You can find the latest patch notes for Modern Warfare 3 below. We always focus on the buffs and nerfs with each update, and have also provided our opinion on the post-patch meta.
Sledgehammer are trying to win over the hearts of CoD players, and so they've undone all the most unpopular changes made by IW last year. But if they want to keep the goodwill of the community for very long they will need to keep making great decisions for MW3 throughout its lifecycle. And that starts with regular, intelligent balancing changes.
In this article we have the full patch notes, the patch size and a short guide on when you can expect future patches. Let's dig in and see if the latest buff and nerfs in MW3 make any sense!
MW3 (Beta) Update (October 13) | Patch Size
Today's patch is less than 1 GB across all platforms. This MW3 update was just a small balancing patch for the ongoing beta, and it was therefore never going to be very large.
It's pretty shocking the game itself isn't larger given how monstrous CoD games were just a few years ago. The devs have clearly improved at optimization.
MW3 (Beta) Update (October 13) | Patch Overview
Here is a short overview of what was included in the patch:
- A nerf to the Striker and the Guardian killstreak.
- Decreased slide-to-sprint delay.
We focus on balancing changes and bug fixes when addressing each patch, not content.
MW3 Update (October 13) | Complete Patch Notes
Here are the full patch notes from today's MW3 update:
Gameplay
- UIX
- Enemy Operators will now display a red nameplate above their head.
- Movement
- Decreased the slide to sprint delay by 200ms.
Weapons
- Reduced Tac-Stance spread while sliding for several weapon classes.
- Assault Rifles: Decreased 17-26%.
- Submachine Guns: Decreased 14-17%.
- Light Machine Guns: Decreased 30-45%.
- Marksman Rifles: Decreased 29-31%.
- Pistols: Decreased 10-20%.
- Striker (Submachine Gun)
- Decreased near-medium damage from 39 to 36.
- Decreased near-medium damage range from 24m to 19m (-21%).
- Decreased medium damage range from 30m to 25m (-17%).
- Decreased far-medium damage from 28 to 27.
- Decreased minimum damage from 23 to 21.
- Increased headshot damage multiplier from 1.2x to 1.3x.
- Increased lower-arm damage multiplier from 1x to 1.1x.
Killstreaks
- Guardian-SC
- Decreased health from 550 to 400 (-27%).
- Decreased lifetime from 120s to 60s (-50%).
Modes
- Ground War
- Vehicles driven by the player no longer have limited fuel.
- Hardpoint
- Disabled overhead spawn camera sequence upon respawn.
Maps
- Estate
- Added collision near various areas of the Waterfall to prevent players from accessing unintended locations.
- Favela
- Players will no longer be killed immediately after respawning near the yellow car on the Side Street.
- Popov Power (Ground War)
- Added collision near Reactor Beta to prevent players from accessing an unintended location.
Operators
- Operator movement animations will now play properly in the moments following a respawn.
UIX
- Added a missing icon for the Incursion XII Long Barrel Attachment for the SVA 545.
- Players will now be properly notified of Playlist updates while idling in the menus.
Stability
- Addressed a crash that occurred while matchmaking in the Ground War playlist.
- Addressed multiple crashes that occurred while launching the game.
- Resolved an issue that caused an error message stating “a required network service has failed” upon attempting to join anothe
When Does Modern Warfare 3 Get Updated?
We expect Modern Warfare 3 to receive near daily updates during the beta, but when the full game launches we predict it will be updated every Wednesday at 9 am PT (12 pm ET / 5 pm GMT / 6 pm CET). This is exactly when the last three Call of Duty games were updated each week, and we don't see why the devs would change their workflow. They will occasionally have weeks off when they don't push out an update, for instance on the week of Christmas.
That was everything you need to know about the Modern Warfare 3 update, we hope you found what you wanted in the patch notes!