Apex Legends‘ latest aftermarket collection event is set out to take the overall legend meta in a new direction.
The aftermarket collection event will finally buff Pathfinder in a pretty significant way. Ever since Respawn nerfed the most friendly robot on the outlands, players have been quite vocal about the change especially all those pathfinder mains.
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Furthermore, legends like Bloodhound is actually getting some nerf to make them more balanced in the current meta. As of now, Bloodhound players are just dominating the current meta. Respawn just made some new changes that should make the game more balanced.
Bloodhound nerf:
Updated Bloodhound’s tactical cooldown while ultimate is active from 6 seconds to 8 seconds.
Dev Note: The 6.0 changes have been extremely powerful for Bloodhound. Their ultimate is now truly a moment you should fear as the enemy. We think we might have gone a little far with 6s. Against a competent BH, there would only ever be 2s during which you’re not scanned. Changing it to 8s means you’ve got 4s of being revealed and 4s to reposition in between pulses.
Basically, Bloodhound was just performing a little bit too well and for the first time Bloodhound actually received some small nerfs. Although this subtle change should not affect the character in any significant way.
Rampart
- Increased the rate at which Sheila’s bullet spread tightens
Rampart got some small buff as Sheila’s bullet spread will now tighten at a faster rate.
Pathfinder buff
- Grapple cooldown is now based on the distance Pathfinder traveled. The shortest possible pull has a 10s cooldown; the maximum cooldown is still 35s, but you’re going to have to swing a very long distance to get there. Have fun out there, friends!
Dev note:
Pathfinder mains rejoice, the Outlands happiest robot is getting some love. Instead of dropping grapple cooldown back to 15s where it was before, or moving it to 25s as a compromise, we considered a player suggestion (thanks Reddit) to have the Grapple drain energy as it goes, similar to Titanfall 2. The difference here is we’re looking at your full distance traveled: from the moment you leave the ground to when you’re on the ground again and not sliding at crazy high speeds. What this means is two things:
- Bad Pathfinder players, no longer need to fear the faceplant grapple quite as much. If you’re not going anywhere, you’re not incurring much of a cooldown.
- If you’re really really good at Pathfinder and looking for the absolute max distance grapple, you’ll still have a 35s cooldown, assuming you land it. This both buffs Path a little less for the scariest robot players out there and it also opens up room for extra skill expression: can you find useful short-distance grapples that’ll give you a shorter CD but still do something good for you? Looking forward to seeing what you all do with this one.
In short, instead of just buffing pathfinders cool down to its original value or finding a nice little middle point as some sort of compromise, Respawn decided to make the cooldown based upon the distance a player travels using the grapple. So, depending upon the distance a pathfinder player can get anywhere between 10s to 35s of cool down. Pathfinder mains can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Wraith nerf:
- Updated Wraith’s sprint animation.
- Dev note:
Wraith is a very challenging Legend to nerf. We look at Legend performance across a number of axes: how often trios with this Legend on them win games / place highly, how often this Legend gets knock downs vs is knocked down, how often this Legend is picked. Across each and every single one of these axes, Wraith dominates.
And yet each time we hit her abilities (which we’ve done a lot) she bounces back within a few weeks without bleeding a lot of pick rate. Her kit is uniquely useful both in solo games and in highly coordinated games. Also she’s just really cool. We get it.
We don’t want to hit her abilities anymore. We think both she and Pathfinder have been pushed to the edge in terms of cooldown and utility nerfs where pushing them any further would make them a lot less fun to play. We don’t want that!
So we started looking at other Legend specific things that could give her this power–and discovered that her sprinting animations are unique in how much they artificially shorten her (by hunching over), thus shrinking her shootable area from the perspective of the enemy. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but taken together with her already small hitbox, it’s a lot of power.
This patch, we’re introducing a new set of sprint animations for Wraith. These are much more upright and expose a larger area of her body to gunfire. Now we know her old sprint was iconic and we hate to see it go as well, but we believe this is the best way by far of bringing her in line without having to hit her abilities again. Depending on what we see after these animations go live, we may even be able to put some power back into her abilities (no promises though).
In short, in this patch, Wraith players will be getting another set of nerfs. However, it won’t be through any of her abilities. Instead, Respawn is actually changing how she “Naruto” runs to make her hitboxes more aligned with other legends in the game.
Apparently, her ninja run was too much for players to deal with. So, Respawn will get rid of the iconic running animation with new ones to better suit her new changes.
Crypto buff:
- Crypto’s Drone can now open loot vaults if Crypto has a key in his inventory. It consumes the key as usual.
Crypto is also going to get a small buff as now his drone will be able to open Vaults by itself provided if Crypto already has a key in his inventory. This small change should make the whole vault looting procedure much more safe and convenient.
Loba buff:
- Increased range of ultimate & passive from 3100 units to 4500 units.
- Loba now starts the match with her ultimate half charged.
Loba is also getting some love from Respawn as her ultimate got some extra range. Additionally, she will now start the match with her ultimate already half charged. And that should make it easier for players to pop her ultimate in the starting phase of the game.
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In the aftermarket event, Respawn is looking to make some bold changes. Depending upon player feedback they will include more character changes in the future updates.
