Visual Comparison of “Nerfed” Wingman vs Old Wingman

One of Apex Legend’s most popular weapons is the Wingman. The pistol is one of the most dangerous weapons in the game that rewards good accuracy and headshots. By default the weapon only carries 6 bullets (12 with extended heavy magazine) so you need to be precise when firing.  After seeing countless Reddit threads, multiple Twitch streamer complaints and seeing the weapon in the top of most pro players Apex Legends weapons tier list they decided it was time for a change. In the latest Apex Legends balancing patch, Respawn made some adjustments to the Wingman, but were they enough?

The balancing patch reads as follows relating to the Wingman:

• Rate of fire reduced from 3.1 -> 2.6 shots per second.
• Skullpiercer Headshot damage multiplier reduced from 2.5 -> 2.25
• Increased base hip fire spread and decreased the rate at which hip fire spread decays (shrinks back down).

Essentially, the rate of fire should be nerfed, the damage multiplier reduced and increased hip fire. Now the hip fire nerf is one that was needed as close rang players were able to get lucky and land head shots consistently. However, because the rate of fire was nerfed, the hip fire accuracy remained almost unchanged because it forces the players to wait before spamming their sequential bullets. The slower rate of fire allows the recital time to recenter making it basically as accurate when hip firing as before. Take a look at the video below (Source: Reddit) to see just how accurate hip firing the Wingman actually is:

Now the rate of fire should overall lower total damage output. However, players that were really good with the Wingman already shot the weapon slowly to focus on good accuracy. You can see in the video below (Source: Reddit) a comparison of DPS output by the pre-balance update Wingman vs the post-balance Wingman patch:

As you can tell from the two videos, it isn’t really much of a nerf at all. In fact it appears to only major nerf to the weapon is it’s spawn rarity. Respawn decided that they are going to stick by the Wingman and make it one of the top tier weapons in the game. To keep players happy they have made it much more rare and harder to find around the map, but is that really enough?