An idea about how to properly nerf the wingman without making it useless.

That's an interesting angle on the Wingman balance feedback, thanks for the post. 

Finisher or opener? 12 bullets of 45 damage a piece (not counting headshots) isn't a finisher or opener. It's enough to kill a fully kitted person with potato aim before you have to reload and 2 people if you have good aim. At all ranges. While sprinting. You want to give it the Mastiff reload, I disagree. Let them reload the entire mag. Just reduce the damage to 30. Solved. Let the Wingman kids run around at * speeds while mashing away with the weapon. Just don't let it autokill people for them.

The only way to make the Wingman balanced and keep its identity is to lower the body shot damage a lot and make it a gun that requires headshots to make an impact, which still allows you to drop opponents in 2-3 shots. Lowering the reload would also really help too.

30 damages means 7 body hits to kill a player with epic / legendary armor, can you guys just stop suggesting random damages values ? Because it is obvious that you are not being impartial and you just hate this gun to the point where you want it to do no damages anymore which is like removing it from the game really, it doesn't help the devs at all...

If the wingman damages had to be nerfed it would need to be something like 42 damages instead of 45, this way it would still down an epic armor player with 5 shots, blue armor would require 5 shots too instead of 4, but white armor would still require 3 shots that seems like an acceptable damage nerf to me which is actually more like buffing blue armor against the Wingman, but 30 damages is just delusional.

And yes even with 12 bullets it would be a finisher or opener weapon without the speed loader, it would be very useful early game because of it's high damages but mid to late game it would be way less interresting and practical to use just the Wingman considering you would be facing players with high tier armors.

The only real problem of the wingman is people running arround and doing spray and pray untill they kill you or luckily hit you enough times so that their team mates can finish you.
Removing the speed loader would fix this because this kind of player usually have to empty 3 full cylinders of 12 cartridges to put you down, but without the speed loader they would not be able to do that anymore.

( It makes me think about another idea, while manually loading the cartridges in the cylinder, it would be impossible to sprint ).

I am good with the Wingman but I am not using this weapon anymore because I find it quite boring after a while but I have used it long enough to know what makes it a bit too overpowered and it is clearly not its damages, I sometimes get frustrated when I am doing epic actions and get killed by a low level player spam firing a Wingman but just because I am getting killed by a Wingman does not mean I want to penalize players who are skilled enough and enjoy playing with the wingman, this weapon needs to be balanced so that each shot counts, that's it.

On a sidenote I think that the hipfire accuracy nerf was not enough since it is only effective for very long distance shooting, it is still accurate enough to hipfire at 20 meters.

42 Damage is the exact same as 45 damage, as is 40 damage. Let it keep most of its ammo (10 maybe?) on an extended mag if its going to keep it,  39 damage and the skullpiercer back to 2.5x would put this gun in a spot where you can't just spam it and win a fight like almost every single player does with it right now (and every single player IS STILL * USING IT). You would HAVE to be accurate with your shots and aim for the head, which seems to be the point of this gun. 30 damage is WAY too low for this gun.

If you're just landing body shots on 39 damage then you're much more likely to lose the fight. That's 6 body shots to kill, 1 headshot + 3 body, or 2 headshot + 1 body are the possible kill times with the gun at 39 damage and 2.5x skullpiercer assuming a purple armor and helmet on your victim (I don't know how the damage is calculated so I assumed purple helmet + 2.5x skullpiercer = 2.25x multiplier?). This also lets it retain its 3 shot kill potential which is actually rewarding the people that are good with the gun as people just spamming away are much less likely to get those quick TTK. If I get domed twice and then die then I guess the guy was just better than I was, but I would feel much more confident fighting against this gun KNOWING that my opponent is going to need to have somewhat decent aim. Right now it feels like I have to be WAY better than the other person to be able to peek and land enough shots to push them off their position or outright down them.

I think this would be the most reasonable change for the gun as there's nothing wrong with having a high skill cap weapon in the game, and currently its a low skill floor + high skill cap weapon that anybody can use effectively and I can't imagine anybody enjoys running into this gun right now. Watching people like shroud and mendo, even they get annoyed when they're running a train on a team and then suddenly they're dead to a pack of wingmans out of nowhere. They know the gun is powerful, they use it often, and they know how annoying it is to run into this weapon. Not that its all about the streamers, but even the best players acknowledge there's problems with it.

I currently like the Wingman as is.  It's not my primary weapon but it's something I never regret picking up.

I fail to understand what is wrong with having to do 7 body shots to down a fully kitted player with a headshot oriented weapon that has 12 bullets in its mag, literally doesn't miss the target if you're not terrible at the game because it's 100% accurate with no mods and lets you move around like you're nearly full sprinting while firing. There aren't that many weapons that down an enemy with a single mag in reality. Most can, but they require your opponent to be significantly out of position and generally also force you to stand still to reduce bullet spread or make you walk at a slug's speed so you're vulnerable too.

Something needs to go on the Wingman. And I want this game to have relatively high TTK so it's more skill oriented and less "wait for others to start fighting and backstab them for a guaranteed win" oriented. So the damage needs to be gutted, not the mobility. Let it be a high mobility hand cannon that pew pews people while you're a dodgy * with basically no attachments required. Just at significantly lower damage. Not 42 or 39, that's not a proper nerf. 30 damage is a proper nerf. 7 body shots isn't bad, at all, considering all its other perks.

I’d actually had the same idea about a no speed reload balance on the wingman.

to be fair though I don’t actually have a problem with body shot damage dropping significantly as you can’t hipfire spray more than one opponent with any other weapon in the game, never mind whole squads!

The thing is that on a very fast paced game like Apex Legends, making a handgun shoot slow wouldn't make any sense and nobody would want to take time to aim at the head in the middle of a fight with a slow firerate weapon because the head being more difficult to hit, if you miss then you are *... and besides it would really ruin the Wingman to reduce the firerate even more and it would actually become more worth to use the longbow instead.
By the way if you think about it, increasing the reload time by removing the speed loader equals decreasing the number of shots per minute, so in a way it has somewhat the same result as decreasing firerate whilst keeping this weapon viable for close range.