The first balance patch for Apex Legends has arrived for all platforms, and some players may be a little dismayed to hear that a couple of the battle royale’s most popular weapons have been nerfed.
First up, both the Wingman hand cannon, and the Peacekeeper shotgun now have reduced spawn rates across all zones, while energy weapon and ammo availability have been increased.
Meanwhile, the Wingman with a Skullpiercer is – in Respawn’s opinion – far too strong, and has been tweaked accordingly. The headshot multiplier for the Wingman has been reduced from 2.5 to 2.25 with the Skullpiercer equipped, while the pistol’s overall rate of fire has fallen from 3.1 to 2.6.
It unfortunately doesn’t end there, as the Wingman’s hip fire accuracy has also been decreased for good measure.
The Peacekeeper with a Shotgun Bolt has also been fairly widely nerfed, as Respawn explained in the patch notes that the rechamber rate has been reduced from 10% to 7.5% at level 1, 20% to 13% at level 2, and 25% to 16% at level 3.
Respawn explained its decision to release less frequent but more substantial changes alongside the patch notes:
Our goal is to make less frequent, better tested, higher impact changes, so it minimizes the effects on your time spent mastering a particular mechanic, weapon, character, etc. You shouldn’t have to read our patch notes every few days just to keep up with how characters and weapons now work … We know y’all are putting a ton of time into the game and mastering every nuance (like Wraith portalling people off cliffs for the final kill lolz).
The studio also revealed that some weapons are intentionally less powerful at lower levels until fully upgraded to create a meaningful and engaging experience for players, though it says it’s seen some good feedback from players regarding making weaker weapons more exciting without losing sight of what they’re trying to achieve.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.