If you’ve hopped into Call of Duty: Warzone Season 6 in the past few days, you’ve probably witnessed the terror of the SP-R 208. The new sniper rifle, seemingly based on the classic R700 sniper from Call of Duty 4, is already proving to be the best weapon in its class. Combining high damage with impressive mobility, fire rate, and bullet velocity, the SP-R is a quickscoper’s dream. It basically has no downsides, which probably means Infinity Ward should knock it down a peg.
Right from level 1 with zero attachments, the SP-R feels remarkably good. A single chest shot is enough to fully break armor. If you add on the 26” barrel and tack on a .337 Lapua magazine, the rifle can maintain high damage over such a long range that it’s a 1-shot headshot. Other sniper rifles can do that, but they’re sluggish and require heavy target leading. The SP-R’s default bullet velocity is so high that it still feels like hitscan from 40-50 meters away.
The gun is so versatile and fun that keeping it in my Warzone loadouts paired with an SMG or assault rifle feels like a no-brainer. Based on how much I’m seeing the gun pop out of player corpses, I’d say the community agrees so far.
On the standard multiplayer side, the SP-R’s strengths are even more pronounced. Like the lever-action MK2 Carbine, the SP-R is always a 1-shot-kill to the chest or higher. Whereas the Carbine’s low velocity requires some on-the-fly target leading, the SP-R is more-or-less a deadly laser pointer. Over the last two days, every single match I’ve played has been full sharpshooters flexing on each other with 1-taps (seriously, I hear them yell at each other over mic).
With such a deadly rifle in the wild, many Play of the Games have looked like this:
So yes, even by Call of Duty’s loose standards of balance, the SP-R probably deserves a nerf. A marksman rifle with virtually no downsides shouldn’t be outclassing behemoth .50 caliber rifles at long-range. Cynically, Infinity Ward might’ve gone a bit overboard with the SP-R to entice players into buying the more expensive $20 battle pass that unlocks the weapon instantly. On the other hand, the rifle is a pitch-perfect throwback to a bygone era of CoD—when sniper rifles were dominant at every range imaginable, especially by those who mastered quickscoping.
If that was/is you, then you’re probably excited to hear that the SP-R also reminds me of the snipers I’ve messed with in Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War—fast, easy, and extremely deadly. Oh boy.
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