Today’s developer stream for Apex Legends’ new map, Broken Moon, gave players plenty of insight on the new battleground for the Apex Games and the ideas that developers had while designing different parts of the map. At the same time, they got to see a few new features that weren’t directly addressed in the stream but were mentioned in the patch notes for the new season, such as a new UI upgrade for Pathfinder while he shoots his zipline ultimate ability.
And then, there were some things included in the stream that might not have been meant for public consumption just yet, like a possible new passive ability for support heroes in the game.
Generally, blue loot bins come with an extra compartment that only Lifeline can open, which gives your team some extra loot. But when approaching a blue loot bin in the dev stream, which was played on an internal build of the game, the Pathfinder in question got a new bit of text to pop up on the stream, informing the player that only support legends can use the blue support loot bins and not giving the Pathfinder an option to open the loot bin at all.
This would be a new class-wide passive ability given to supports in the game, a class that has typically been thought of as weak over the past couple of years. While buffs have been given individually to both Lifeline and Loba, Apex HD’s only two support characters, they’ve only marginally increased both legends’ popularity with players.
This possibility of only allowing support legends to open blue bins seems like a sizable buff to the support class, while also a slight nerf to Lifeline and her previously unique interaction with the blue bins. The success of such a change would probably depend on just how many blue loot bins are placed around any given map. Not being able to get more loot is frustrating and might entice more players to play a support.
Of course, with only two supports, adding a class-wide passive might also signal Apex’s intent to finally add a new support character to the full version of the game. Rhapsody made her debut as a support in Apex Mobile not long ago, but there’s been no indication as of yet that mobile-only characters will eventually cross over into the PC and console world.
And finally, there’s a chance this change won’t come at all and is simply being tested out in an internal build. But support players can still dream, right?
Season 15 of Apex Legends drops on Nov. 1.
Published: Oct 31, 2022 04:24 pm