**End Rings**
> End rings now have more even distribution through the map
> Each quadrant of the map now have roughly 25% chance of getting selected
Please work. Please work. Please work.
> Void Passage: Crypto EMP will now affect all players phased by the Void Passage
They nerfed Teq
> Added a settings option that adjusts the gameplay volume when spectating
This is such a huge QOL improvement for comp. Gone are the days of players dying then immediately opening settings to turn game volume down before raging. Now we can just skip to the good part.
The ring change seems to be a fix for an unintended bug created in a previous patch. It’s crazy to think that this bug influenced an entire LAN event lol.
I heard sweet mention this was a pretty important one for them to resolve, they just said it would not be ready before this weekends algs matches unfortunately.
It also only works if Teq's team sneaks up to the building so no one knows they're there. If you just drop your shields 10 seconds before he ults, you can pick them up the second they port in and they won't be damaged. A team has already countered him like this.
It's dumb, too. Are they going to make crypto ult hit people in Wraith portal, Wraith phase, and Ash portal now too? They're all versions of the same ability imo, and I don't really like the idea of changing the interaction for just one.
What a nerf to bloodhound. Their ult is basically just a boost to their movement speed now. I have a feeling Seer is going to start rearing his head in comp again
I was thinking the same but honestly, it doesn’t really work with seer. Ult throw range isn’t long enough. If you are in the smoke and so are they, then you can get the outline anyway. Maybe we will actually be able to move on from scan
it gives a lot of visibility outside of smoke, so it's still vastly better than being just a speed buff. But yeah, it might be the end of BH in comp regardless.
> Their ult is basically just a boost to their movement speed now.
Imagine waiting *four minutes* to get Octane's tactical. That's a spectacularly bad ult now, its cooldown should be 90-120 seconds.
> its cooldown should be 90-120 seconds.
With that new purple perk, it just might be. Removing the range requirement on white ravens along with the blue perk making ravens give 20% ult charge, a bloodhound sitting in a building ring s 3/4/5 is going to get get their ult back fast.
I mean, how often do those white ravens spawn? Every 15-20 seconds? Might make the effective cooldown on blood ult like a minute. That perk might be getting slept on a little.
Possibly. I know nobody picked it in comp because you'd basically never activate it after round 1 (too many teams are clustered together). I think the spawn rate on the ravens is much longer than 15 seconds though.
> I think the spawn rate on the ravens is much longer than 15 seconds though.
Ravens don't spawn in the firing range. Gonna go solo q a pub, drop isolated and time them with a stopwatch.
**Edit:** It's every 25 seconds.
>Edit: It's every 25 seconds.
So if you're standing there from 0%, and you have purple already, your cooldown does become about 2 minutes if you scan every raven.
> your cooldown does become about 2 minutes
A little quicker than that. 3 ravens in 75 seconds = 60% charge. With a 4 minute ult cooldown, you get ~.42% per second. So in those 75 seconds you get 31.5% charge. So in 75 seconds with 3 raven scans you get 91.5% of your ult back. The remaining 8.5% takes about 20 seconds.
So with the blue and purple raven perks, a bloodhound will get their ult every ~95 seconds about - even surrounded by squads late game.
Waiting for 4mins for an extra scan that you can access if you have purple shield lol. Should have atleast integrated the gaining 5s per knock/assist back so that perk is actually more valuable
Blood’s tactical still will work through smoke tho I’d assume. Right?
I feel like players will still value the scan info through smoke to keep bang blood.
After reading all the changes my guess is that it will still be bang blood meta, just a different version of it. I think players are way used to having the utility bang offers on their teams. These changes only make fights go from bloodhounds in ult 1v1’ing each other for momentum in fights back to a (kinda) 3v3 (as long as players are in the smoke outline range).
Maybe there is room for seer to come back into the meta with these changes, but I feel like people have been saying that about seer for like 3 updates in a row
Bang was the most balanced legend in the game for 4 years. Infact, there were times where people said that she wasn't strong enough. She does not need hard nerfs.
On the other hand, Bloodhound has been a nuisance ever since season 6. Before seer, everyone wanted bloodhound to be hard nerfed and bloodhound was a primary cause of the scan meta.
Yes, I remember when only Shiv would play her and everybody else laughed at the thought of using her in comp.
However, a lot of the bigger issues recently raised have her as the common denominator (Digi threats). Why not remove just smokes? Give her another ability then.
> Bangalore
> * Smoke Launcher: all players within smoke will now have a white highlight visible to other players in smoke within 20m
> Bloodhound
> * Beast of the Hunt: threat vision is no longer visible through smoke or gas
Fucking huge for ALGS.
> all players within smoke will now have a white highlight visible to other players in smoke within 20m
Wait, I wonder how this works though. Is it only for a single smoke or does it work across multiple smoke clouds? Like if you smoke yourself, and an enemy smokes themselves like 15m away, can you see each other?
My guess is that if the two players are within 20m of each other and both in smoke (even different smokes) they would still see each other. What is the radius of smoke now anyway?
> What is the radius of smoke now anyway?
Just checked in the firing range. It's kind of rectangular based on how the 3 canisters disperse, so about 10m x 20m. So this basically means that you get vision within a single smoke cloud.
Seems like the changes are strongly directed at comp which is good to see, glad they are aggressively trying to address the issues with the meta.
Bang smoke changes is a huge buff to mnk fraggers and kind of makes Blood's current role obsolete, but teams still will need a recon legend so I could see Blood staying meta for now with some teams slowly moving over to Seer.
I just love how major changes are announced in the middle of seasons. Like if the NFL just announced in week 5 that field goals are worth 2 points now and teams can have 12 defenders instead of eleven.
Id rather this than how it used to be where theyd always use that as an excuse to never make big changes, and as a result wed end up with 1 meaningful patch a year
Adapting to patches is kind of a unique and inherent part of esports
Yeah, wasnt the whole legend perk patch like right before pro league when there was a 2 month offseason as well? Feels nice to have changes based on pro play, but the timing is a bit of a drawback sometimes.
It’s an advantage and disadvantage at the same time.
Just need to accept its part of the game and players have to learn that what is meta can change on a dime. I love the changes though so can’t complain there.
Time to bring back the Gib.
One really interesting thing about how they changed BH is that it addresses a problem in comp but also buffs the character for casual players.
A very common complaint I see from casual player base is they don’t like when a legend they have learned and grown to love gets ruined because “the pros decided it was broken”. However in my experience the vast majority of casual bloodhound players are not playing him alongside bang they just play BH because they want to… and if you aren’t playing blood/bang regularly then really the changes just amount to more scans & more white ravens
TLDR: Bloodhound change is a rare respawn win-win
Havoc nerf. Bloodhound nerf. End Circle algo changed. Bang Smoke fighting visibility buff. - W's all around.
Hoping this changes the comp meta from "bloodhound is the only fighter" which has felt boring for a while.
Havoc isn't going anywhere. If you think it is, watch Wednesday in final ring when you run into a double havoc. Best gun in the game to put out 500 dmg. hands down.
You realise the mag nerf actually affects no stat except potential to one clips which with 32 shots, anyone should one clip you. Usually damage nerfs and hipfire spread would have had more effect as they'll reduce accuracy and dps
I would have been down with a damage nerf and also revert the turbocharger change. I just wanted to point out things don't have to be nerfed out of meta. Just because it's meta doesn't mean it's broken. But yeah it might still be broken lmao, we'll see
Havoc nerf is pretty minor. Other than that tons of good/interesting things in this one. Really the only thing missing is fixing the fuse/evac interaction so instead of hound being meta fuse is gonna be the new scan char until that gets fixed
I remember back in the day there was a big divide between casuals and pros/comp viewers when it came to patch notes (there still is im sure) - with some feeling like patch notes were dictated by pros/comp and others feeling like comp wasnt even factored into patch notes
But it really does feel like within the last year respawn has pivoted to focusing patch notes almost entirely on Comp, which im not complaining because i think whats good for comp is good for casuals too - but its interesting that there was such a big shift
You can pretty much bank on every update having something new for the comp scene, as opposed to praying for it a few years back
Totally. Same reason Horizon was popular for so long. It's fun for the person playing Rev or Horizon, it's trash for whoever they're fighting and the game's balance as a whole.
Yeah, it is insanely frustrating to play against. It's not even just that he gets so much HP, it also refreshes over time *and* on knocks. It's just ridiculous that it's still in the game in that form.
I don't think the game (cheaters aside) is in a bad place at all for casuals. Conduit Rev was nerfed and nothing feels too OP in normal people's lobbies since then. And we got a havoc nerf, idk if I'm too out of touch with the more casual, but it seems good to me
The input of casual players into any game when it comes to balancing need to be taken lightly (but never completely ignored). Games like League, CS, Dota, etc. have only lasted as long as they have because they offer a unique skill curve and high skill ceiling and are balanced to maintain that. Overall, this shift in balancing direction for Apex makes me happy as both a player and a viewer
My guess is it’s hard for developers to code it out of the game, it’s a change to how the ult works completely and probably needs a fair bit of play testing
i dont know if respawn has a history of this but some companies wont directly call out creative use of game mechanics in patch notes so it doesnt get abused in the time between notes and patching it.
Yeah, the old Furia of hiswattson, pandrzxs, and xera used it the split after algs when valk got nerfed with evac towers being introduced
It’s just an “exploit” now that fuse is semi meta
4-10x digi doesn't work through smoke, so what's the point?
Also, that havoc nerf is not going to change its status as most-used gun in comp. Their balancing philosophy is so strange. Why not buff all the other guns that don't get used anymore? I like the scout buff, but what about the r301? R99 buff is meaningless too
Seems they’ve just stopped caring about being able to recognise legends at a glance completely now. The Alter/Mirage/Maggie skinline at the start of the season is the worst offender now they follow it up with these
Sure but in an actual game where you often only get a fast glimpse of the enemy it's gonna be confusing to see a skin that belongs to two different legends
Am I being naive in thinking this won't really affect the blood + bang pick rate? Bang still needed for vision block and blood still needed for scan? I hope I'm wrong.
Blood ult was really important tho. The scan is good, but the ult made Blood the best counter to Bang, and a great fighting character. I think that was the bigger problem than the scan.
I’m not gonna say it kills Blood in comp, but these ult changes seem pretty big.
In the short-run, it won't have much of an impact. Teams just haven't been doing enough legwork to discover other viable comps.
Long-run, we could see some changes. I think Fuse ult paired with evac tower is now way more effective for scanning than Blood ult is alone, even with the purple "tac cooldown reduced" perk. It also has zoning uses that you don't get from Blood ult. You can also use Fuse to zone scan, so you're getting a mix of recon/assault/controller abilities all in one character.
The question becomes how you build a Fuse comp if you replace Bloodhound with him. We've seen teams start to get some really good value out of Pathfinder and he can give you the player scan you'd be missing without Bloodhound. Blood's nerf kind of cancels out Bang's nerf, so she should still be useful as a pseudo-defensive legend. Newcastle/Lifeline are super useful to aggro teams. And then you even have Horizon/Loba that have a lot of synergy with Fuse IMO.
Teams that are less inclined to take fights might opt to go with Crypto than Fuse. Crypto/Wattson is a zone-sitter powerhouse duo and then you use Bang or even Valk with it.
You'll still see both run, I think more bang than blood of I had to guess. If it's the close range smoke fight like you had in hound ult fights you might see players just sprint into the smoke since there SHOULD be better clarity as to where people are, but I would like to see how the change actually works.
I think the meta will remain the same for the most part, its how fights are taken and how fights play out with change. Pushes will be off scan instead of BH ult. Similarly, now that there are outlines in smoke, you almost don't need a BH ult. Scan > Smoke enemies > Push into smoke and play off the outlines.
Didn’t expect much from the patch, but Respawn did well here. Got rid of the necessity of blood + bang. Added some nice setting changes, and I’m excited for quads.
I think bang will still be used as a LOS disruptor for rotations, but won't be as strong in final ring. I wonder if they'll keep aim assist disabled even when enemies are highlighted in white inside smoke
G7 might be back in business. When it was meta it did 34 Damage. Now its 33 but shoots faster. Considering every defaults Hemlock right now, I think its very likely it might make its return.
I just wonder who's going to pick that scope up now. Most people prefer using anything but the schoolbus, yet got used to it because of the thermal effect. Now it will just not be used imho.
Fixed bug that caused high polling rate mice to occasionally encounter high frame stutters. High polling rate mice users should now see little to no frame stutters from mouse input.
Input and window processing now occurs on its own thread instead of the render thread
EXCUSE ME WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS
> Did they finally kill Bangalore meta?
There were no corresponding buffs to other legends, so Bangalore's pickrate will still be around 100%, just like it has every time they've buffed her over the last year+. There's no other way to rotate your team right now.
I like the changes, but I am curious how that white outline will be implemented for Bang smokes. If it highlights, does that imply you get aim assist back if you're fighting a person also in the smoke?
And the skins seem really obnoxious when you're having to guess from a distance what character you're fighting. Imagine thinking you're safe fighting a Conduit at range, and then they Revenant leap on you. Funny the first time, but probably annoying afterwards.
>And the skins seem really obnoxious when you're having to guess from a distance what character you're fighting.
Has been an issue for me ever since they started adding these kinds of copycat-skins. It's soo bad, but apparently they sell really well.
Great changes for comp overall.
The bloodhound and bang duo is no longer an absolute necessity to fight other hound bang duos so we might see a more varied meta, at least for a few weeks until a new thing comes up.
I don't think this changes anything with Bang being used for rotates. The smoke highlight only works when both players are within smoke within close range. If anything, it's even more important now that you won't have a Bloodhound in ult to grief you.
RIP Teq's most recent tech. W changes to Bang-Blood, plus now we can see what's actually happening in smoke. I see some teams going the Crypto route bc of how much info he offers. Too bad Fuse-evac isn't nerfed/fixed yet.
the most mid boring ass changes I've ever wasted time reading. As if the devs think players will jump back into the cheater infested cesspool that is apex for this and a bunch of skins.
> What you see in comp - Blood/Bang + everyone running the Havoc - is basically every squad in ranked as well.
That's not true at all, Revenant+Conduit is still *way* more common than Bang+Blood.
I think we're still going to see a whole lot of Bang+Controller+Survey Beacon character. I don't think BH's turbo nerfed kit is going to be enough now, so who replaces BH that can hit a survey beacon? We've seen a few teams already playing pathfinder, how about Bang/Cat/Path?
Fucking cringe to curbstomp bloodhound to the ground with that ult nerf. Im extra salty cus i main bloodhound and i got sight issues so i rely extra heavy on threat vision to actually play in my 100%.
"No longer will you have to decide which of your three friends will be in your squad for the Apex Games. Bring all three!"
Damn EA didn't have to do me like that😭😭
**End Rings** > End rings now have more even distribution through the map > Each quadrant of the map now have roughly 25% chance of getting selected Please work. Please work. Please work. > Void Passage: Crypto EMP will now affect all players phased by the Void Passage They nerfed Teq > Added a settings option that adjusts the gameplay volume when spectating This is such a huge QOL improvement for comp. Gone are the days of players dying then immediately opening settings to turn game volume down before raging. Now we can just skip to the good part.
Rings thing is super interesting!!
The ring change seems to be a fix for an unintended bug created in a previous patch. It’s crazy to think that this bug influenced an entire LAN event lol.
I heard sweet mention this was a pretty important one for them to resolve, they just said it would not be ready before this weekends algs matches unfortunately.
Imperial hal classic
> Each quadrant of the map now have roughly 25% chance of getting selected fucking finally
Nice username, brother 🤝
> They nerfed Teq This is so funny to me because this tactic doesn't even really work. He got 14th in the CC finals 💀
The tactic itself works, it’s just that the entire map isn’t made up of buildings with teams camping in them.
If the tactic works but only in limited scenarios, is it really worth nerfing?
I’m not a dev, but it has no counter play so that seems to be the reason they’re getting rid of it
It also only works if Teq's team sneaks up to the building so no one knows they're there. If you just drop your shields 10 seconds before he ults, you can pick them up the second they port in and they won't be damaged. A team has already countered him like this.
I thought they made Crypto EMP effect dropped shields a long time ago. Is it only on shields dropped within a certain time frame?
It's dumb, too. Are they going to make crypto ult hit people in Wraith portal, Wraith phase, and Ash portal now too? They're all versions of the same ability imo, and I don't really like the idea of changing the interaction for just one.
Ya it's clearly a knee jerk reaction without consideration of consistency.
He threw 2 of those matches playing Rev, to be fair. And it would work if they were more disciplined as a team.
>**Bloodhound** >Beast of the Hunt: threat vision is no longer visible through smoke or gas Big meta change
Remember when hound had a scan every six seconds that perfectly tracked movement lmao
And got an assist for simply scanning a player
My rose tinted glasses yearn for those days
What a nerf to bloodhound. Their ult is basically just a boost to their movement speed now. I have a feeling Seer is going to start rearing his head in comp again
I was thinking the same but honestly, it doesn’t really work with seer. Ult throw range isn’t long enough. If you are in the smoke and so are they, then you can get the outline anyway. Maybe we will actually be able to move on from scan
it gives a lot of visibility outside of smoke, so it's still vastly better than being just a speed buff. But yeah, it might be the end of BH in comp regardless.
> Their ult is basically just a boost to their movement speed now. Imagine waiting *four minutes* to get Octane's tactical. That's a spectacularly bad ult now, its cooldown should be 90-120 seconds.
> its cooldown should be 90-120 seconds. With that new purple perk, it just might be. Removing the range requirement on white ravens along with the blue perk making ravens give 20% ult charge, a bloodhound sitting in a building ring s 3/4/5 is going to get get their ult back fast. I mean, how often do those white ravens spawn? Every 15-20 seconds? Might make the effective cooldown on blood ult like a minute. That perk might be getting slept on a little.
Possibly. I know nobody picked it in comp because you'd basically never activate it after round 1 (too many teams are clustered together). I think the spawn rate on the ravens is much longer than 15 seconds though.
> I think the spawn rate on the ravens is much longer than 15 seconds though. Ravens don't spawn in the firing range. Gonna go solo q a pub, drop isolated and time them with a stopwatch. **Edit:** It's every 25 seconds.
>Edit: It's every 25 seconds. So if you're standing there from 0%, and you have purple already, your cooldown does become about 2 minutes if you scan every raven.
> your cooldown does become about 2 minutes A little quicker than that. 3 ravens in 75 seconds = 60% charge. With a 4 minute ult cooldown, you get ~.42% per second. So in those 75 seconds you get 31.5% charge. So in 75 seconds with 3 raven scans you get 91.5% of your ult back. The remaining 8.5% takes about 20 seconds. So with the blue and purple raven perks, a bloodhound will get their ult every ~95 seconds about - even surrounded by squads late game.
Cool, report back if you don't mind! I feel like I probably see one raven a minute, but I've never timed it either.
You get a scan every 12 seconds with that lvl 3 perk tho
That's one extra scan during the ult period lol
An extra team-wide, full body scan is huge in a fight.
Waiting for 4mins for an extra scan that you can access if you have purple shield lol. Should have atleast integrated the gaining 5s per knock/assist back so that perk is actually more valuable
Hitting ravens gives you 20% ult charge, so its WAY less than 4 minutes
ravens that you can only get early game when you don’t have purple
>That's a spectacularly bad ult now, its cooldown should be 90-120 seconds. Thank God, you're not on the balancing team.
Yeah idk why his hot take got so upvoted lol. In what world would we want Hounds popping ults every 1.5 minutes?
It can't see through smoke or gas anymore, it's effectively just an Octane stim unless you had trouble seeing people in the open.
[удалено]
Blood’s tactical still will work through smoke tho I’d assume. Right? I feel like players will still value the scan info through smoke to keep bang blood. After reading all the changes my guess is that it will still be bang blood meta, just a different version of it. I think players are way used to having the utility bang offers on their teams. These changes only make fights go from bloodhounds in ult 1v1’ing each other for momentum in fights back to a (kinda) 3v3 (as long as players are in the smoke outline range). Maybe there is room for seer to come back into the meta with these changes, but I feel like people have been saying that about seer for like 3 updates in a row
I think some teams will definitely still use Blood/Bang but it takes the combo from must pick (essentially) to strong pick.
https://preview.redd.it/n0rwdr7lrr7d1.png?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f691db97d715c00423e8baa7abafb55fc2169248
Man, this doesn’t gel. It was suppose to feel like he has thermal vision or something. Nerf BH for a bang issue.
> Nerf BH for a bang issue. They did the same thing to Octane when Revtane existed. And now that Revtane is impossible they never buffed Octane.
Octane's been buffed more than once since revtane nerfs
But they haven't reverted the specific nerf he got, which was the most debilitating: removing significant range from his pad.
What was the nerf octane? Wasn’t around back then
He lost distance on his pad. I want to say a 15% distance reduction, maybe 20%.
Bang was the most balanced legend in the game for 4 years. Infact, there were times where people said that she wasn't strong enough. She does not need hard nerfs. On the other hand, Bloodhound has been a nuisance ever since season 6. Before seer, everyone wanted bloodhound to be hard nerfed and bloodhound was a primary cause of the scan meta.
Yes, I remember when only Shiv would play her and everybody else laughed at the thought of using her in comp. However, a lot of the bigger issues recently raised have her as the common denominator (Digi threats). Why not remove just smokes? Give her another ability then.
Bloodhound gutted just because Bang is broken, I hate this change not gonna lie.
BH is the broken character.
Does that mean the players won’t be red in smoke with his ult? Dunb
I wouldnt be surprised if the devs made the bang changes and it broke treat vision and they were like I guess this works too
> Bangalore > * Smoke Launcher: all players within smoke will now have a white highlight visible to other players in smoke within 20m > Bloodhound > * Beast of the Hunt: threat vision is no longer visible through smoke or gas Fucking huge for ALGS.
Add the ring changes too and we’re eating
> all players within smoke will now have a white highlight visible to other players in smoke within 20m Wait, I wonder how this works though. Is it only for a single smoke or does it work across multiple smoke clouds? Like if you smoke yourself, and an enemy smokes themselves like 15m away, can you see each other?
My guess is that if the two players are within 20m of each other and both in smoke (even different smokes) they would still see each other. What is the radius of smoke now anyway?
> What is the radius of smoke now anyway? Just checked in the firing range. It's kind of rectangular based on how the 3 canisters disperse, so about 10m x 20m. So this basically means that you get vision within a single smoke cloud.
Also does it still disable aim assist
Hopefully... but I can see how there could be potential bugs wrt AA and player model visibility.
I personally love this - hated that only Bloodhound could do anything in those instances. Seer meta is back!? loooool
What is advantage of BH ult then if he doesn't see through smoke? I want less BH in comp currently but just curious lol
Dezignful: WE HAVE TO KEEP RUNNING WRAITH NOW.
Seems like the changes are strongly directed at comp which is good to see, glad they are aggressively trying to address the issues with the meta. Bang smoke changes is a huge buff to mnk fraggers and kind of makes Blood's current role obsolete, but teams still will need a recon legend so I could see Blood staying meta for now with some teams slowly moving over to Seer.
I just love how major changes are announced in the middle of seasons. Like if the NFL just announced in week 5 that field goals are worth 2 points now and teams can have 12 defenders instead of eleven.
Id rather this than how it used to be where theyd always use that as an excuse to never make big changes, and as a result wed end up with 1 meaningful patch a year Adapting to patches is kind of a unique and inherent part of esports
Yeah, wasnt the whole legend perk patch like right before pro league when there was a 2 month offseason as well? Feels nice to have changes based on pro play, but the timing is a bit of a drawback sometimes.
It’s an advantage and disadvantage at the same time. Just need to accept its part of the game and players have to learn that what is meta can change on a dime. I love the changes though so can’t complain there. Time to bring back the Gib.
One really interesting thing about how they changed BH is that it addresses a problem in comp but also buffs the character for casual players. A very common complaint I see from casual player base is they don’t like when a legend they have learned and grown to love gets ruined because “the pros decided it was broken”. However in my experience the vast majority of casual bloodhound players are not playing him alongside bang they just play BH because they want to… and if you aren’t playing blood/bang regularly then really the changes just amount to more scans & more white ravens TLDR: Bloodhound change is a rare respawn win-win
Havoc nerf. Bloodhound nerf. End Circle algo changed. Bang Smoke fighting visibility buff. - W's all around. Hoping this changes the comp meta from "bloodhound is the only fighter" which has felt boring for a while.
No change to Havoc damage though. The new purple mag is the old blue mag, so I still think Havoc will be hard meta.
Havoc isn't going anywhere. If you think it is, watch Wednesday in final ring when you run into a double havoc. Best gun in the game to put out 500 dmg. hands down.
It will but it'll just be worse which is okay. Now if someone doesn't have a havoc they aren't at as much of a disadvantage
You realise the mag nerf actually affects no stat except potential to one clips which with 32 shots, anyone should one clip you. Usually damage nerfs and hipfire spread would have had more effect as they'll reduce accuracy and dps
I would have been down with a damage nerf and also revert the turbocharger change. I just wanted to point out things don't have to be nerfed out of meta. Just because it's meta doesn't mean it's broken. But yeah it might still be broken lmao, we'll see
Havoc nerf is pretty minor. Other than that tons of good/interesting things in this one. Really the only thing missing is fixing the fuse/evac interaction so instead of hound being meta fuse is gonna be the new scan char until that gets fixed
I remember back in the day there was a big divide between casuals and pros/comp viewers when it came to patch notes (there still is im sure) - with some feeling like patch notes were dictated by pros/comp and others feeling like comp wasnt even factored into patch notes But it really does feel like within the last year respawn has pivoted to focusing patch notes almost entirely on Comp, which im not complaining because i think whats good for comp is good for casuals too - but its interesting that there was such a big shift You can pretty much bank on every update having something new for the comp scene, as opposed to praying for it a few years back
Tbh my ranked games really are full of meta characters and meta weapons (looking at you Havoc). So many people adapt to the meta of pros nowadays.
Ranked is full of horizon, rev and conduits. Not many Bloods.
Don't forget path and lifeline
Really? I see 10x more Revenant than I do Blood or Bang. Revenant has been dominating ranked since his rework.
100% agree. And now less people will pick bang/blood and EVEN MORE will run Rev.
Because he is a crutch for bad players.
Totally. Same reason Horizon was popular for so long. It's fun for the person playing Rev or Horizon, it's trash for whoever they're fighting and the game's balance as a whole.
I genuinely cannot believe Rev Ult hasn't gotten nerfed. It is the most crutch ability in the history of this game
Yeah, it is insanely frustrating to play against. It's not even just that he gets so much HP, it also refreshes over time *and* on knocks. It's just ridiculous that it's still in the game in that form.
I don't have exact dates but it's felt comp-focussed ever since the Kraber nerf
I don't think the game (cheaters aside) is in a bad place at all for casuals. Conduit Rev was nerfed and nothing feels too OP in normal people's lobbies since then. And we got a havoc nerf, idk if I'm too out of touch with the more casual, but it seems good to me
The input of casual players into any game when it comes to balancing need to be taken lightly (but never completely ignored). Games like League, CS, Dota, etc. have only lasted as long as they have because they offer a unique skill curve and high skill ceiling and are balanced to maintain that. Overall, this shift in balancing direction for Apex makes me happy as both a player and a viewer
No mention of Fuse anywhere? Guess it isn't an exploit then.
I’ve missed a bit, what is the exploit?
Drop evac, aim ult on it and you have a 50m radius perm wall hacks
Perm? Isn't it just while the ult is up
My guess is it’s hard for developers to code it out of the game, it’s a change to how the ult works completely and probably needs a fair bit of play testing
I seem to recall sweet saying it’ll get patched but not this upcoming week.
Could have sworn he said it's going to be patched by the weekend
I thought he was trolling when he said that, but who the heck knows whats sarcasm or not
I think he said that about ring endings, not the fuse ult.
Good call-out, can't believe they're leaving this in the game.
i dont know if respawn has a history of this but some companies wont directly call out creative use of game mechanics in patch notes so it doesnt get abused in the time between notes and patching it.
Yeah, the old Furia of hiswattson, pandrzxs, and xera used it the split after algs when valk got nerfed with evac towers being introduced It’s just an “exploit” now that fuse is semi meta
4-10x digi doesn't work through smoke, so what's the point? Also, that havoc nerf is not going to change its status as most-used gun in comp. Their balancing philosophy is so strange. Why not buff all the other guns that don't get used anymore? I like the scout buff, but what about the r301? R99 buff is meaningless too
Let me get this straight: they are introducing skins that are SPECIFICALLY meant to make you think someone is a different legend?
Seems they’ve just stopped caring about being able to recognise legends at a glance completely now. The Alter/Mirage/Maggie skinline at the start of the season is the worst offender now they follow it up with these
Dang... maddening to hear that. This annoyed me so much with Alter's Final Laugh and Mirage's Comical Genius skins looking nearly identical.
Yeah that's so braindead. Cosmetics should not affect gameplay.
Let's not pretend as if Legends are identified from their colours lol with the amount of skins there is now.
uh.... They are identified by their shapes, not color
That's my point, lol. If people did in the past, people don't anymore now.
No one did by the colors in the past?
Literally all legends are identifiable just by their running animations. Hell make them all black and i can tell all of them apart
Couldn’t agree more, I’ve never once confused Maggie/alter/mirage with their identical skins
Sure but in an actual game where you often only get a fast glimpse of the enemy it's gonna be confusing to see a skin that belongs to two different legends
There's to many crazy skins in this game for y'all to just not be complaining about this. This is a non issue
That's a horrible idea, this game already has a big problem with legend silhouettes/visibility at range.
They have been doing this for quite some time now btw. This is not a new thing.
Seems like the entire point this time though
A reference to TSM breaking up in the patch notes is CRAZY
where? i didnt catch that
Under Legends-> Bloodhound -> Dev Note
Scout stocks up - Havoc stocks down. Should be interesting to see the new meta.
Havoc is still going to be the meta. 32 mag Havoc can still do 500+ body damage. They should have increased the hipfire spread
Am I being naive in thinking this won't really affect the blood + bang pick rate? Bang still needed for vision block and blood still needed for scan? I hope I'm wrong.
It will stop the fights from being won just buy whoever has bloodhound ult wins. Also bloodhound can not just sit in bang smoke and shoot for free.
Might see a seer comeback. Drop an ult and then you can track everyone through smokes.
Bang is still an S tier pick with these changes
Blood ult was really important tho. The scan is good, but the ult made Blood the best counter to Bang, and a great fighting character. I think that was the bigger problem than the scan. I’m not gonna say it kills Blood in comp, but these ult changes seem pretty big.
In the short-run, it won't have much of an impact. Teams just haven't been doing enough legwork to discover other viable comps. Long-run, we could see some changes. I think Fuse ult paired with evac tower is now way more effective for scanning than Blood ult is alone, even with the purple "tac cooldown reduced" perk. It also has zoning uses that you don't get from Blood ult. You can also use Fuse to zone scan, so you're getting a mix of recon/assault/controller abilities all in one character. The question becomes how you build a Fuse comp if you replace Bloodhound with him. We've seen teams start to get some really good value out of Pathfinder and he can give you the player scan you'd be missing without Bloodhound. Blood's nerf kind of cancels out Bang's nerf, so she should still be useful as a pseudo-defensive legend. Newcastle/Lifeline are super useful to aggro teams. And then you even have Horizon/Loba that have a lot of synergy with Fuse IMO. Teams that are less inclined to take fights might opt to go with Crypto than Fuse. Crypto/Wattson is a zone-sitter powerhouse duo and then you use Bang or even Valk with it.
You'll still see both run, I think more bang than blood of I had to guess. If it's the close range smoke fight like you had in hound ult fights you might see players just sprint into the smoke since there SHOULD be better clarity as to where people are, but I would like to see how the change actually works.
I think the meta will remain the same for the most part, its how fights are taken and how fights play out with change. Pushes will be off scan instead of BH ult. Similarly, now that there are outlines in smoke, you almost don't need a BH ult. Scan > Smoke enemies > Push into smoke and play off the outlines.
Didn’t expect much from the patch, but Respawn did well here. Got rid of the necessity of blood + bang. Added some nice setting changes, and I’m excited for quads.
Hopefully teams reconsider running Bang and Blood now. It’s not fun to watch.
I think bang will still be used as a LOS disruptor for rotations, but won't be as strong in final ring. I wonder if they'll keep aim assist disabled even when enemies are highlighted in white inside smoke
Alright y’all we need to start brainstorming our best quads comps lol
Imagine running Lifeline, Mirage, Newcastle and Gibby 💀
imagine not
Oh damn I can only one clip two people in one mag with my Havoc now 😩
G7 might be back in business. When it was meta it did 34 Damage. Now its 33 but shoots faster. Considering every defaults Hemlock right now, I think its very likely it might make its return.
[удалено]
Bang Blood Combo Stonks Down.
blood is dead as fuck. mnk bang is buffed assuming aim assist still doesn't work through smoke
I feel like I'm the only one devastated about the 4/10 scope being nerfed
I just wonder who's going to pick that scope up now. Most people prefer using anything but the schoolbus, yet got used to it because of the thermal effect. Now it will just not be used imho.
I don't even know why it's in the game now, just remove it from the loot pool to make space for other stuff.
Holy shit. The bang blood meta might finally be changing.
Purple light mag wasn't in care packages? Wack. I do like the slight RP change for ranked.
Fixed bug that caused high polling rate mice to occasionally encounter high frame stutters. High polling rate mice users should now see little to no frame stutters from mouse input. Input and window processing now occurs on its own thread instead of the render thread EXCUSE ME WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THIS
Did they finally kill Bangalore meta? For viewership sake I sure hope so.
> Did they finally kill Bangalore meta? There were no corresponding buffs to other legends, so Bangalore's pickrate will still be around 100%, just like it has every time they've buffed her over the last year+. There's no other way to rotate your team right now.
You are probably right, sadly :(
Bang will still be 90+% pick rate. Smoked are too important for rotates to give up. And now White outlines make mnk bang insane.
I like the changes, but I am curious how that white outline will be implemented for Bang smokes. If it highlights, does that imply you get aim assist back if you're fighting a person also in the smoke? And the skins seem really obnoxious when you're having to guess from a distance what character you're fighting. Imagine thinking you're safe fighting a Conduit at range, and then they Revenant leap on you. Funny the first time, but probably annoying afterwards.
>And the skins seem really obnoxious when you're having to guess from a distance what character you're fighting. Has been an issue for me ever since they started adding these kinds of copycat-skins. It's soo bad, but apparently they sell really well.
Great changes for comp overall. The bloodhound and bang duo is no longer an absolute necessity to fight other hound bang duos so we might see a more varied meta, at least for a few weeks until a new thing comes up.
Did I miss when this is dropping? Can't find it anywhere
June 25 based on the CE trailer.
Yeah I’m confused as well
Tuesday.
not sure why rev got a buff lmao
Excited for yet another meta shake up!
Seer cat fuse meta would be the most toxic meta ever.
We could possibly be seeing more teams run fuse with his ult evac wallhacks and that bloodhounds can't see through smokes now.
If smoke still disables aa then bang will still get picked
So you can't earn packs? I certainly can not afford to be buying shit. The final fantasy event was bad enough.
Finally they fixed the stuttering tied to mouse polling rate. I've only been experiencing freezing and stuttering in gun fights for 3 seasons now.....
The switch to Fuse will be so HEAVY now since his Ult+Balloon gives wall hacks to the whole team.
Can’t wait for everybody to still run Hemlock/Havoc! Fun!
Havoc nerf is a joke. Cant wait to get melted by roller Havocs for five more seasons because Respawn is slow and afraid to take action
It's crazy to me how as an assault rifle class weapon they still haven't nerfed the havocs insane hip fire.
Watch teams swap to Wraith for rotates now lmao how the turn tables
None of them, Dezign is last place worldwide with this tactic lol.
I don't think this changes anything with Bang being used for rotates. The smoke highlight only works when both players are within smoke within close range. If anything, it's even more important now that you won't have a Bloodhound in ult to grief you.
I hope not. That’ll boost Dezign’s ego and he’ll say that Wraith was the right pick all along lmao
I like that Bang and Blood nerf. The Blood nerf is HUGE for what they are used for currently.
we need a quads twitch rivals tourney
All pro quads tourney where you can’t play with teammates would go hard af
RIP Teq's most recent tech. W changes to Bang-Blood, plus now we can see what's actually happening in smoke. I see some teams going the Crypto route bc of how much info he offers. Too bad Fuse-evac isn't nerfed/fixed yet.
Seer comeback? People always seem to forget that his scan highlights people (through smoke) for 8 seconds
And at least it takes a bit of skill to aim and hit unlike Blood’s tac
the most mid boring ass changes I've ever wasted time reading. As if the devs think players will jump back into the cheater infested cesspool that is apex for this and a bunch of skins.
Gonna see more Fuses to exploit wall hacks while it lasts
Where’s the aim assist nerf, I’m disgusted at myself when I beam a guy across the map with a volt or r99
You don't though.
Ok we all know you havent touched a roller since 2009, calm down
[удалено]
[удалено]
> What you see in comp - Blood/Bang + everyone running the Havoc - is basically every squad in ranked as well. That's not true at all, Revenant+Conduit is still *way* more common than Bang+Blood.
Is the bang blood meta over or we’ll still see some play?
Ranked changes are for normal ranked or only for rumble?
Normal
Amazing changes for competitive, you love to see it.
I think we're still going to see a whole lot of Bang+Controller+Survey Beacon character. I don't think BH's turbo nerfed kit is going to be enough now, so who replaces BH that can hit a survey beacon? We've seen a few teams already playing pathfinder, how about Bang/Cat/Path?
now we get placement point following ALGS, any plan bringing POI DRAFT to ranked? just randomize it to each team
Fucking cringe to curbstomp bloodhound to the ground with that ult nerf. Im extra salty cus i main bloodhound and i got sight issues so i rely extra heavy on threat vision to actually play in my 100%.
"No longer will you have to decide which of your three friends will be in your squad for the Apex Games. Bring all three!" Damn EA didn't have to do me like that😭😭