Respawn Entertainment will launch a big patch for Apex Legends along with the new Lost Treasures Collection Event. Along with some interesting new gameplay mechanics like the mobile Respawn Beacon (explained in the linked article), some big Legend buffs and nerfs will launch today. Here are some of the big changes coming to Apex Legends with the new patch.
Lifeline rework
Lifeline is getting the biggest changes this patch with a partial rework of her abilities. Most notably, Lifeline’s revive ability is getting an overhaul. Previously, Lifeline would personally revive a teammate while being protected by a shield. Now, her drone – D.O.D – is doing the reviving while the shield still protects your fallen teammate. This leaves Lifeline free to stay in the fight while the revives are performed autonomously. But this fully replaces Lifeline’s old passive, including Fast Heal.
Additionally, her healing drone can now be deployed once every 45 seconds instead of once every minute. And lastly, her Ultimate is receiving a buff. Now, when basic healing items are spawned, you’ll get 3 of them instead of 1. When the Care Package contains an attachment, it now spawns 2.
Wraith nerfed
Respawn is also trying to minimize the advantage Wraith has over all other characters. According to the dev, Wraith still has a disproportionately high win rate and kill rate. By giving her Tactical Ability – the Phase Walk, technically called Into the Void – a windup time, it should prevent players from using it as a ‘get out of jail free card’. Phase Walk now takes 1.25 seconds to enable instead of just 0.4 seconds. Conversely, when in Phase Walk Wraith gets some additional benefits from it. She moves faster, the cooldown is decreased to 25 seconds, and it lasts for one second longer.
Other Legend changes
Other changes to characters include a slight speed boost for Octane, along with the ability to double-jump in mid-air. Mirage will now deploy decoys for the entire squad while skydiving. While cloaked, he’s also slightly more visible to players within 5 metres of Mirage. The game encourages Wattson players to use her Ultimate more. She can now place up to 3 Ultimates (the Pylon), while also stacking 2 Ultimate accelerants per inventory slot.
Discouraged cheesing Ziplines
Another notable patch note revolves around Ziplines. The yellow cables are dotted all across both maps and give Apex Legends the sense of fluid movement. Apparently Respawn doesn’t want too much of that quick movement, because Ziplines are receiving a slight nerf. When not touching the ground after re-grabbing Ziplines, the player now receives a cooldown. Each time a player disconnects and re-grabs the Zipline, the cooldown increases.
Only when you land on the ground, the cooldown is lifted. So just zipping up and down a Zipline isn’t possible anymore. It is however not entirely clear how long the cooldowns are. It might be that you wouldn’t even notice it unless you’re trying to cheese the system.
Whatever the case, we’ll know pretty soon. The Lost Treasures Collection Event is slated for today, June 23. Be sure to check out the full patch notes here.