Along with the upcoming gameplay changes coming in Apex Legends Season 16, the developers at Respawn Entertainment wanted to address some core meta Legend issues that have been developing within the game. They also hope to breathe new life and strategy into some Legends that needed it the most.
Which Apex Legends characters are getting updates for Season 16?
The first set of Legend changes was centered around making a dent in the infamous “scan meta”. The two Legends at the forefront of this change are the ones who the devs believe were too reliant on their scanning abilities.
Seer
Seer is set to receive some considerable nerfs across the board. Reducing the frequency of his Ultimate. Reducing cooldown and duration. And they’re changing how “free” the information coming from his Heartbeat Sensor is. This means you won’t be able to spam its activation and have immediate knowledge of everyone in the area. You will only get information from the heartbeat pulses themselves. And the heartbeat sensor is audible to nearby enemies.
Bloodhound
Bloodhound, on the other hand, is getting a shift in abilities. Shifting their power away from their scans and back to their tracking fantasy through a new concept called the White Raven. This means that their Ultimate will no longer refresh or charge up their tactical. Instead, they will find ethereal white ravens throughout the environment that when interacted with or scanned will fly in the direction of the nearest enemy, guiding them to battle.
Wraith and Pathfinder will be receiving a buff to fulfill that role of macro rotation for the team. This is aimed to relieve some pressure on an overreliance on Valkyrie.
Wraith
Wraith is now able to place her portal twice as far as before and will speed up as she travels with her Ultimate to this new extended range. In short, she’ll be able to cover a lot more distance in a short amount of time while placing her portal to make longer rotations for her team.
Pathfinder
Pathfinder’s zipline range and riding speed have been greatly increased. Allowing them to travel farther and faster than before. This comes with the added benefit of not being a sitting duck while in transit.
The last set of changes is more for getting the Legends more in line with their new Classes. The exception can be Lifeline who, for the longest time, was in desperate need of a rework to her antiquated kit.
Horizon
Horizon will be getting a few nerfs to her kit. Accuracy in Horizon’s gravity lift has been reduced making it more difficult to target enemies while floating from up high. But to encourage her vertical traversal use for it, the lift speed has been increased opening up new unexpected attack lanes.
Mirage
Mirage is getting an unironic buff this season to give him more team utility and overall competitive viability. So, after reviving he and his ally will remain cloaked for a short time. (or roughly around 3 seconds or so.) However, if pull out your weapon during this time, the cloak will deactivate. Additionally, if a clone gets shot, the enemy will be tracked by Mirage’s little icon for a while. Allowing the team to react to this incoming enemy.
Lifeline
Lifeline’s getting a few buffs. The team has greatly reduced the slow penalty when activating her revive and greatly increased the drop speed and range of her Care Packages. It’s not much, but it’s something.
Respawn’s take on Balance Changes for Apex Legends Season 16
“It’s never one specific thing that inspires a balance change,” says Lead Legend Designer, Deven McGuire. “Often community sentiment is something that can grow into an issue. Or the data starts to reflect a trend that triggers us to sit down our balance meetings as a team, analyze and investigate where the actual problems are coming from.”
“And we use a number of outlets and tools to gather feedback and data and help us discover problem areas. We take in player feedback from all experience levels. We analyze competitive and ranked matches. We leverage analytics as we assess the spikes and drops in pick and win and encounter rates. And of course our own experiences with the live game. Our internal playtests. And our team’s feedback all factors in.”
This will not be the last time the team will be making changes to Legends in the near future. The team has an idea of what they want to do but they are willing to wait until community feedback and their internal data have been processed.
Apex Legends Season 16: Revelry is coming to PC (via Steam) and all mainline consoles starting on February 14, 2023. Check out the trailer here.
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