06/18 HEATWAVE PATCH ANNOUNCEMENT

[MageLO 385]

Hello everybody,

 

Our standard weekly maintenance will be held this Thursday (06/18) starting at 9:00 AM UTC. The game should be back up and running in 6 to 8 hours.

 

This patch marks the beginning of our Summer 2026 Heatwave! Event, play Missions or Minigames to progress the Heatwave! Event role awarding Joker Tickets, new Titles as well as one of two faction based weapon skins whilst enjoying scheduled gameplay bonuses over the course of the entire event! You can find out all the details about the Heatwave event in our written blog post.

 

Balance changes

 

 

Todays update includes a large number of experimental pistol changes following a new design approach, these were tested and iterated on with the help of our testing team over the last month and we're now at the point where we feel confident in trying these out on the Live servers to gather more feedback and see how this new approach affects the meta in the ways we're hoping it will. Before we head into the details we wanted to take the time to go over what prompted this design approach.

The Colby .45 has been at the top of the Secondary Meta for an extremely long time for good reason, it is supposed to be one of the best if not the best secondary in the game within short to medium ranges should the user have the required skill to consistently utilize its strengths despite its glaring weaknesses of high recoil, low magazine capacity and poor accuracy when firing as soon as you come out of sprint. We have seen the constant feedback about the Colby .45 feeling overpowered when playing against players who mastered the weapon but because of the effort and consistency required to make the Colby .45 be this strong our design approach was to bring other pistols up to par and able to beat the Colby .45 but not as versatile to ensure that players who mastered the Colby .45 are still rewarded for their mastery of the gun. This also directly influenced the design of the Joker M9 which was supposed to be a a direct counter to the Colby .45 in close range scenarios, giving players yet another alternative to combat the Colby .45.

The Joker M9 was a final attempt to balance around the Colby .45 AP to see if there is going to be a decrease in negative feedback about the Colby .45's power and following the release of Legends and the Joker M9 becoming available to all players via regular contact progression it quickly became apparent that this design approach is not working as it created a scenario in which there was negative feedback about both the Colby .45 AP as well as the Joker M9 with users from both ends being unhappy about the state of the other weapon. 

Following this increase in negative feedback and many community suggestions including extensive discussions in our testing community we started working on an experimental balance pass that addresses the issue of Secondary weapons being too powerful and often working well enough within closer ranges to consistently beat out primary weapons that are designed to perform best in close range.

All of the changes below are experimental, we will be monitoring the situation closely and make changes based on further feedback or even fully revert changes and go back to the drawing board should this approach not work out either. We also understand that many of these will throw off years of muscle memory but our hope is that these changes will diversify the Secondary meta whilst also allowing Close range weapons more freedom to exist.

 

 

Colby .45 AP

 

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.8s to 0.86s.
• Improved accuracy when coming out of sprint.

 

FR0G

 

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.8s to 0.86s.
• Improved accuracy when walking and running.
• Decreased Bloom per Shot.

 

Joker M9

 

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.8s to 0.9s.

 

Mountie

 

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.78s to 0.82s.
• Burst Interval decreased from 0.45s to 0.35s.

 

N-FA 9

 

• Health damage decreased from 70 to 66 to increase its time to kill from 0.63s to 0.675s.
• Increased magazine capacity from 28 to 31.
• Increased reserve ammo from 168 to 186.
• Reduced Horizontal Recoil by 16%.
• Reduced Vertical Recoil by 5%.

 

S-AS PDW

 

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.84s to 0.876s.

 

UL-3

 

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.84s to 0.876s.
• Decreased maximum bloom.

 

OCA 'Nano'

 

• Decreased equip time from 0.8s to 0.4s.

 

RFP-9

 

• Reduced sprint delay from 0.525s to 0.425s.
• Improved accuracy when walking, running and sprinting.

 

Obeya FBW

 

• Improved base accuracy from 19cm to 18cm.

 

Thank you for your patience.

[a Pair of Socks 128]

Im sure the 0.06ms TTK increase will surely fix the 45 as that's precisely why everyone thinks the 45 is overpowered.

[koenyboy500 82]

Here's to hoping the S-AS PDW nerf makes the gun better at keeping up with it's own bloom thus making it more accurate.

Fr0g looking extremely favourable now which is personaly something I enjoy but in the grand scheme I'm unsure of.

 

RFP, oh man. I used to play entire matches with that alone with a buddy of mine. I quite enjoyed that but it was a bit rediculous.

 

Still hating the Nano. A VERY personal issue with that thing CONSISTENTLY being whipped out a snipers arse to then have a pocket SMG. AND it was something money couldn't buy (directly)... makin' me jealous >: (

Edited Thursday at 10:16 PM by koenyboy500
(wanted emote not to be an icon but text)

[purpleHorizons 143]

On 6/5/2026 at 12:18 PM, MageLO said:

Hello everybody,

 

Our standard weekly maintenance will be held this Thursday (06/18) starting at 9:00 AM UTC. The game should be back up and running in 6 to 8 hours.

 

This patch marks the beginning of our Summer 2026 Heatwave! Event, play Missions or Minigames to progress the Heatwave! Event role awarding Joker Tickets, new Titles as well as one of two faction based weapon skins whilst enjoying scheduled gameplay bonuses over the course of the entire event! You can find out all the details about the Heatwave event in our written blog post.

 

Balance changes

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Todays update includes a large number of experimental pistol changes following a new design approach, these were tested and iterated on with the help of our testing team over the last month and we're now at the point where we feel confident in trying these out on the Live servers to gather more feedback and see how this new approach affects the meta in the ways we're hoping it will. Before we head into the details we wanted to take the time to go over what prompted this design approach.

The Colby .45 has been at the top of the Secondary Meta for an extremely long time for good reason, it is supposed to be one of the best if not the best secondary in the game within short to medium ranges should the user have the required skill to consistently utilize its strengths despite its glaring weaknesses of high recoil, low magazine capacity and poor accuracy when firing as soon as you come out of sprint. We have seen the constant feedback about the Colby .45 feeling overpowered when playing against players who mastered the weapon but because of the effort and consistency required to make the Colby .45 be this strong our design approach was to bring other pistols up to par and able to beat the Colby .45 but not as versatile to ensure that players who mastered the Colby .45 are still rewarded for their mastery of the gun. This also directly influenced the design of the Joker M9 which was supposed to be a a direct counter to the Colby .45 in close range scenarios, giving players yet another alternative to combat the Colby .45.

The Joker M9 was a final attempt to balance around the Colby .45 AP to see if there is going to be a decrease in negative feedback about the Colby .45's power and following the release of Legends and the Joker M9 becoming available to all players via regular contact progression it quickly became apparent that this design approach is not working as it created a scenario in which there was negative feedback about both the Colby .45 AP as well as the Joker M9 with users from both ends being unhappy about the state of the other weapon. 

Following this increase in negative feedback and many community suggestions including extensive discussions in our testing community we started working on an experimental balance pass that addresses the issue of Secondary weapons being too powerful and often working well enough within closer ranges to consistently beat out primary weapons that are designed to perform best in close range.

All of the changes below are experimental, we will be monitoring the situation closely and make changes based on further feedback or even fully revert changes and go back to the drawing board should this approach not work out either. We also understand that many of these will throw off years of muscle memory but our hope is that these changes will diversify the Secondary meta whilst also allowing Close range weapons more freedom to exist.

 

 

Colby .45 AP

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.8s to 0.86s.
• Improved accuracy when coming out of sprint.

 

FR0G

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.8s to 0.86s.
• Improved accuracy when walking and running.
• Decreased Bloom per Shot.

 

Joker M9

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.8s to 0.9s.

 

Mountie

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.78s to 0.82s.
• Burst Interval decreased from 0.45s to 0.35s.

 

N-FA 9

• Health damage decreased from 70 to 66 to increase its time to kill from 0.63s to 0.675s.
• Increased magazine capacity from 28 to 31.
• Increased reserve ammo from 168 to 186.
• Reduced Horizontal Recoil by 16%.
• Reduced Vertical Recoil by 5%.

 

S-AS PDW

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.84s to 0.876s.

 

UL-3

• Rate of Fire decreased to increase its Time to Kill from 0.84s to 0.876s.
• Decreased maximum bloom.

 

OCA 'Nano'

 

• Decreased equip time from 0.8s to 0.4s.

 

RFP-9

• Reduced sprint delay from 0.525s to 0.425s.
• Improved accuracy when walking, running and sprinting.

 

Obeya FBW

• Improved base accuracy from 19cm to 18cm.

 

Thank you for your patience.

 

Balancing TTK by changing rate of fire (affecting tapping muscle memory) is a large mistake.
- Why would they nerf the S-AS PDW?.... It was completely fine. I would have lowered made these changes: Run Modifier=1; ShotModifierCap<1,01; CrouchModifier≤0,7; Maybe even adjust the "Accuracy Radius @ 10m" statistic.
- The .45 got a indirect buff.... why? Why would they change SprintModifier=1,5 to something lower?.... You are indirectly buffing it's total accuracy during gameplay. The 60ms difference in TTK is not enough to offset it...
- RFP & FBW buffs are going to be a good buff. I don't see the necessity of it though.
- NANO got unnecessarily buffed, but it'll still be mediocre. It's close to FR0G Kokoe levels of Equip Time 
- The NFA9 got a buff... regardless of this trivial +45ms TTK difference. I'd have rather seen them change the "Accuracy Radius @ 10m" statistic to ≤35cm and buff the CrouchModifier<0,8, set WalkModifier=1 & RunModifier=1 and set Marksman Modifier<0,9 
- Buffing FR0G to the extents mentioned in this patch are going to be a slight issue, as it's already top 3 in terms of bullet spread secondaries while hipfiring or walking. Changing the values from WalkModifier=1,2 & RunModifier=1,3 is bound to create even more issues...  

I dislike the fact that they're omitting exact weapon stats again on some of these weapons.
A overall trivial weapon balancing patch, but better than doing nothing I suppose...
I'd rather see them balance the districts, add a internal frame rate limiter, get away from Scaleform & add a map notification pinging system (without entering the map for it).

What's also hillarious to me is that ARMAS still isn't account lifetime only, which is the vision Matt has for ARMAS as per the last AMA.
What's the point of sales if the interface of ARMAS, the main income source of this game, still isn't solved?

Edited 8 hours ago by purpleHorizons

[EC2Jonathan 35]

MCD APPROVES THIS POST!!!

Players can thank MCD for the .45 changes.

 

-

[BlatMan 744]

- The .45 is dead to me. Restore it to it's release stats. I think I'm the only person who doesn't have hatred towards others using the .45.

- I like the Nano change. It's slow draw time made it useless in most situations. 

- I like the RFP-9 changes. Maybe it will be usable again.

- I don't know how I feel about the FBW change. It's the starting weapon. It's suppose to be not quite good enough at everything. This might make it too accurate, indirectly decreasing it's ttk.

- The UL-3 changes don't make sense. The problem with the UL-3 is the slow draw time. It's a secondary designed to be used in close range, but only 1 variant is capable of that. It should be changed to 0.35s, like the FR0G and RFP-9.

 

It doesn't matter though. There's no point in signing in when there's still server sided network problems. This is a shooter, the bullets need to hit where the game says they will hit. You seem to have forgotten that.

[MidnightQ 12]

Release this...

 

[TheMessiah 431]

nice event - 0 interest (240-270)
nobody expect this secondary changes..why dont you focuse on improving the missions for example?
theres so much work to be done

Edited yesterday at 09:58 AM by TheMessiah

[MACKxBOLAN 494]

Well U kids finally got your way, .45 was already a nerf with STK of 5 close range and 15 shots at range.

Somebody probley shot a gold with it so they nerfed it, So now my spring action bb gun firing a 4.5 mm round, 

firing when new bout 380 fps, and is old so 100 fps, is now more deadlier and has a lower ttk/stk than any 

apb pistol. 

[Darkzero3802 642]

SoonTM

[cowhorseman 486]

you guys going to roll over the premium line on armas any time soon? been the same thing since feb. put some guns up that are rare or can not be obtained in game normally. 

 

in fact be funny put the FFA up for sale

[PonuryZniwiarz 66]

Personally i used ofet UL-3 jersey devil and NFA - theyy weerent good before but kind funny to use u could get some kill in very close range like face to face, but hand no chance vs colby/ fbw and other semi auto in over 5m range, now its even hard to kill with it when u camp behind corner, best change at all is colby ap, yukon brust and m9 nerf. rest is like make bad gun even worse, i want to say i have all of them pulse check was kind of easy to use its good that they all semi got nerf, but nfa and ul-3 /pdw/mountie changes should be done by other way? Do you even check other guns in test? its like finnally we nerf ap but other guns also XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[PonuryZniwiarz 66]

I need to make break from game and wait till they test their changes first, why nerf bad guns used by 1% of player base. Please NERF NFAS is too good and ISSR-A and DOW thumper its little op please make it 4 shoots to kill. Definnitely NFA with 3m range was too good in compare to colby ap now players just hit u 2 times  rune like crazy to u run out of ammo and shoot rest of bullets. Remove that changes u make it even worse

[koenyboy500 82]

On 6/5/2026 at 12:18 PM, MageLO said:

This patch marks the beginning of our Summer 2026 Heatwave! Event, play Missions or Minigames to progress the Heatwave! Event role awarding Joker Tickets, new Titles as well as one of two faction based weapon skins whilst enjoying scheduled gameplay bonuses over the course of the entire event! You can find out all the details about the Heatwave event in our written blog post.

I like events. I like participating in events. But 100 missions for a skin is a lot. I don't really care about titles anyway as I can only carry one at any time.
Weapon skins however can fit the bill real nicely on a mulititude of weaponry.

However, if the goal is to play 100 matches to get that skin WITHIN the timeline of 18 June - 8 July then I would have to commit on such a level for A SKIN that I don't even wanna commit at all.

[PonuryZniwiarz 66]

On 6/19/2026 at 12:44 AM, purpleHorizons said:

 

Balancing TTK by changing rate of fire (affecting tapping muscle memory) is a large mistake.
- Why would they nerf the S-AS PDW?.... It was completely fine. I would lower the total bullet spread of the gun (Shot Modifier Cap) instead.
- The .45 got a indirect buff.... why? Why would they change SprintModifier=1,5 to something lower?.... You are indirectly buffing it's total accuracy during gameplay. The 60ms difference is not enough to offset it...
- RFP & FBW buffs are going to be a good buff. I don't see the necessity of it though.
- NANO got unnecessarily buffed, but it'll still be mediocre. It's close to FR0G Kokoe levels of Equip Time 
- The NFA9 got a buff... regardless of this trivial +45ms TTK difference. I'd rather see them touch the Shot Modifier Cap instead.
- Buffing FR0G to the extents mentioned in this patch are going to be a slight issue, as it's already top 3 in terms of bullet spread secondaries while hipfiring or walking. Changing the values from WalkModifier=1,2 & RunModifier=1,3 is bound to create even more issues...  

I dislike the fact that they're omitting exact weapon stats again on some of these weapons.
A overall trivial weapon balancing patch, but better than doing nothing I suppose...
I'd rather see them balance the districts, add a internal frame rate limiter, get away from Scaleform & add a map notification pinging system (without entering the map for it).

What's also hillarious to me is that ARMAS still isn't account lifetime only, which is the vision Matt has for ARMAS as per the last AMA.
What's the point of sales if the interface of ARMAS, the main income source of this game, still isn't solved?

DId you tested any gun first?You should check first any of this guns in gamplay then say anything, its seems u have no idea what you talking about, buffed nfa9 go to game and check it, it was bad before now its useless

 

[raging 26]

Ok one question, on the thumb nail it shows the mirage crim and enforcer versions but its notable that the enforcer version seems to have new wheel option and kit.. When will these new options be available  to purchase.. 

[purpleHorizons 143]

10 hours ago, PonuryZniwiarz said:

DId you tested any gun first?You should check first any of this guns in gamplay then say anything, its seems u have no idea what you talking about, buffed nfa9 go to game and check it, it was bad before now its useless

I don't need to log in to know that the trivial TTK difference still makes it one of the lowest TTK's in the game and that the lower recoil & increased ammo size is just a benefit.
Sadly, now it's higher TTK than the OCA with CJ3.
The NFA9 was capable of shredding OCA with CJ3 relatively easy when played correctly (crouch and ADS, never hipfire)

In terms of where it stacks up now:

SHAW 0,56s TTK [CJ3 possible]
NFAS 0,56s TTK [CJ3 possible]
AMG 0,585s TTK [CJ3 possible]
S1-TIC RABID 0,6s TTK [CJ3 possible]
DOW 0,6s TTK [CJ3 possible;]
--previous NFA9--
VAS C2 0,63s TTK [no CJ3 possible]
ACES 0,63s TTK [no CJ3 possible]
VBR HUNTRESS 0,65 [no CJ3]
JG 0,65 [CJ3 possible]
--NFA9 new, live--
M1922 0,675s [cj3 possible]
NTEC-7c 0,68s [cj3 possible]
S1-FA 'Frenzy' 0,69s [cj3 possible]
CAP40 0,696s [cj3 possible]
OCA 0,7s [CJ3 possible, went to ~0,65s afterwards]


It was the 6th fastest gun in the game. I don't see a point of them changing it. Barely anyone out of the 300-500 people still playing the game used it during the last 4-5 years.
In fact, I don't recall the NFA9 being touched in years at this point.
I assume the game designer got some complaints of the lower skilled players in this game and succumbed to their requests
Sad how simple peer pressure impacts weapon balancing decisions.

I'd have rather seen them buff the "Crouch Modifier" & "ADS Modifier" or change the "Accuracy @ 10m" statistic, while keeping the TTK unchanged.
 

Edited 8 hours ago by purpleHorizons

[PonuryZniwiarz 66]

go to game and try to use it now, what's good on paper doesn't always reflect how a weapon performs in practice, its definitely much worse, ofc we have experts which dont even use some type of guns and know everything about it (probably ntec plus colby user), nothing changed about colby they tag u 2 times with colby and switch to ntec, try to kill anyone with oca with cj3, mayby if he is afk. They should leave it without changes same as pdw, nothing changed about colby and ntec all this changes are uselles

 

[PonuryZniwiarz 66]

They could just lower time to equip or movement speed with colby and thats it, they just did mess with this changes, one good thing they did is fire interval in yukon brus, mayby someone will use it now

[PonuryZniwiarz 66]

Testing of this changes was like lets equip only pistols and make 1vs1, no weapons combintation, they didnt think about diffrent situations or enviroument