Prior to Apex Legend’s first season, Respawn dropped a rather significant balance update and detailed its philosophy behind balancing the game. This balance update was made for all platforms. As of this writing, the weapon balance changes are live now, but character rig and ability changes are coming in Season 1.
Be sure to read all of the developer notes and comments on the original Reddit post and check out all the big changes below.
“We make less frequent, better tested, higher impact balance changes in order to minimize the impacts on your time spent mastering the game.” – Respawn
Weapon Balance[edit]
Wingman[edit]
- Rate of fire reduced from 3.1 -> 2.6 shots per second.
- Skullpiercer Headshot damage multiplier reduced from 2.5 -> 2.25 (This does not affect the Longbow hopup damage)
- Increased base hip fire spread and decreased the rate at which hip fire spread decays (shrinks back down).
Peacekeeper[edit]
- Shotgun Bolt rechamber rate has been reduced for the Peacekeeper only.
- Level 1 mitigation 10% -> 7.5%
- Level 2 mitigation 20% -> 13%
- Level 3 mitigation 25% -> 16%
- Wingman and Peacekeeper availability has been reduced in all zone tiers.
- Increased availability of energy weapons & ammo in all zone tiers.
Why no P2020 or Mozambique buffs?[edit]
- We love y’all’s ‘Bique memes, so we’re hesitant to lose that 😛
- In all seriousness, our goal is to have a power curve of weapons. “Power curve” just means that some weapons will be weaker and more common, while others will be stronger and rarer. Some weapons are intentionally less powerful until fully purp’d with hopups and attachments, while other weapons on the bottom of the power curve are your early game, better-than-melee, but-gotta-upgrade-out-of-ASAP weapons. We’ve seen some good feedback from players about how to make these pistols more exciting without losing out on the goal above that we’re listening to. We’ll be continuing to watch player data and feedback and trying things out internally but for now, they’ll remain the same.
Additional Weapon Balance Patch Notes[edit]
- Fixed some script errors that we identified were occasionally causing disconnects during matches.
- Caustic occasionally causing disconnects while throwing is Ultimate.
- Pathfinder occasionally causing disconnects when activating a Survey Beacon.
- Players occasionally causing disconnects when removing an attachment.
- Gibraltar occasionally causing disconnects when pulling up his Gun Shield.
- Players occasionally causing disconnects when entering Spectate Mode.
Legend Balance[edit]
“Our goal is to be able to have characters with different rig sizes, hitboxes and ability kits, and still have each character be roughly equal in power level, win rate and viability of pick.” – Respawn
Note: These changes will be made sometime in Season 1
Major balance changes[edit]
- Hit box size reductions and optimizations for Caustic, Pathfinder and Gibraltar
- We’re better sizing hitboxes to character gear & model
- Since these adjustments have a MAJOR impact on the game, we want to make sure there aren’t any major bugs, so we didn’t want to rush them out
- If these adjustments prove to be insufficient, we’ll consider additional adjustments during Season 1
Minor balance changes[edit]
- Caustic
- Traps – Reduced cooldown to 25 seconds from 30 seconds
- Traps – Increased radius and proximity radius by about 10%
- Traps – Removed a 1 second delay on the smoke dealing damage to players
- Pathfinder
- Insider Knowledge – Increased the number of beacons in the world to 12 from 10
- Lifeline
- Care Package – Removed slight chance that level 4 armor and helmets will drop
- Wraith
- Into The Void – Cooldown increased from 20 -> 25 seconds
- Bangalore
- Double Time – Reduced move speed bonus to 30% from 40%
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