Apex players, rejoice: The long-awaited fixes to Catalyst’s Dark Veil are now live in all regions and platforms.
Seer and Catalyst have dominated Apex Legends on a global scale, from the ranked ladder to the pro leagues in each major region. With the ability to cut off sightlines and safely fire without fear of being seen, many players called for nerfs to the oppressive pair, a fix that the dev team has been working on since the beginning of season 17.
But today, Respawn published a new Apex patch that included multiple bug fixes to legends and maps. The biggest news is changes to Seer’s ultimate ability, now unable to track enemies through Catalyst’s Dark Veil. Respawn further clarified that the dev team is reviewing other scan abilities as well, finally answering one big community woe present since Catalyst’s release.
Catalyst’s Dark Veil is made to be an anti-scan ability, blocking any scan ability from detecting players on the other side of the wall. Bloodhound’s Eye of the Allfather, Crypto’s Neurolink, Seer’s Focus of Attention and Heart Seeker all don’t work when on one side of the wall, but Exhibit continued to work perfectly fine.
This interaction created one-way windows that allowed savvy teams to ambush their enemies without exposing their own positions, causing very skewed fights and a massive increase in Seer and Catalyst’s pick rates—a major shift easily visible in the Apex Legends Global Series.
Seer and Catalyst were in the top three most-picked legends throughout Split Two of the 2023 ALGS, according to Apex Legends Stats. In three of the five major regions, Seer, Catalyst, and Valkyrie made up the most popular team, maintaining their status throughout the entirety of the split.
North American teams adopted this composition the most, with 35 percent of comps in Split Two, totaling 424 individual picks. The second most popular team—Bangalore, Seer, and Valkyrie—only made up 11 percent of the total compositions at 134 total picks.
The season 17 patch notes dropped on May 9, with many players praising Respawn for finally answering the bugs surrounding Catalyst’s ultimate ability. But as Arsenal went live, many were disappointed to find out the interaction between Seer and Catalyst continued to persist, despite the patch notes’ statement.
Respawn then deleted the line concerning Catalyst from the official website, bringing widespread confusion as to whether the dev team truly intended to fix the interaction or failed to deliver on their promises.
With the newest patch today, the Apex community can now rest easy knowing the dev team’s intentions have finally been realized, even if the results came two weeks late.
The patch notes also fix additional legend and game issues, such as fixing one Wraith bug that allowed her to shoot while downed or Ballistic losing his weapon reticle after locking onto an opposing Ballistic with Whistler. Map fixes included lighting issues that blinded players on World’s Edge, client crashes when interacting with certain objects, and fixes to Control, where players could not respawn on any captured zones.
