Season 05 weapon balance: the AN-94 split, and what the numbers actually say

Season 05 landed on 23 July with a weapon pass on both sides of the franchise, and the most interesting thing in it is a weapon that was nerfed and buffed on the same day.

The AN-94 was nerfed in multiplayer and buffed in Warzone

In Black Ops 7 multiplayer, the AN-94's maximum damage fell from 30 to 24. Treyarch's stated goal was to remove its four-shot body kill inside the maximum damage range, so other full-auto weapons could compete with the hyperburst head on. The compensation was range: the maximum damage band stretched from 24.1m to 36.8m, absorbing the old medium band entirely. A weapon that used to have three damage bands now has two.

In Warzone, at the same patch, the AN-94's damage bands did not move at all — 38 up close, 34 in the midrange — and its minimum damage rose from 30 to 32. It also gained a 1.3× headshot multiplier (from 1.2×), 5ms off its aim-down-sight time, and roughly 8% less base recoil in Battle Royale and Resurgence.

This is exactly why Killstreaks holds the two contexts separately and refuses to merge them. A site that showed you one AN-94 page with one set of numbers would have to pick which patch note to believe. Both are true; they just describe different games.

The clearest single winner is the Sturmwolf 45

Most weapons in a balance pass trade something. The Sturmwolf 45 did not:

• Maximum damage 45 → 47
• Medium damage 41 → 42
• Aim-down-sight speed 170ms → 160ms
• Damage ranges unchanged at 13.8m and 23.2m

Damage up, handling up, nothing given back. That is rare, and it is the sort of change worth checking against the source yourself — the full table is on the Sturmwolf 45 page.

The long-range assault rifles all came down together

The X9 Maverick, MXR-17 and AK-27 were trimmed in the same shape: a point or two of damage, a meaningful cut to where that damage applies, and slower or slower- travelling bullets.

The X9 Maverick took the heaviest hit. Its maximum damage range fell from 50m to 42m and its medium band now ends at 55m rather than 60m, so the distance at which it deals 48 rather than 41 shrank by eight metres. Bullet velocity dropped from 930m/s to 900m/s, and aim-down-sight time went from 235ms to 245ms.

The MXR-17 is the more interesting case, because Season 04 had _extended_ its medium damage range from 55m to 60m only weeks earlier. Season 05 pulled it back to 52m — past where it started. You can see both moves stacked on the MXR-17 page.

The Rev-46 has now been improved twice in a row

Two consecutive seasons of handling buffs have taken the Rev-46's aim-down-sight time from 175ms → 165ms in Season 04 to 165ms → 160ms in Season 05, and its headshot multiplier from 1.2× to 1.3×. Season 04 also nudged its lower torso and leg multipliers from 1× to 1.03×.

It still has the lowest maximum damage of the verified SMGs at 26. What it has now is the fastest published handling in its class, which is a different weapon to the one it was two months ago.

What we are not telling you

We do not have usage data. We have no telemetry, no pick rates and no win rates, and we are not going to describe our reading of a damage table as though we did. Everything above is arithmetic on published numbers, plus judgement about what those numbers mean — which is labelled Editor-rated wherever it appears as a ranking.

We also do not have complete profiles. Rate of fire is unpublished for most of these weapons, which is why several of them show a shots-to-kill figure but no time-to-kill figure. That is a gap in what Activision publishes, not a gap we have filled in with an estimate.

Every figure in this piece is on the weapon's own page with its source next to it. If we have got something wrong, it should be easy for you to prove — and corrections get published.