Feb 1, 2021

Apex Legends™ - Electronic Arts

The latest season of Apex Legends introduces our most explosive Legend yet, a hard-hitting new gun, a world-shattering update to Kings Canyon, and a whole new batch of quality-of-life updates.

Season 8: Mayhem brings the boom starting February 2nd at 10am PT.

Read on for details.

DEVSTREAM
Join the designers as they break down the most explosive updates coming in Season 8.

MEET FUSE

Meet Fuse: a mercenary-turned-cage fighter who never turns down a good dust-up. His affinity for explosions allows him to carry extra grenades and to throw them faster and further. He can launch a cluster bomb with airburst explosives. And when it’s time to really bring the boom, Fuse uses “Wally” to launch a bombardment that encircles an area in a ring of flames.

Passive - Grenadier

Stack an extra grenade per inventory slot. Fire grenades farther, faster, and more accurately.

Tactical - Knuckle Cluster

Launch a cluster bomb that continuously expels airburst explosives on impact.

Ultimate - The Motherlode

Launch a bombardment that encircles a target area in a wall of flames.

NEW WEAPON: 30-30 REPEATER
This heavy ammo lever-action repeater boasts hard-hitting rounds that’ll nail a fleeing Mirage at 200 paces.

The 30-30 is the benchmark for reliability, designed to withstand whipping sandstorms and temporal instability, which made it an obvious choice for the Apex Games.

DISCIPLINED TRIGGER FINGER
The 30-30 Repeater requires the user to rechamber their rounds between shots which brings a methodic rhythm to the rifle, an analogue elegance that the modern weapons of the Outlands just can’t quite capture.

To further tempt those itchy trigger fingers, the 30-30 Repeater has a built-in charge giving players an opportunity to deal increased damage with each shot at the cost of a short build-up.

The 30-30 reloads one round at a time, which makes for some very interesting resource management you won’t find anywhere else, even on the Mastiff.

The 30-30’s engagement range allows unique opportunities to reload individual rounds between shots. This gives the Repeater the ability to lay down consistent precision ranged pressure, something weapons with full reloads can sometimes struggle with.

KINGS CANYON MAP UPDATE
Season 8 once again sees changes to Kings Canyon. The main new point of interest shows the devastation from the ship crashing into the map. Players can now explore beyond Artillery, Spotted Lakes takes over the Slums and some new observation towers for basic recon or a sniper’s nest. Read more on the map changes in the map blog here.

LEGENDARY MAGAZINES
Season 8 introduces the Gold-tier magazines. Attaching it to a weapon automatically reloads your stowed weapons after a brief delay. The Gold magazine has the same capacity as Purple mags, and is available for Light, Heavy, Snipers, and Energy Weapons.

QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES
Damage counter

We have now added a damage counter to the HUD. This was a highly requested feature, so we’re excited to allow people easier tracking for chasing those badges and challenges!
Pinging Ammo
Pinging weapons or ammo in your inventory displays your current ammo count along with "player wants ammo" in quick chat.
Color Blind update
Healing and reviving will now follow colorblind rules when colorblind settings are enabled
Lore Blurbs on Canon Skins
Some of our skins are canon, and some are just for fun. For the skins that represent an important part of that character's backstory, we've added a small blurb to describe the significance of that skin in the Legend's life.

LEGEND META
Wraith: Hitbox adjustments.
Dev Note:
We know Wraith will always be a popular pick considering the amount of combat utility in her kit. After many tweaks to her abilities and animations, the fact remains that her win rate continues to be at the very top as it has since day one. With Season 7 hitbox adjustments to Pathfinder, we were able to control his power without nerfing his kit. We hope to do the same with Wraith.

Wraith now has a slightly larger hitbox than her fellow small legends, but the changes stay true to her model. As you can see in the before and after comparison, we’re adding some width mostly in the torso and leg areas.

Even with these changes, Wraith remains small and hard to hit. She will retain Low Profile as we monitor her usage and win rates to see if power can be given back in other ways in the future.

Rampart:

Sheila angle increase from 120° to 180°
Wall health in build phase increased from 1hp to 45hp (sniper rounds still pierce through)

Dev Note:
Rampart has remained at the bottom across our performance metrics since her release. Her kit is very much built around proactively setting up a powerful position, but in a game as fast-moving as Apex, we determined her walls should have some reactive power as well. We’re keeping a careful eye on this one.

Horizon:

Gravity Lift effective cooldown increased from 21s to 25s. The 15s cooldown timer will now start when the Gravity Lift disappears.

Dev Note:
Horizon released strong, to the point where she rivals Wraith in win rate and pick rate. For the time being, we are monitoring her usage and checking whether or not the cooldown changes have a significant effect.

Octane:

Launch Pad Remastered: Many players may have known about Octane’s “super-jump” that was possible with a well-timed jump while hitting the pad. Once the double-jump option was introduced, there was an input clash that led to unreliable usage. We decided to add some launch options that are better defined than the old super-jump.

Hitting the jump pad from a standing position will launch players along a high arc (the speed and trajectory of the old super-jump).
From a crouched position, players will launch along a low arc, meaning they’ll fly lower but farther in the horizontal direction.

Crypto:

Remove ability to stick arc stars to friendly drones.

Loba:

Loot inside unopened care packages is now visible with Eye for Quality and accessible through the Black Market Boutique.

Caustic:

All gas now dissipates as soon as Caustic’s team is eliminated.

Mirage:

Mirage decoys create footstep sounds.

Dev Note:
This change was mistakenly mentioned in the Fight Night patch notes when it was in fact coming with this patch. Mirage decoys will now have footstep audio in a limited capacity. There won’t be a footstep tornado if an enemy Mirage ults nearby, but it should be slightly harder to pick out the real Mirage from audio cues alone.

WEAPON META

Fully Kitted Rotation

Removed: Wingman, Sentinel, Havoc, G7, Alternator
Added: R-301, 30-30 Repeater, Mozambique, Longbow DMR, Spitfire

Attachments

We are removing the Gold Barrel from the loot pool

Hop Ups

The Double Tap hop up will be removed from the loot pool
The Anvil Rounds hop up will be added into the loot pool

Volt

Bullet damage decreased from 16 to 15

Alternator

Bullet damage increased from 15 to 16

Spitfire

Bullet damage increased from 18 to 19
Reload speed increased from 2.8 seconds to 3.2
Empty Reload speed increased from 3.33 seconds to 3.8

EVA 8

Fire rate increased from 2.0 to 2.1

BUG FIXES

Caustic

Sonar abilities no longer stop Caustic’s highlight vision.

Loba

Fixed a few exploitable areas on Kings Canyon that Loba was able to reach via her Bracelet.

Rampart

Jumpads in Octane’s town takeover no longer allow Rampart to place Sheila on them.
Fixed an issue with Rampart's passive persisting even after changing characters in Firing Range

Havoc

Fixed an issue causing the Havoc to have 100% accuracy when hip-fired through Rampart’s Amped Cover.

Peacekeeper

Fixed a POV issue that occurred when using Horizon’s abilities, then immediately going into ADS with a Peacekeeper.

Clubs

Re-enabled ability to invite friends to club from friends list
Fixed an issue causing some users who have opted out of "Last Squad Invites" to not appear in club event timelines when placing in the top 5 of a match
Failing to connect to the club database no longer leads to a misleading "Kicked from club" message
Players will no longer be kicked from clubs when switching to another profile on Xbox.

MISC

Fixed an issue with crowds not cheering in Pathfinder’s Town takeover.
Fixed an issue preventing some heirlooms from appearing in the heirloom shop.
Fixed an issue that allowed Thermites to deal damage through certain walls on Olympus.