All Apex Legends Aftermarket buffs & nerfs for Legends & weapons

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The massive Apex Legends update that kickstarted the Aftermarket Collection Event included major buffs and nerfs for several of the game’s Legends and guns.

Apex Legends’ highly-anticipated Aftermarket Collection Event launched on October 6, bringing a flurry of new content and big changes to the popular battle royale.

Along with major additions like cross-play, the Flashpoint LTM, and a bunch of awesome new cosmetics, the patch also implemented tweaks to various characters and weapons.

Included in that list were Pathfinder and Wraith, two of the game’s more popular Legends, as well as guns like the Devotion, Spitfire, and Triple-Take.

Legend changes

Pathfinder

A lot of fans were upset with Respawn for nerfing Pathfinder’s popular Grapple ability several months ago by raising its cooldown from 15 seconds to 35. As a result, the devs have made the timer dependent on the distance the character travels using it.

Now, the cooldown can range from 10 seconds for the shortest distance traveled to a maximum of 35, which, according to the devs, was actually inspired by a Reddit post!

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“This both buffs Path a little less for the scariest robot players out there and it also opens up room for extra skill expression,” they remarked. “Can you find useful short-distance grapples that’ll give you a shorter CD but still do something good for you?”

Wraith

Wraith’s change may not seem like much on paper, but it has devastated a lot of fans. Following this patch, she no longer has the iconic ‘Naruto-style’ sprint; instead, her running animation is more upright, so to open up her body more for enemies to shoot at.

“Wraith is a very challenging Legend to nerf,” Respawn said. “We don’t want to hit her abilities anymore. So we started looking at other Legend specific things that could give her this power–and discovered that her sprinting animations are unique in how much they artificially shorten her (by hunching over), thus shrinking her shootable area from the perspective of the enemy.”

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As for the removal of the popular animation, the developers say they hate to see it gone too: “Now we know her old sprint was iconic and we hate to see it go as well, but we believe this is the best way by far of bringing her in line without having to hit her abilities again.”

Bloodhound

Bloodhound’s viability in Apex Legends has considerably grown over the past year, as several updates have buffed the Technological Tracker to the point where they’re now part of the meta.

This Aftermarket patch slightly nerfed Bloodhound’s Tactical cooldown while the Ultimate ability is active, from six seconds to eight.

“The 6.0 changes have been extremely powerful for Bloodhound; we think we might have gone a little far with 6s,” the devs wrote. “Against a competent BH, there would only ever be 2s during which you’re not scanned. Changing it to 8s means you’ve got 4s of being revealed and 4s to reposition in between pulses.”

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Here are all of the changes pertaining to Legends from the Aftermarket patch notes:

• Rampart
  • Increased the rate at which Sheila’s bullet spread tightens
• Bloodhound
  • Updated Bloodhound’s tactical cooldown while ultimate is active from 6 seconds to 8 seconds. 
• Pathfinder
  • Grapple cooldown is now based on the distance Pathfinder traveled. The shortest possible pull has a 10s cooldown; the maximum cooldown is still 35s, but you’re going to have to swing a very long distance to get there. Have fun out there, friends!
    

• Wraith
  • Updated Wraith’s sprint animation.
    Wraith is a very challenging Legend to nerf. We look at Legend performance across a number of axes: how often trios with this Legend on them win games/place highly, how often this Legend gets knockdowns vs is knocked down, how often this Legend is picked. Across each and every single one of these axes, Wraith dominates. And yet each time we hit her abilities (which we’ve done a lot) she bounces back within a few weeks without bleeding a lot of pick rate. Her kit is uniquely useful both in solo games and in highly coordinated games. Also, she’s just really cool. We get it. We don’t want to hit her abilities anymore. We think both she and Pathfinder have been pushed to the edge in terms of cooldown and utility nerfs where pushing them any further would make them a lot less fun to play. We don’t want that! So we started looking at other Legend specific things that could give her this power–and discovered that her sprinting animations are unique in how much they artificially shorten her (by hunching over), thus shrinking her shootable area from the perspective of the enemy. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but taken together with her already small hitbox, it’s a lot of power. This patch, we’re introducing a new set of sprint animations for Wraith. These are much more upright and expose a larger area of her body to gunfire. Now we know her old sprint was iconic and we hate to see it go as well, but we believe this is the best way by far of bringing her in line without having to hit her abilities again. Depending on what we see after these animations go live, we may even be able to put some power back into her abilities (no promises though). As always, we will be listening to feedback and monitoring data on this change.
• Crypto
  • Crypto’s Drone can now open loot vaults if Crypto has a key in his inventory. It consumes the key as usual.
• Loba
  • Increased range of ultimate & passive from 3100 units to 4500 units.
  • Loba now starts the match with her ultimate half charged.

Weapon changes

The adjustments to the guns in this patch were not nearly as extensive as those made to the characters, but there were a few powerful weapons that were tweaked to better balance out the loot-pool.

For starters, the almighty Devotion’s hip-fire spread was increased at a base level, and that spread will also now continue to grow while the LMG is being fired.

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That same hip-fire increase was also implemented to the Spitfire in order to “keep the numbers consistent with similar weapons in the same class,” according to the devs. However, they’ve compensated for that change by reducing the horizontal recoil on the LMG.

Last but not least, the Triple Take got a minor nerf as its fire rate was reduced from 1.4 to 1.3.

There you have it, those are all of the Legend and weapon buffs and nerfs from the Aftermarket event patch on October 6!

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