Players spawn with Level 0 Evo Shields, which have no Shield by default
Level 2 and Level 3Body Shields are replaced with pre-leveled Evo Shields. Level 4 Body Shields still exist separately. Level 5 armor is not found in the game world and can only be achieved by evolving.
Precision Choke - Removed from loot pool, but it will now be integrated into the Triple Take and Peacekeeper by default. Fire select toggles on/off the choke.
↑This patch, we're taking a look at the recon class. A class built around information gathering should be powerful in a BR where knowing where the enemy is is often the difference between life and death, but out of the three Legends in the recon class (Pathfinder, Crypto, and Bloodhound), one dominates in terms of in-game performance. (It’s the robot. The robot dominates.) In this patch, we’re mostly buffing Bloodhound as they needed the help the most. Crypto’s changes are a mixed bag as we also found one bug we had to fix that was giving Crypto a hidden advantage (TLDR: sometimes when you thought you were hitting the drone, you weren’t really hitting the drone). Between the buffs to Bloodhound's ult and the new utility Crypto gains on his drone, we hope to see a more diverse field of recon legends in-game.
↑Giving all Recon legends access to survey beacons makes Pathfinder less unique, and obviously we don’t love that. For now, we’re giving our friendly robot a small buff to his ultimate cooldown when he uses a survey beacon, but in the future, we will take another look at Pathfinder to see what else we could do to make him feel more unique.
↑Bloodhound fulfills a very clear role in Apex Legends: they’re the information gatherer and tracker, but currently their performance leaves a lot to be desired. In this patch, we wanted to double down on their ultimate being their big moment of becoming a god-like tracker. Bloodhound already gives up some information to the enemy when they scan or use the ultimate (it makes a noticeable sound), so we think there is room for a lot more power during the ultimate.
↑Crypto is a particularly interesting recon character: the amount of information he can gather for his team with the drone is very high, but the fact that he has to switch over to his drone leaves him vulnerable and often at a great distance from his team. Because he has no abilities without his drone, we figure there’s room for even more power when he’s in his drone.
↑ EMP will now slow teammates caught in the blast, even if they had no shields. This means that players who have used Revenant’s Death Totem will also be slowed.
↑We’re happy to see that dropping the range restriction on Death Totem brought a lot more Revenants into play, but we’ve been watching a particularly frustrating combo play out in professional-level play involving a squad of Revenant, Wraith, and Crypto, where using the three ultimates together resulted in two back to back runs at the enemy team that they could do very little about. We’ve attacked part of that in the Crypto EMP change, but here’s the other part aimed at making this play less overwhelming.
↑While Loba was initially very popular, she’s been struggling to keep up more recently, so we’re tossing her a little buff. If you’re curious why we’ve chosen to buff her ultimate, rather than her tactical, we’re seeing that she has decent combat success but that teams with her on them don’t win as much as, say, teams with Lifeline or Wattson. This suggests to us that her out-of-combat utility (that is to say, how she funnels loot to her team) isn’t doing enough.
↑The Havoc's existing recoil pattern had constant horizontal movement. This means it would either be too difficult to control if there was too much recoil or far too easy to control if there was too little recoil. Updating to a new pattern that is more consistent in style with existing recoil patterns.
↑This will leave Hammerpoint P2020 damage unchanged in most scenarios.
Crafting system
Replicators around the map
Death Totem will also be slowed.
