All Apex Legends Season 6 buffs & nerfs to weapons and Legends

The new Season 6 Boosted update in Apex Legends is overhauling the Recon class while introducing even more balance changes to weapons and characters in the battle royale.

Along with a completely new Volt SMG, the Respawn studio brought in a new Legends in Rampart. The Apex Games arena is about to look completely different, and not just because of the upgrades to World’s Edge.

In Season 6, there will be nine Legends that will undergo a change of some kind and the arsenal has 10 weapons with notable changes as well as updates to the items in supply drops and ground loot.

Weapons

Right off the bat, Apex Legends now has the new Volt SMG, which is sure to be picked up by anyone that can find one.

Respawn has made the R99 only available in Supply Drops, taking the place of the Devotion which can now be found on the ground.

But that means the submachine gun is going to get a little bit more of a kick to make up for it’s scarcity. It’s damage has been increased slightly, while bumping up the magazine size to 32 with an ammo reserve of 160.

As for the Hemlock, Respawn actually made it a bit more stable to use. Not that it was a problem before, but players are definitely going to enjoy the slightly reduced recoil in for burst mode.

The biggest change in Apex weapons actually comes with the update to the Precision Choke, in that it’s now gone. It has been removed from the loot pool, however, its effects have been integrated with the Triple Take and Peacekeeper by default.

• Read more: Respawn dev explains all of Rampart’s weaknesses

This comes in the same patch Respawn amped the Triple Take with an increased fire rate and magazine size. This could be a sniper’s new favorite pickup.

Weapons (and loot) patch notes

• In Supply Drop:
  • R99
    • Damage increased from 11 to 12
    • Increased magazine size to 32
    • Ammo Reserve: 160
• Out of Supply Drop- Into Ground Loot:
  • Devotion
    • Clip size reduced back to original values (36/40/44/48).
•  Hemlok
  • Reduced vertical recoil in burst mod
  • Slightly reducing recoil in pattern on 2nd and 3rd shot so first burst kicks less
  • Burst mode time between bursts .32 -> .28
• Charge Rifle
  • Will now use 2 ammo per shot.
  • Increased mag size from 4 to 8
• Triple Take Buff:
  • Increase fire rate 1.25 -> 1.4
  • Increased Mag size from (5/6/7/8) to (6/7/8/9)
  • Built the Choke hop up into the weapon by default. Toggle select-fire to enable/disable the Choke
• PK
  • Built the Choke hop up into the weapon by default. Toggle select-fire to enable/disable the Choke
• Spitfire
  • Improve recoil controllability
• Havoc
  • Updated Havoc with a new recoil pattern
    Designer Note: The Havoc’s existing recoil pattern had constant horizontal movement. This means it would either be too difficult to control if there was too much recoil, or far too easy to control if there was too little recoil. Updating to a new pattern which is more consistent in style with existing recoil patterns.
• Mozambique
  • Increased clip size from 3 to 4.
• P2020
  • Increased Damage from 13 to 15
  • Decreased Hammerpoint damage multiplier from 2.7 to 2.35. This will leave Hammerpoint P2020 damage unchanged in most scenarios..
  • Increased mag size from (10/13/15/18) to (12/14/16/18)
• Sentinel
  • Only requires one shield cell to charge if the player has the gold armor.
• Prowler
  • Slightly Reduce vertical recoil in burst mode
  • Increase horizontal recoil in Auto Mode

Legend changes

Along with new Legend Rampart, a host of Legends are getting amped with new abilities or a crucial change to start blistering their success rate in a team.

The Legends that fall under the Recon class now have Pathfinder’s old passive that lets them use the Survey Beacons. This will give the class an actual meaningful reason to be classed under Recon for the first time since the battle royale came out.

This also means that Pathfinder will be getting a new passive that will make him more unique, but until then the bot will reduce the total cooldown of its Zipline Gun with every survey beacon it uses.

Bloodhound will be more vicious in the Games now that their Beast of the Hunt ulti gains a healthier duration of time with every kill or knockdown. Meanwhile, Crypto’s drone can now do more than just scout ahead, the Season 6 update will let it activate respawn and survey beacons.

Revenant had a special nerf seeing as now you can’t use Wraith’s Dimensional Rift after taking the Death Totem’s effect. This was to stop teams from essentially using the Rev/Wraith/Crypto combo would result “in two back to back runs at the enemy team that they could do very little about.”

• Read more: Apex Legends Season 6 Boosted Battlepass – skins, holo-sprays

Another major change lies in Loba’s Black Market cooldown which was taken from a full three minutes to just 90 seconds.

Legends patch notes

Recon Legends

All Recon legends (Bloodhound, Crypto, and Pathfinder) can now use Survey Beacons to get the next ring location. Crypto can use his drone to instantly get this information.

• Pathfinder:
  • Context: Giving all Recon legends access to survey beacons makes Pathfinder less unique, and obviously we don’t love that. For now, we’re giving our friendly robot a small buff to his ultimate cooldown when he uses a survey beacon, but in the future we will take another look at Pathfinder to see what else we could do to make him feel more unique. 
  • Passive: Each time Pathfinder scans a survey beacon, the total cooldown of Zipline Gun is reduced.
  • Numbers: Zipline Gun cooldown reduced by 10s each time Pathfinder scans a beacon. Up to 6 rings per game means the total cooldown of Zipline Gun can go from 120s to 60s.
• Bloodhound:
  • Context: Bloodhound fulfills a very clear role in Apex Legends: they’re the information gatherer and tracker, but currently their performance leaves a lot to be desired. In this patch, we wanted to double down on their ultimate being their big moment of becoming a god-like tracker. Bloodhound already gives up some information to the enemy when they scan or use the ultimate (it makes a noticeable sound), so we think there is room for a lot more power during the ultimate.
  • Beast of the Hunt: Now gains even more duration when Bloodhound scores a knockdown or kill with the ultimate about to run out.
  • Eye of the Allfather: During Beast of the Hunt, Eye of the Allfather now comes out twice as fast and has a much shorter cooldown.
  • Numbers: 
    • Beast of the Hunt duration extension 5s → [5s – 15s] based on remaining duration
    • Eye of the Allfather CD during Beast of the Hunt: 25s → 6s
    • Eye of the Allfather total use time during Beast of the Hunt: 1.8s → 0.9s
• Crypto:
  • Context: Crypto is a particularly interesting recon character: the amount of information he can gather for his team with the drone is very high, but the fact that he has to switch over to his drone leaves him vulnerable and often at a great distance from his team. Because he has no abilities without his drone, we figure there’s room for even more power when he’s in his drone.
  • Surveillance drone: 
    • Crypto can now activate respawn and survey beacons from his drone. Doing so is instant instead of requiring a prolonged use. 
    • Made the surveillance drone slightly more consistent to hit but also doubled its hitpoints.
  • Drone EMP:
    • EMP will now slow teammates caught in the blast, even if they had no shields. This means that players who have used Revenant’s Death Totem will also be slowed.
  • Numbers:
    • Surveillance Drone 30HP → 60HP
    • Surveillance Drone hitbox size: cube of edge length 16 → cube of edge length 24

Other Legends:

• Revenant:
  • Context: We’re happy to see that dropping the range restriction on Death Totem brought a lot more Revenants into play, but we’ve been watching a particularly frustrating combo play out in professional level play involving a squad of Revenant, Wraith, and Crypto, where using the three ultimates together resulted in two back to back runs at the enemy team that they could do very little about. We’ve attacked part of that in the Crypto EMP change, but here’s the other part aimed at making this play less overwhelming.
  • Death Totem:
    • For 2s after being recalled by the Death Totem, players cannot use Wraith’s Dimensional Rift.
• Octane:
  • Stim: Can now use Stim while healing, but stim will not remove the slow you incur from healing.
• Loba:
  • Context: While Loba was initially very popular, she’s been struggling to keep up more recently, so we’re tossing her a little buff. If you’re curious why we’ve chosen to buff her ultimate rather than her tactical: we’re seeing that she has decent combat success but that teams with her on them don’t win as much as, say, teams with Lifeline or Wattson. This suggests to us that her out of combat utility (that is to say, how she funnels loot to her team) isn’t doing enough.
  • Black Market:
    • Lowered cooldown from 3min to 90s
• Gibraltar:
  • Defensive Bombardment:
    • Increased cooldown from 3 minutes to 4.5 minutes
• Bangalore:
  • Rolling Thunder:
    • Decreased cooldown from 4.5 minutes to 3 minutes
• Wattson:
  • Interception Pylon
    • Trophy system will now shoot down Caustic barrels in flight if they would have landed inside the range of the trophy.

Don’t forget to take a look at the full Apex Legends Season 6 patch notes to get caught up on all the changes coming in the next era of the battle royale.