Caldera. The bullet velocity will increase tremendously your accuracy and ability to hit all your shots a long ranges, same idea as the recoil.
- KG M40, Kilo, M13 and Vargo 52 are the winners of this category. You can beam people out of the sky thanks to this insane bullet velocity! Automaton and Bruen are also great.
- Two main losers in the category: the Cooper and the UGM. This is the reason why the Cooper might feel weak and a “pea shooter”! And thankfully, the UGM-8 has a downside, otherwise it would be a truly broken gun.
Final Thoughts on the Long Range meta
The long range meta is now more balanced than ever. You have a good number of weapons that are excellent choices depending if you are playing solo, trio/quads, Caldera, Fortunes Keep etc.
Long range Meta Caldera
One very important criteria to consider for Caldera, is related to the optic. Vanguard guns have a huge advantage when it comes to the x3 x6 optic. This is probably the main element that is holding back all Modern Warfare and Cold War guns to truly compete!
If i had to choose one gun above the other and determine the absolute meta for Caldera, it would be the KG M40. Indeed, even with the higher TTK, the KG is the best in class when it comes to Average Damage per mag, Bullet Velocity and very important the easy recoil.
Then, not far behind we have the Bruen MK9 (but lacking the x6 optic) and the Automaton. Yes, Automaton is finally truly back into the top meta: downs per mag, muzzle velocity, low recoil!
UGM-8 is also a great choice, but be careful of the bullet velocity and reload time!
Long Range meta Fortunes Keep and Rebirth Island
Criteria for resurgence is different than for Caldera: you don’t really care about bullet velocity or high zoom optics and you will be looking more into the overall mobility and mid range time to kill.
And here it’s impossible to identify one absolute meta above the rest. All i can say is that you will have a lot of fun and be competitive with the Kilo, M13 or Cooper Carbine!
The KG m40, Bruen and UGM-8 are great options on paper, but mobility is not their strong asset so i don’t think they are really worth using against the others.
Also, let’s not forget about the Volk, Nikita and AS44 that are also incredible choice for Rebirth Island with insane TTK but a little bit more recoil. Read the full article about the best mid range Assault Rifle!
Long Range Meta and loadouts
Just click on the row you need and you’ll get the loadout for each of those guns. Note that those loadouts are thought to be good for both Caldera and Resurgence. If you want resurgence specific loadouts, have a look at this page.
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