Apex Legends brought lots of important changes with the launch of Season 8 on February 2nd. They also released some changes with the Chaos Theory Collection Event. We can call these updates the mid-season updates. Because the importance of them is no less than the new season’s changes. These 8.1 made some players sad (Caustic mains) while left some players surprised (no nerf on Gibraltar). But, we know from different social platforms that the devs are working on some changes for different legends. So, we compiled the legend plans the devs talked about on social media, and we can see these changes on Apex Legends with the launch of Season 9.
It’s very common to see big changes with the new season announcements since the season is changing, a new season means new meta and new gameplay strategies. Some of those changes were big enough to make Wraith lose her top spot of pick and win rate rankings. It’s pretty obvious that the Chaos Theory updates will also change the meta.
We don’t have any official announcement about Apex Legends Season 9, but the devs are talking about their upcoming plans on Reddit and Twitter. Those changes can be released with Season 9, at least it’s what we expect. While some of them are confirmed to stay the same, we gathered every important piece of information about the legends.
Gibraltar
- Nerf on his passive ability, gun shield
Note:
The changes we are going to talk about have come with the Chaos Theory update. But according to the devs’ statement, those changes were postponed. However, with the Chaos Theory update, we can see that these changes are live and that did not happen accidentally. They added those changes to the 8.1 patch notes too. But we will talk about it nevertheless.
We know that Gibby’s kit is quite good, despite his big hitbox. When Respawn announced the 8.1 patch notes, the players were surprised not seeing any nerf for his kit. But, after the 8.1 went live, the players discovered that they nerfed Gibraltar without addressing it on the patch notes.
After a few hours, Respawn added those changes to the patch notes. But according to John Larson, one of the developers of Apex Legends, there were some bugs that prevented them to release the changes.
Unfortunately, a couple of meaningful tweaks to the gun shield just missed the cutoff for next week’s patch: (1) Bleed through and (2) damage counting towards stats/EVO to mitigate some of the shield economy difference in poking engagements against a Gib.
Wanted to add that we really wanted to get the gun shield change in for 8.0. But we discovered a bug in how damage is registered by the gun shield with single projectile vs. multi-projectile weapons.
John Larson
The Bleed Through / Bleeding Effect
It can seem like it’s something you are unfamiliar with, but actually, you do know what it is. So, let us explain it with an example. Imagine you have 100 health points and 25 shield points, and you get headshotted by a single Flatline bullet. You will get like 32 damage points. First, your shield will absorb that damage, but it can only absorb 25 damage from it. The remaining 7 damage point will impact your health points. This is what the bleeding effect is.
The effect was disabled when Gibraltar pulled up his gun shield. Although it will absorb like 50 damage points, a single shot that deals more than 50 damage won’t affect his shields or health points. For example, if you hit Gibraltar’s gun shield with a Kraber (which deals like 140 damage points), the gun shield absorbs all the damage, it won’t absorb the 50 damage points and decrease the remaining points from his health.
Counting on Stats and EVO Shield
Before the Chaos Theory update, when you dealt damage to his gun shield, it didn’t affect your EVO Shield progress or the damage you dealt to enemies, even you hit it.
Again, these two changes were expected to be released with Season 9, but it’s official that the Apex Legends players will now see them in the game nowadays with the Chaos Theory update.
Lifeline
- Nerf on her passive
- Buff on her ultimate
The main reason for the popularity of Lifeline has to be her passive ability. She will revive her downed teammates with her drone, and at the same time, she can fight with enemies. Also, the drone provides a wall to protect the downed teammate while reviving. However, her ultimate is not that good, her care package is not enough for the players. Especially, when the EVO Shield update is released and the players will have an EVO Shield at the beginning, we will already have better armor until Lifeline brings her care package.
After they released the Season 8 patch notes, John Larson explained their plans about Lifeline too. We didn’t see any changes on her with the 8.1 notes, so we can expect those changes with the release of Season 9.
Nothing at the start of Season 8 for Lifeline, but we are exploring options to reduce some frustrations surrounding her passive. Taking some power from that and giving it to her underwhelming ult is what we’re looking at in particular. We didn’t want to act too hastily in nerfing the combat utility part of her kit without giving her a bump elsewhere. The other aspect is communication. Let’s say we add a cool down to it: how do you best communicate it’s on cooldown to the Lifeline, downed teammate, and enemy? That requires testing, getting feedback on what feels right, iterating, etc. Did want to let you know we are working on reducing that Lifeline frustration without discouraging people from using her.
John Larson
Loba
- Buff on her tactical ability
In my opinion, Loba is the strangest legend of the game. She can bring her teammates every loot in an area with her ultimate ability, and her tactical ability can teleport her after she throws her bracelet. The thing I find strange is, Loba players use the ultimate ability more than the tactical. It has some reasons of course. Respawn buffed her ultimate ability in different ways, like decreasing the cooldown, letting the players take any amount of ammo from it. But her tactical has stayed the same, broken and frustrating. She can’t use her tactical especially in Kings Canyon, the bracelet just won’t land on the different spots. A Reddit user asked the devs why they are so shy with her tactical. The lead designer of the game, Daniel Klein, answered the question.
“We’re Currently Playtesting A Version”
There are two separate issues, only one of which I can really speak to. So issue 1 is her tactical still has a bunch of areas where it fails. That’s a bug! Whenever we find those, we try to fix ’em for you as soon as possible. That’s all I can say for that one.
The other issue I *can* speak to. Why are we so conservative balancing her tactical? There are good reasons! Combat readability, that is to say having a good idea where the enemy could have gone to in this case, is super important for making Apex feel as good as it does. Teleports are scary in this context; if you ever fail to see/hear the throw, you might suddenly have a Loba behind you, you didn’t expect, and that feels awful. So both the amount of telegraphing (a very visible silver arc in the air + very audible sounds) and the amount of downtime around usage (before/after the throw) help with this.
One thing we *ARE* trying is just making it feel better while not adding too much power. We’re currently playtesting a version that doesn’t slow you down at all while the bracelet is in the air and that doesn’t slow you down when you arrive at your target location. A bit scary, but been testing well so far, so while there isn’t an ETA we hope to ship something for Loba’s tactical soon.
Daniel Zenon Klein
These changes wouldn’t come with Season 9, but the next patch notes of Apex Legends will come with Season 9. So, we can expect it with the release of Season 9.
Horizon
Horizon is maybe the most popular legend of the game. She really came out strong, and that made her have some high pick and win rates. And, it’s pretty normal to see in every competitive game, including Apex Legends, that the strong ones will be nerfed while the weak ones getting buffed. We don’t know what this nerf would be, but Klein said they have plans for her.
There was a discussion about the nerf on Gibraltar’s tactical on Reddit, and Klein told that they nerfed him because he was strong. Another Reddit user asked him “If Horizon has the best win rate why she only got a small nerf?”. And Klein gave a short answer.
We weren’t ready with the big nerf for Horizon, so we shipped what Gibraltar had first. Bigger nerf is coming soon, hopefully, Season 9, but no guarantees.
Daniel Zenon Klein
Revenant
We know that there are plans about Revenant, but we don’t know what they are. We mentioned that why the devs are struggling with buffing Revenant. It seems like there will be some changes in his passive or his hitbox. We can’t give any guarantees about these changes will Season 9, but we can only expect it.
Crypto
Bad news for the Crypto mains. According to Klein, we won’t see any changes on Crypto in the near future.
Of course, the changes we talked about are not every change we will see in Season 9 patch notes, the Apex Legends devs just told their ideas to the players. We can only guess that some of them will come with Season 9.
