Apex Legends’ season eight is on the way with another legend, a new weapon, and an “obliterated” Kings Canyon.
In addition to the big-picture changes, Mayhem is also bringing in a slew of adjustments to both weapon and legend balance, as well as a series of quality of life features. Here’s what’s new.
Legend balance
Mayhem is bringing tweaks to a series of legends, including Wraith, Horizon, Caustic, and Rampart, according to the official patch notes. The adjustments try to balance aspects of their kit—and in Rampart’s case, aim to bring more firepower to make her more viable.
Wraith’s kit isn’t seeing any changes, but Respawn is increasing her hitbox once more. Wraith has dominated Apex despite a series of tweaks to both her abilities and animations and the devs will try to tone down her power without making changes to her kit once more, similar to Pathfinder’s hitbox adjustments in the previous season.
Despite the changes, “Wraith remains small and hard to hit,” according to Respawn, and will continue to have Low Profile.
Horizon has also been dominating Apex since her release (with Wraith levels of both win rate and presence), so Respawn is increasing the effective cooldown on her Gravity Lift to 25 seconds (up from 21). The cooldown only starts to tick when the gravity lift disappears.
Caustic isn’t seeing big changes in his kit, but Respawn will change up a controversial aspect of it: his Nox Gas will disappear after a squad wipe. One particularly egregious instance of the interaction caused player Phillip “ImperialHal” Dosen to die to the toxic cloud after the enemy squad was already defeated and raised awareness of the issue. Respawn later confirmed that it was a long-running bug with the Toxic Trapper.
Rampart, on the other hand, is getting some extra help to become more viable in Apex. Sheila now has a 180-degree field of view (up from 120) and her Amped Walls have 45 health points during the build phase, which could help them soak up a bullet or two.
Other legends are getting a series of tweaks. Respawn is reworking Octane’s Jump Pad, while Crypto, Loba, and Mirage are seeing small but handy changes.
The jump pad rework aims to restore the old “super jump” in some way. After season eight, hitting the jump pad while standing up “will launch players along a high arc” similar to the old super jump, while stepping into the jump pad while crouching will launch players along a lower arc, “meaning they’ll fly lower but farther in the horizontal direction,” according to the patch notes.
The tweaks to Loba, Crypto, and Mirage aren’t as significant but can offer an edge in combat—or, in Crypto’s case, remove it. Allies won’t be able to stick Arc Stars onto his drone, a strategy that offered a fairly risk-free shot at an enemy squad.
The changes to Loba improve her passive and ultimate. She’ll be able to see what’s inside care packages with her passive and will be “accessible through the Black Market Boutique”—seemingly to all players on the squad.
Mirage is getting more power to deceive his enemies. His decoys will create footstep sounds but “in a limited capacity.” It should be swift enough to bamboozle players into picking the wrong Mirage based on audio cues, but “there won’t be a footstep tornado if an enemy Mirage ults nearby,” according to the notes.
Weapon meta and balance
Season eight is also bringing a slew of changes to weapon balance that can still shake things up ahead of season eight, despite not being as significant as the adjustments to legends.
All the weapons in the fully-kitted rotation have changed. Players will now be able to find gold versions of the R-301, 30-30 Repeater, Mozambique, Longbow DMR, and Spitfire.
The Gold Barrel Stabilizer is out of the loot pool for the season to make way for the new attachment, the Gold Magazine, which will automatically reload weapons after a 5.5-second delay. The Double Tap Trigger hop-up is also out of the rotation, but the Anvil Receiver will take its place.
A few weapons are also getting some tweaks with the new season. The Volt’s damage will drop to 15 per bullet (down from 16), while the Alternator is going the opposite direction: it will deal 16 damage per shot, up from 15.
The Spitfire and EVA are getting slight adjustments. The LMG will deal 19 damage per shot (up from 18) but will take longer to reload: 3.2 seconds (up from 2.8) normally and 3.8 seconds (up from 3.33) with an empty mag. The EVA will see a minor increase in fire rate, up to 2.1 (from 2.0).
Quality of life
Mayhem is bringing a series of quality of life updates to the game, including one long-anticipated fan demand. The new season will feature an in-game damage counter that will allow players to see how much damage they’ve done in a match.
To help bridge the gap between canon and simply cosmetic skins, Respawn is adding “lore blurbs” to skins that “represent an important part of that character’s backstory” as a way to highlight their importance.
There will also be a change for players who use color blind modes. “Healing and reviving will now follow colorblind rules” when those settings are enabled. Lastly, inging ammo will display your current ammo count in quick chat, alongside a message of “player wants ammo.”
Apex season eight is set to go live tomorrow, Feb. 2.
Published: Feb 1, 2021 02:08 pm