Respawn Entertainment has just released a new update, dubbed Takeover, for its flagship shooter, Apex Legends, and the patch notes reveal significant changes to the game’s balancing. The update focuses on aggressive playstyles, buffing every gun in the weapon pool and Assault Legends, while significantly changing the armour system.
Each weapon in the game has increased its base damage to ensure freedom of choice, making every weapon competitively viable allows for a myriad of different playstyles. Increased weapon damage also decreases the time to kill in each encounter to facilitate more fast-paced combat and reduce the chance of squads being attacked by third parties.
More minor changes to the weapons include visual changes such as reduced muzzle flash, decreased visual noise, and lessened lighting effects on the weapon models. General visual changes like these are meant to keep the player’s view free from obstructions, making it easier to focus on the combat.
Apex Legends has also overhauled armour, having entirely removed lower-rarity helmets and replaced them with ones of a higher rarity that provide the players with additional perks. The standard armour, or Evo Shields, has also been modified; players now can only charge their Shields to Level 3 instead of Level 4, and now the only way to obtain a Level 4 Shield is to possess one of the aforementioned rare helmets.
Assault Legends Ash and Ballistic have been given improvements to their main abilities, making them more versatile. Ash’s active abilities now have better chances to hit with an increased range, as well as a new passive, and Ballistic’s changes give him access to extra Whistler charges, a speed boost from his Ultimate, and the ability to carry Crate Weapons in his Sling.
The Assault Legend Class has also become more viable through additional class-specific perks. These range from minor advantages like carrying extra ammo and grenades to more significant benefits like stowed reloads and gaining a boost to movement and reload speed upon breaking an enemy’s Shield.
Apex Legends is currently available as a free-to-play title on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
