Respawn believes new Evo Shield will promote sniping and “poking at a distance”

Apex Legends players, it may finally be worth it to shoot your shot.

Respawn design director Jason McCord discussed the upcoming Evo Shield in today’s Apex Devstream. Because the new armor gets stronger as you deal damage, McCord believes it’ll encourage more long-range poking and sniping.

“There’s not a whole lot of reason to do that right now,” McCord said. “So I think that some of the more sniper players will have a reason to pick this up because you can take a couple of shots and you might down somebody but, you know, they’ll probably get picked right up. But you’ll be actually evolving your armor in a fight where they can’t really kill you in.”

Shooting players from far away can typically be a risky endeavor. Any downed enemies will likely just be picked up by teammates and it also alerts other teams of your position. The Evo Shield can potentially be worth the risk of third parties, though, if it means getting stronger armor.

Respawn devs also explained that picking up another player’s Evo Shield from their deathbox will steal their progress. So if an enemy you killed was able to upgrade their Evo Shield to its final form, then you inherit the same armor.

As fun as the new armor seems, it’ll only be available while playing the Deja Loot mode in the System Override Collection Event. But the Evo Shield might make its way to competitive Apex play in the future.

The System Override event goes live tomorrow until March 17.