Shroud explains his thoughts on the Apex Legends Wingman nerf

The first major balance update for Apex Legends was released on March 6, with hot topics such as the Wingman pistol and hitboxes addressed – and streamer Michael ‘shroud‘ Grzesiek has weighed in on the changes.

Shroud was one of the many ‘influencers’ who participated in Apex Legends’ development, helping Respawn Entertainment with various gameplay decisions, and is even credited with suggesting the predictive recoil system.

He’s also one of the best players, with his natural skill for FPS games on PC allowing him to excel – particularly with the so-called “higher-skill” weapons, namely the Wingman.

The Wingman is a high-powered revolver, which rewards players who are accurate by dealing out 45 damage per shot to the body at all ranges – so you can only imagine what a player with such pinpoint accuracy like shroud can do with it.

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But has the March 6 nerf to the Wingman, which reduced hip fire accuracy and rate of fire, done enough? Shroud definitely doesn’t think so, stating: 

“I don’t think they did anything really. That was not the right nerf. If they were going to nerf the fire rate, they needed to really nerf it, or don’t touch the fire rate at all, and just nerf the damage. But, instead, they literally did nothing.”

While this was shroud’s initial thoughts on the matter, he changed his tune slightly after getting a chance to extensively test out the changes. 

Later on in this same stream, shroud clarified that the nerf was actually better than he originally thought.

Although this seems to be a topic of debate in the Apex Legends community, as some still feel that the nerf wasn’t enough and the weapon is still a bit too strong. 

As for other changes, or rather lack thereof, shroud explains that Respawn’s reluctancy to buff the Mozambique and P2020 (two notoriously weak weapons) is because they actually want some guns to be noticeably less powerful, to create a hierarchy of sorts in loadouts.

There is still time for these changes to settle in, and Respawn will be monitoring all feedback as well as gameplay data in order to determine if these changes were effective or not.