Apex Legends Season 2 is here and has a lot to prove. The game was a huge hit on release earlier this year, but since then its player base has been gradually shrinking as folks return to Fortnite.
That migration wasn’t helped by the much-hyped Season 1 Battle Pass turning out to be a dud, with players criticizing its boring progression systems and disappointing rewards. Season 2, which released on Tuesday, appears to have taken that criticism on board and has launched with revamped leveling up mechanics, an interesting new Legend in Wattson and a number of tweaks to the existing characters.
None of these are game-changers per se, but they’re the stuff that higher-level Apex Legends players will have to assimilate with in order to stay on top.
According to the official patch notes, here’s what’s changed:
Fortified [Gibraltar, Caustic]
- Damage reduction increased: 10% -> 15%
- Fortified Legends are now immune to slow effects from weapon fire.
Low Profile [Wraith, Lifeline, Pathfinder]
- Low Profile increases incoming damage by 5%.
Bloodhound
- Eye of the Allfather
Enemies scanned now are tracked in real time instead of leaving a ghost image behind. The tracking lasts for 1.5 seconds.
Increased the angle of the scan to 110 from 90.
- Tracker
Increased clue duration to 90 seconds from 60 seconds.
Fixed a bug where energy weapons wouldn’t leave behind weapon fired clues.
Fixed a bug where movement clues would sometimes not be generated.
Mirage
- Vanishing Act
Mirage can now cancel out of his ultimate cloak early.
Mirage now has a small delay when disabling cloak.
Caustic
- Nox Gas
The magnitude of the slow is reduced by 50% when effecting teammates.
Gibraltar
- Dome of Protection
Increased the duration by 3 seconds.
Pathfinder
Updated the hit box to better conform with the base model.
We are also planning to make adjustments so his hitbox better reflects Legendary Skins as well for cases where it’s not matching up.
Lifeline
- D.O.C. heal drone now gets destroyed after 2 damage ticks by the circle.
Most of these changes are sensible enough and those maining any of the characters will be pleased to see that there are no obvious nerfs in this patch. In fact, most the changes make their abilities more useful rather than less. The only thing I can see that’s even arguably a negative is updating Pathfinder’s hitbox to better conform with the model, and until we have the data of exactly how that works, we can’t say whether that makes him easier to hit or not.
Beyond the individual changes, the patch demonstrates that Respawn understands what they’re doing with Apex Legends. After all, they’ve said they have plans for it to continue for a long while yet and it’ll be fascinating to watch as it evolves over time.