Apex Legend’s latest event launched on 14 September 2021, Evolution, came with a series of major tweaks and balancing adjustments.
In addition to Rampart’s Town Takeover and heirloom which comes in the form of a pipe wrench, there’s also a major collection event with limited-time comestics for Wraith, Octane, Pathfinder, Fuse, Bangalore, Rampart, and Lifeline. It also brought in a new Arena known as “Rampart’s Arenas Extravaganza” that packs in discount on loadouts. In this article, we look at the following balancing and other changes that were announced in the patch notes.
As expected, Respawn encountered server issues yet again after rolling out Evolution. Several players encountered server issues and was not able to connect. Respawn will be attempting to fix this issue frantically by increasing server capacity.
Balancing Changes
Legends tweaks
Since Rampart is one of the least popular Legends, Respawn was adamant to buff her up in a bid to cash in on Rampart cosmetic sales. Rampart’s ultimate, Sheila is now ultimate. When activated, Rampart will be able to carry Sheila around at a very walking pace and blast off. She no longer needs to displace it on a stationary position to shoot. However, she can position it on the ground permanently for her teammates to use Sheila with infinite ammo!
Top picks legend, Octane was nerfed by reducing his jump pad distance by 10-15%. His health regeneration was also reduced from 1.5 hp/sec to 1.0 hp/sec. Respawn is probably planning to reduce Octane’s popularity given that he is not only useful in casual matches but also very viable in competitive play, especially with tap-strafing on jump pads.
Revenant was added a further weakness by allowing its Death Totem to be revealed as a pulse in the map similar to Loba’s ultimate placement.
Bloodhound on the other hand was given a slight UX improvement by displaying the enemie’s trails in quickchat for teammates’ reference. Many players have been asking for this feature since Season 1.
Weapon tweaks
Bocek received a slight change allowing its draw speed to be lower. This allows the weapon to be switched faster by 0.02 seconds. The number of arrows that can be carried was also increased by 4 per stack and each arrow picked up is increased by 2. Respawn hopes that players would have less problems with running out of arrows and encourage the pick rate of Bocek.
Shatter caps also received some buffs since it is not as popular as other Hop-ups. Its damage was gradually increased when equipped on Bocek while the ADS strafe speed and charged pellet damage increased by 15% when equipped on 30-30 Repeater. Perhaps Respawn is hoping to increase the use of Shatter caps.
Respawn decides to tamper with Hemlok yet again by reducing its hipfire to make it slightly more accurate and reset faster. It comes to show that Respawn was never consistent with its balancing of some weapons and have been flipflopping each patch.
If Hemlok example is not convincing enough, check out how Respawn is nerfing back L-Star after receiving many complaints from players that it is too OP. Cool down now takes a longer time and its overheat limit is now shorter per magazine tier.
Despite past attempts to buff EVA-8, they are not again nerfing it slightly together with the Mozambique by reducing headshot damage multiplier from 1.5 to 1.25.
Triple Take has its charge time reduced slightly to 0.8.
Quality-of-life Updates
The best fix so far was on the Evo Shields. Gold shields can now be swapped easily on the deathboxes from Red Shield. This issue has been there for a long time despite several complaints from players and quick swapping armors has been very critical during clutch plays. Before this patch, players had to drop its existing armor before swiftly picking up the gold armor. On the other hand, Evo shields now display its health when looting deathboxes and this can be extremely helpful for players.
With the reduction of out-of-bounds timer, players can no longer stay in out-of-bound area for too long. This will probably discourage unfair advantage to teams which can reach there areas, especially in competitive play.
They have also incorporated a red text warning when players leave the match prematurely. However, it seems that casual matches will not be affected. Players have been complaining of early leavers and Respawn has been slow in handling this.
One other feature added was the detection mechanism now highlights the recon portraits. This would give information readily to recon teammates.
The update also comes with many bug fixes which were also packaged in the patch.
Tap-strafing
Despite many objection from PC players, Respawn has decided to remove tap-strafing technique. They reasoned that leveraging on multiple forward (w-key) should be considered as an exploit and should be allowed in the game. Many pro players have been leveraging on tap-strafing to help them gain speed advantage and gain sharp movements which is not possible for controller players. PC players argued that tap-strafing help them balance out controller’s aim assist which have been annoying. However, it seemed to fall on Respawn’s deaf ears again. The only blessing right now is that removal of tap-strafing has been postponed and was not included in this patch.