In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the tactical shield is currently considered a nuisance. The result was a mid-season nerf. However, players are disappointed with the changes, as the debuff missed the target precisely.
The riot shield has a dubious reputation in Call of Duty. It is considered toxic as it allows you to break normal gameplay patterns and deal no damage to an enemy who is holding the shield with the trigger pulled.
The part had its first appearance in the original CoD MW2 from 2009. And now, 13 years later, the operational shield has reached a kind of peak. In a majority of matches, at least one player carries a shield.
The developers obviously have this trend in mind and thought to themselves at mid-season: “Here’s a big nerf announced!”. But apparently you didn’t look very closely – because the strong nerf does not bring the desired effect for many players.
By the way, a free weekend is currently running in CoD MW2 including double XP until 12/19/22. A few tips for weapon leveling are in the video:
CoD MW2: 3 tips to quickly level up your weapons
CoD MW2: Operation shield leads to turtle battles
How was the shield nerfed? A pretty strong nerf can be seen in the mid-season patch notes:
This nerfed the playstyle when using the blast shield as your primary weapon.
Why didn’t the nerf pull? The problem is that the shield is currently used less as a primary weapon. Rather, players use the thing as a back shield.
Because if you don’t have the part in front in your hand, you carry the shield on your back and this is where it also keeps malicious bullets from puncturing you.
The problem is particularly evident on the new map Shipment. Many players come in here to level up a specific weapon or farm kills like mad.
Together with the perk “Overkill” or Akimbo pistols, the shield is set as an additional weapon and serves as a turtle shell on the back:
Actually, it was exactly these turtle battles that went against the grain for many players. But the nerf went straight off target onto the back of a shield player – no effect.
How big the topic is in the community can be observed on Reddit. In the CoD MW2 subreddit, 2 of the top 10 threads are currently dealing with the topic of the operational shields.
A 26-day-old thread with nearly 12,000 upvotes addresses the back protector issue (via reddit.com). In the current Nerf thread (via reddit.com), which collected over 9,700 upvotes in 2 days, there is a comprehensive discussion about it (as of 12/16/22 / 11:30 a.m.).
It remains to be seen how the matter will continue. However, many players would like something to change here and see less turtle battles.
We are also interested in your opinion on the topic. How many years has that shield been bugging you? Can you play it yourself? How would you nerf that part? Leave a comment on the topic.
Would you rather read more about how the mid-season update was generally received by players, then have a look here: CoD MW2 & Warzone 2 bring updates with over 120 bug fixes – are the shooters running smoothly now?