Apex Legends Season 7 patch notes: Horizon, Olympus, buffs, nerfs

Apex Legends Season 7: Ascension is one of the most highly anticipated seasons in the battle royale’s history as it brings an interesting legend in Horizon, a new map in the form of Olympus, and plenty of other changes. So, here are the patch notes.

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For weeks, Apex Legends players have been looking forward to Season 7 and everything that Respawn Entertainment would be piling into the new season.  After leaks suggested that the new legend would be Valk, the devs confirmed that it would, in fact, be Horizon – a Scottish scientist who has a penchant for messing with Gravity. 

There’s also the arrival of a new map, Olympus, as well as plenty of other changes to the weapon pool, existing legends, and even some new items. 

New Legend – Horizon

Getting a new legend to start each season is obviously the biggest change, and that’s only amplified when it’s someone like Horizon. As already noted, she’s got a thing for messing with gravity, and her ultimate – a black hole that pulls players towards it – could really shake-up the meta when it comes to the legends.  

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In addition to that, her passive reduces the impact of a fall, and her tactical is a gravity lift so you can get a leg up on your enemies. 

• Passive: Spacewalk: Increase air control and reduce fall impacts with Horizon’s custom spacesuit.
• Tactical: Gravity Lift: Reverses the flow of gravity, lifting players upward and boosting them outward when they exit.
• Ultimate: Black Hole: Deploy NEWT to create a micro black hole that pulls players in towards it.

Olympus map & Trident vehicle

The new map, Olympus, will also shake up the way Apex is played because not only are there vehicles on the map, but there is also the constant danger of falling to your death because of how high up the map is. 

• Read More: All Trident vehicle locations on Apex Legends Olympus map

As mentioned, there will be vehicles on Olympus – these are called Trident. These small hovercrafts will be situated across the map and can fit a trio in with ease. You can also deploy abilities while using the Trident, making it a mobile fighting machine. 

Legend buffs and nerfs in Apex Season 7

Mirage, Rampart, Octane, Pathfinder, and Loba are all receiving buffs – with Pathfinder having the cooldown on his grapple, while Loba will be able to take ammo from her Black Market Boutique without needing to use one of the two loot spots for it. 

A full breakdown of all the changes made to Legends in this update, as well as some of the developers’ explanations behind the tweaks, can be found in our Season 7 buffs and nerfs page here.

Weapon changes – R-99 returns and new hop-ups

There is also a myriad of changes coming to the weapon pool. The biggest of these is the return of the R-99 SMG to floor loot. It will be replaced in supply drops by the Prowler. 

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In addition to that, there is a new ‘Quickdraw’ hop-up for the Wingman and RE-45. This new hop-up will provide better hipfire accuracy, faster draw time, and faster ADS. There will also be three new gold weapons in Season 7 – the Havoc, Alternator, and Sentinel. 

You can read up on all of the buffs and nerfs, as well as all gun-related changes, in our Season 7 weapons page here.

Apex Legends Season 7 patch notes

New Legend: Horizon

Meet Horizon! She’s the newest Legend, a brilliant scientist, and a master of  gravity manipulation. She has a deep connection to the new arena, and a motivation that will tug at your heartstrings. 

Horizon’s custom space suit allows her to fall from great heights and control her movements in the air. Using her custom technology, she can use gravity lifts to give her team a vertical boost, and she can even deploy NEWT (her small robot named after her son, Newton) to drop a micro black hole that pulls opponents into the center for some serious crowd control.

Passive: Spacewalk

Increase air control and reduce fall impacts with Horizon’s custom spacesuit.

Tactical: Gravity Lift

Reverse the flow of gravity, lifting players upward and boosting them outward when they exit.

Ultimate: Black hole

Deploy NEWT to create a micro black hole that sucks in nearby Legends.

New Map: Olympus

The Legends have entered a new arena: the sky city of Olympus.

A utopia floating in clouds above Psamathe, it was once a place where the brightest minds in the Outlands could gather and exchange ideas. However, an accident in an experimental research facility led to the creation of the Phase Rift (a massive bubble of Phase energy), and the city was abandoned.

Now players can use Olympus’ luxurious amenities to their advantage. Rotating agricultural towers, beautiful gardens and classy restaurants serve as new stages for intense skirmishes. New vehicles called Tridents give your squad a way to boost into battle and take your enemies by surprise. The Phase Runner – a tunnel of Phase energy running through the center of Olympus – lets you cross the map in seconds. And the Rift stands tall over everything, mysterious and beckoning . . .

New Vehicle: The Trident

Exclusive to Olympus, the Trident is a hover car designed for your whole squad.

Cruise the highways to avoid chokepoints or use the boost to soar over jumps, this thing is made to speed up those early game rotations. Drive in third person, or ride as a passenger in first person with full shooting capabilities. The Trident is durable, so it will never explode, but damage applied from enemy fire will be dispersed amongst the players in the car. Don’t worry, you can still do full damage to players by hitting them directly so we expect to see some amazing Kraber shots. Disembark to park it anywhere and use it as makeshift cover in the late game.

The Trident interacts with Legend abilities in many different ways, experiment and have fun!

LTM: Olympus Preview

To help you understand and explore the map without fear of getting shot, we are introducing a new playlist called Olympus Preview. This mode teams you up with 30 Legends on Olympus and allows you to roam the map to learn map drops, loot areas, and practice your routes to the end game. Circles are still on and once circle 4 finishes, players are brought back up to the plane to start the second skydive run. There are a total of 3 runs before the match ends. This mode is only available for one week. 

Clubs

With this season, we are introducing clubs. Join a club with like minded legends and make it easier to find your champion squad. Don’t see a particular club you like, then create one and let your friends know to join! Read more on clubs here.

Steam

Boot up Steam and start downloading and play Apex Legends! If you’re coming from Origin, all your progress and unlocks will carry over. And for a limited time, log into Steam and receive these Half-Life and Portal inspired weapon charms. 

Battle Pass

The Season 7 Battle Pass is all about that high fashion. Level up your Pass to unlock the skins like the Wraith “High Class” and Octane’s “Fast Fashion”.

Challenges are no longer points-based and are now granted between 1 to 5 stars, depending on their difficulty. Collecting 10 stars will take you to the next Battle Pass level. We have also added tabs to the challenges menu in the lobby that allow you to toggle between daily, top weekly, and event challenges. Within a match, players can open the map and see this same widget in game.

For more on the changes to Challenges, check out this dev blog.

QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES

Attachment Swap Improvements

When replacing an attachment with one from the ground, if the old attachment is an improvement for your other weapon, the old attachment will get automatically transferred. 

Replicator Updates

• For Season 7, we have removed weapons from the crafting pool and have replaced them with Shield batteries. The high level attachments will still be tailored towards a weapon category.
• We now prevent other players from picking up items that you crafted for the first 5 seconds after crafting.  This can be disabled by pinging the item.

Air Drop Clarity

• The colors of the beams have been changed to differentiate between normal airdrops, Lifeline’s airdrops, and Replicator airdrops. Normal drops are a light tan, Lifeline’s drops are blue, and Replicator drops and teal.
• All of the airdrops’ landing area FX while it’s coming down matches their colors.
• Airdrop beams still stay visible when close to the airdrop, instead of fading when you get close. The beam still disappears when the pod is opened.

Misc

• The Arc Star now shows an Arc Star model when one is thrown near you, instead of a grenade.
• Added a new VO line when you are using a Phoenix Kit
• Added a new VO line when you drop a Holo Spray
• You can now ping ammo in your inventory to request more from your squad
• Made modifications to The Ring to reduce the amount of unplayable space in the circles.

MAP ROTATIONS

Regular Map Rotation

For 2 weeks, Olympus will be the only map you can play on. After that week we go into a normal rotation between Olympus and World’s Edge. We will be vaulting Kings Canyon for the time being. 

Season 7 Ranked Rotation

The first half of Ranked Split will be played on Olympus. The second half of ranked will be played on World’s Edge. For more information on this season’s ranked updates, check out the ranked blog here.

LEGEND META

Bangalore

• Rolling Thunder: Reduced the time it takes for explosion from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.

Dev Note: 

Not much to say here. Rolling Thunder will continue to function primarily as a zoning ability, but with a somewhat shorter fuse, it will encourage enemies to leave the zone slightly faster.

Caustic

• Nox Gas Trap/Nox Gas Grenade: Legends no longer get a blurred vision effect while in the gas. Damage updated from 4-10 ticks of damage to 6-12 ticks of damage.

Dev Note:

Fighting in Caustic Gas is one of the most frustrating things in Apex Legends, and yet we need the gas to represent a meaningful threat or else enemies will just ignore it. With this change we’re attacking what we think is the greatest contributor to this frustration: the fact that your vision is blurred while you’re in gas. This made it extremely hard to fight back. To make up for lost power, we’re upping the damage from the gas a bit.

Mirage

• Psyche Out/Life of the Party: Decoys now have 45 health

Dev Note: 

Our bamboozler-in-chief is a hard Legend to keep relevant. Every time we make a change to decoys, there is a clear uptick in usage and power as Mirage mains learn to use their new tools, and then as the rest of the world catches on and starts being able to tell the real Mirage from his equally handsome holographs, that uptick disappears. This time around we want to try and make it a little bit harder to clear out decoys. We’re giving them health, but to make this very clear up front: they will not work as a shield. While they take damage from bullets, the bullet also passes through them and hits whatever’s behind them. This is what we call the hallway test: you should not be able to win an engagement against an enemy in a straight coverless hallway by snapcasting a decoy and having said decoy eat an entire Wingman shot. Decoys will also play unique hit effects and briefly flicker out of existence when taking damage to help you differentiate between them and the real Mirage.

Octane

• Swift Mend: Doubled healing rate (from 0.5 hp/s to 1.0 hp/s)

Dev note:

Octane is a Legend for players who like to go fast, run face first into the enemy, and get knocked down a lot. We think that’s absolutely fine; the fact that his Trios winrate isn’t great doesn’t really bother us because both his encounter win rate (think of this as his ability to score knockdowns) and his pick rate are very healthy. That said, we figured we could give him a little extra out of combat help. His passive’s heal rate was very slow, requiring up to 200s to fully heal your health bar.

Wattson

• Perimeter Security: Increased damage per touch from 10 to 15.

Dev Note:

Wattson is the anti-Octane: not super powerful individually, not picked very often at all below Plat, but an absolute must have for competitive squads. We’re also happy with that niche, but figured it would be safe to give her a little extra power in her best case: people running into her fences. We’re aiming for this to bring up her power and attractiveness at lower levels of play especially, since we don’t see a lot of players run into Wattson fences in high skill matches.

Loba

• Black Market: Ammo taken no longer counts towards Black Market’s maximum. You can scoop up all the ammo in range.

Dev Note:

We’re taking another swing at making Loba the ultimate Legend to bring to solve all of your team’s loot needs. We have heard your feedback that you want improvements to her tactical as well, and while that’s certainly not off the table, our data suggest that her encounter win rate (how many knockdowns she gets compared to how many times she’s knocked down, across all matches) is quite healthy. It’s her Trios winrate that’s worryingly low. Make no mistake: this is a major swing at making Black Market powerful. 

Rampart

• Sheila: Now takes 1.25 seconds to fully spin up, down from 2 seconds.
• Amped Wall: Now takes 3 seconds to fully build, down from 4 seconds.

Dev Note:

In patch 6.1, we made a small change to how long it takes Sheila to tighten her bullet spread. This didn’t meaningfully increase her winrate. The other half of that change is in this patch. We do not want to change Rampart away from being a Legend that requires setup, but we do want to make it faster to set up. Amped Wall should remain a mostly out of combat setup ability rather than a reactive ability and Sheila should remain an area denial tool rather than a murder machine, but like all things, these balance points exist on a spectrum, and with this patch we’re moving them slightly closer to reactive/murder machine territory.

Pathfinder: 

Dev Note:

Pathfinder continues to be an overachiever in terms of win rate. The good news is that his grapple change in 6.1 didn’t move his win rate by much (it went up 1% in total). We’re doing two things this patch: we’re adjusting his hitboxes and we’re putting in tuning for Grappling Hook that will firmly move it into buff territory. More context below!

Hitbox: Pathfinder has a tall but extremely skinny hitbox. A lot of his model isn’t actually shootable and particularly his arms and legs do not represent a lot of shootable area either. Here is a before and after comparison of Pathfinder’s hitboxes:

As you can see, there is still a lot of negative space around his arms and legs. We’re hoping that by making it a little easier to hit Pathfinder, we can bring his win rate under control to the point where we can put meaningful power into his kit.

Because the question is sure to come up: we are not yet removing Low Profile from Pathfinder with this change. Even with these increased hitboxes, Pathfinder will still be considerably harder to hit than most other characters in the game. If this change does make a meaningful difference in terms of his win rate we will drop Low Profile; but we really didn’t want to take it off him this patch only to have to put it back next patch when it turns out his winrate spiked.

Grappling Hook: We’re making a number of changes to Grappling Hook. In 6.1 we shipped a very conservative version of this change; now that we know this didn’t meaningfully affect his winrate or, anecdotally, how frustrating it is to fight him, we’re shipping the much more aggressive version of the changelist. We also want to make it clear that players should not be punished for chaining grappling hook perfectly into other movement mechanics.

• Pathfinder no longer needs to be on the ground for Grappling Hook to be considered finished.
• The speed to which Pathfinder needs to drop for us to consider Grappling Hook finished was increased from 300 units/second to 500 units/second
• The maximum cooldown grapple can be set to was lowered to 30 seconds, from 35 seconds; the maximum amount of travel time before a new cooldown is set is now 5 seconds, rather than being uncapped. This means that effectively, you can never incur more than a 35 second cooldown.
• The amount of distance you can travel before you hit maximum cooldown was roughly doubled.

WEAPON META

Supply Drop

R99 Out of Supply Drop: The R99 will be returning to the normal loot pool this season, with the same stats it had before it went into the supply drop at the start of season 6.

• Damage: 12 -> 11 (from Care Package version to normal pre-season 6)
• Ammo 20/22/24/27

Prowler Into Supply Drop: The prowler is replacing the R99 in the supply drop.  Despite the Selectfire hop-up being removed from the loot pool this season, the Prowler will still have the ability to change between 5 round bursts and full-auto.

• Magazine size: 35; reserve ammo: 175

Fully Kitted Weapons

• Removed: Devotion, Mastiff, Triple Take, Flatline, Volt
• New: Wingman, Sentinel, Havoc, G7, Alternator

Hemlok

• Increasing horizontal recoil of the first 3 shots slightly to the right (first burst when in burst mode)
• Increasing recoil magnitude in the later stages of the pattern
• Reducing recoil multiplier in single fire mode to help compensate for additional recoil in pattern. Recoil should mostly be increased in burst mode rather than single fire mode
• Reducing headshot multiplier 2.0 -> 1.75 (44 -> 39 damage headshot against no helmet base character)

Dev Notes: 

While we are happy to see the Hemlok get more attention with the recent buffs, we think it is a little too strong in season 6. The effective range of the burst mode felt a bit too far, and the spike damage capabilities of a full headshot burst were too strong in high level play.

Havoc

• Updated recoil pattern. Kicks up, then right, then left, then up again.

Dev Notes:

With 6.0, the Havoc got a new recoil pattern. This new recoil pattern was a bit too erratic and difficult to control, due to multiple rapid changes in direction. We have adjusted the recoil pattern to have the same general movement while simplifying the motions required to control the pattern.

L-Star

• LSTAR has a new recoil pattern that kicks horizontally at first and then settles into a relatively consistent upward recoil. Players who feather the trigger will be able to keep the LSTAR in the good portion of the recoil pattern.
• LSTAR venting time after letting go of the trigger has been reduced 0.4s -> 0.15s.
• LSTAR will now reduce heat faster when not overheated — 1.15s from 99.9% to 0% charge if not overheated, still 2.45s if overheated.

Dev Notes: 

The LSTAR had some limitations that caused it to feel worse than we’d like. The recoil pattern snaked back and forth, which was difficult to control reliably. Additionally, firing for short bursts and then releasing the trigger repeatedly, or “feathering the trigger”, felt somewhat clunky due to the long venting time after firing and the slow heat reduction. So, we are reducing those pain points to improve the viability and feel of feathering the trigger, and adjusting the recoil pattern to reward players who can effectively control the LSTAR’s heat.

Sentinel

• Energized Sentinel now has a pure damage increase, instead of bonus damage only vs shields
• Energized Sentinel base damage 70 -> 88

Dev Notes: 

The Sentinel was still a bit weak. We think a good place to improve it is the energize ability. It seems a bit too situational, only being a benefit if the opponent has >70 shields. So, we are changing the energize from a “disruptor” anti-shield effect to an “amp” damage boost effect.

Triple Take

• Fire rate 1.3 -> 1.2

Dev Note:

The Triple Take is still performing a bit too well after the most recent nerf, so we are reducing the fire rate back to what it was before the 6.0 patch. We will be watching in the future to see how just the integrated choke, sniper ammo increase, and new popularity affect the weapon’s performance.

Hop-Ups

• Quickdraw Holster Hop-up: This new hop-up attaches to the RE-45 and Wingman.  When equipped, the gun becomes quicker to raise and lower, takes less time to ADS, and has reduced hipfire spread (particularly when not actively moving).  This should open up new opportunities to use the two weapons, especially in close-quarters combat.

• The Selectfire Receiver hop-up will be removed from the loot pool to make room.

GAME META CHANGES

Evo Armor requirements increased

We increased the requirements to evolve Evo Armor in order to reduce the amount of players with Red Evo Armor during the end game.

• Level 0 -> 1 : 100 damage (from 50)
• Level 1 -> 2 : 150 damage (from 125)
• Level 2 -> 3 : 300 damage (from 250)
• Level 3 -> 4 : 750 damage (from 500)

Ring damage reduced

• Ring 1: 2% per tick (same)
• Ring 2: 3% per tick (from 5%)
  • Particularly this change should allow players enough time to pop a syringe if they are picked up in Ring 2.
• Ring 3: 5% per tick (from 10%)
• Ring 4: 10% per tick (from 20%)
• Ring 5: 10% per tick (from 20%)
• Ring 6: 15% per tick (from 25%)
• Ring 7: 15% per tick (from 25%)

BUG FIXES

Audio

• We’ve made some advancements in footstep audio playing more reliably. We have more work being done that we’ll continue to roll out as it gets completed.

Pathfinder

• Fixed an issue with ziplines going through platforms when deployed from underneath.

Wraith

• Fixed an issue with priming a grenade cancelling Wraith’s ultimate. 

Octane

• Fixed an issue with getting stuck in double jump after using a jump pad. 
• Fixed an issue with Octane being able to use healing items while on a zipline. 

Crypto

• Fixed an issue with his drone being able to drop items from Crypto’s inventory.
• Fixed an issue with his drone not being able to fit through certain windows. 
• Fixed an issue with his drone marking friendly Mirage decoys as enemies. 

Revenant

• Fixed an issue with Revenant getting pushed into geo when his totem was deployed in tight spaces. 

Rampart

• Fixed an issue with Rampart not being able to place an amp wall while jumping. 
• Fixed an issue with Sheila teleporting when placed on a hatch in World’s Edge Staging. 

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Apex Legends Season 7: Ascension will be released on Wednesday, November 4 at 8 PM PT / 11 PM ET / 4 AM GMT (next day).