Apex fans debate the game’s worst-ever balance changes, and there’s one clear loser

Apex Legends has successfully lasted for four years, introducing players to 24 playable legends, five unique maps, and 18 seasons of content that keep the game fresh. However, despite Respawn’s good intentions to balance the game, not every patch has won the community over.

One Aug. 15 Reddit thread took opinions from the Apex community to find the worst balance updates or changes to the game since its initial release. The top comments all pointed to season 6’s armor meta changes, which lowered the shields of all armor by 25 health, with the intention to reward better strategic positioning by lowering the time to kill.

Evo shields first landed in Apex back in season four during the System Override collection event, where Respawn devs encouraged players to play safer and poke enemies from afar, racking up damage and gaining a distinct advantage when engaging in a close-range fight. Many players liked the alternative option to the normal shields, which started with more health but did not evolve or benefit from damage dealt, with Respawn fully committing to keeping evo shields in the game past the collection event.

Evo shields and regular body shields would coexist with each other until season six, when all body shields were removed from the game to be replaced by evo shields, with the exception of the level four gold body shield. Players spawned with no armor and had to deal 50 damage to enemies to receive their first level of armor, which only amounted to 25 shields, rather than the previous level one white shield level of 50 shields.

This balance change was universal to all shield levels, making blue armor only have 50 shields, purple armor 75, and the highly valued max level red armor 100 shields rather than the previous 125. Evo shields naturally found on the ground were also affected, making early game fights end faster due to players only gaining a 25 health advantage if they spawn near a shield after dropping.

These nerfs effectively lowered the TTK at all stages of the game, enabling a hyper-aggressive meta where teams looked to rush down enemies thanks to other buffs in season 6’s patch notes, such as Pathfinder’s reduced cooldown on his ultimate when scanning beacons, Bloodhound scanning faster and extending their ultimate on knockdowns, and the strong introduction of the Volt SMG.

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The community backlash to the shield changes was so bad that Respawn would introduce a patch two weeks after season 6’s release, reverting the armor value changes completely. After dealing 50 damage or crafting at a Replicator, players with level one white armor would be back to 50 shields, the same value as the old body shields, while max level red armor was brought back to its 125 shields, bringing each player’s endgame stats back to 225 total health.

The transparent communication from Respawn was met with praise after the multiple complaints, as all stages of the game were balanced like the previous season, while still rewarding players who committed to the dev’s initial vision of sniping and poking for damage.

Other notable patches that the community recognized in the thread were the season eight changes to Caustic, where the Toxic Trapper’s gas damage was changed to a flat five damage, allowing players to heal past the damage being dealt, and the release state of legends like Horizon and Seer, who were both seen as overpowered by both the casual and competitive community, and continue to dominate the pick leaderboards despite multiple same-season and later nerfs.

However, one bad balance change clearly reigned supreme in the community’s eyes. Thankfully, it was so wildly unpopular that Respawn changed it almost immediately.