All Apex Legends Season 9 Legend buffs & nerfs: Loba, Horizon, Lifeline, more

The full patch notes for Apex Legends Season 9: Legacy are here, and as expected, several of the game’s characters have been adjusted to either improve or reduce their effectiveness: Lifeline, Octane, Loba, Horizon, Fuse, Bangalore, Bloodhound, and Crypto.

There’s tons of anticipation among Apex Legends players for the launch of Legacy on May 4, as it’s set to include tons of new content and several major changes to various aspects of the game.

As is usually the case with the first major update of a new season, there are going to be numerous buffs and nerfs implemented to several Legends – eight to be exact. All of the details of these Legend changes can be found below.

All Legend buffs & nerfs in Apex Legends Season 9 update

Octane: Changes to Stim & Launch Pad

The developers have noted that Octane might be performing “too well” since the latest series of changes the character received, so this update will be making changes to both the Stim and Launch Pad with hopes of balancing those abilities.

• Stim: Reduced cooldown between stims from 4s to 1s. Increased health cost from 12hp to 20hp.
• Increased bullet spread while in the air and shooting from the low Launch Pad trajectory.

This was bound to be a controversial one ever since the developers confirmed that they were planning on nerfing Octane’s stim tactical, but they did also give it a small buff to counteract this. The plan is to “increasing the health cost for his Stim” but balance it by “letting you stim again much sooner.”

The current plan is to take 20 damage from Octane’s stim, rather than only 12. But the cooldown will be reduced to only 1 second, and regen speed will remain the same. This will make using Octane’s stim a more dangerous decision, as you’ll need to balance the tradeoff between health and speed.

Lifeline: Changes to Combat Revive, Heal Drone, & Care Package

The Season 9 update will be making major changes to all three of Lifeline’s main set of abilities:

• Combat Revive: No longer deploys a shield. Can now revive two players at the same time. Can now cancel active revives in progress to allow your teammate to defend themselves with their knockdown shield.
• D.O.C. Heal Drone: Heal rate increased from 5hp per second to 8hp per second. Deployment time before healing begins reduced by roughly 33%.
• Care Package: Cooldown reduced from 6 minutes to 5 minutes. Now guarantees an upgrade (if possible) in three categories: Body Shield, Other Equipment (Helmet, Backpack, and Knockdown Shield), and Weapon Attachment, based on your team’s current gear when the Package arrives.

Lifeline’s res shield is gone in Season 9. This is obviously a big downside, but there are some buffs too. Healing from Lifeline’s Doc Drone will be 60% faster, and the Care Package will be given a big buff, guaranteeing an upgrade, in addition to a shorter cooldown.

According to the devs, the Legend’s ability kit was “not in a particularly healthy place,” as the shield was becoming an “extremely strong point of frustration” while the Care Package and Heal Drone were “becoming more and more obsolete.”

Loba: Changes to Bracelet & Ultimate

Loba mains had been begging for some improvements to her kit since she was first released, and, Season 9 will finally be that time. Respawn had already confirmed that Loba would move at full speed “while it’s in the air” and “no slow down when you arrive.” On top of this, the bracelet will now be much more reliable.

The bad news, though, is that Respawn have also nerfed Loba’s ultimate slightly, adding another 30 seconds to the cooldown. Here are the exact changes:

• Burglar’s Best Friend: Can now run and slide at full speed while aiming the bracelet and while the bracelet is in the air. Loba will no longer be slowed after translocating.
• Fixed a lot of bugs that caused bracelet tosses to fail.
• Black Market Boutique: Increased cooldown from 90s to 120s.

Horizon: Gravity Lift nerfed

Thanks to Game Designer Daniel Klein, we already knew that Horizon was in line to receive a pretty substantial nerf in Season 9, and now that’s been confirmed in the official patch notes.

• Gravity Lift: Reduced lift speed by 30%. Reduced side-to-side acceleration. Limited the time you can sit at the top of Gravity Lift to 2 seconds. Increased cooldown from 15s to 20s.
• Horizon’s abilities will now get zapped by Wattson pylons.

Horizon has been getting cut back constantly after she released very strong. Nerfs in almost every subsequent update, to both her tactical and her ultimate, haven’t been enough to drop her out of the top spot as a Legend.

However, according to the developers’ note in the patch notes, this nerf isn’t because of her popularity or powerful nature, but rather to make Horizon’s mistakes more punishable. These changes make it “much more possible” for enemies to shoot at the Legend as she sits in her Gravity Lift, and make the ability “less of an impromptu sniper tower.”

Fuse: Knucle Cluster buffed

It was pretty obvious that Fuse would be getting some sort of buff after the developers revealed that he has the lowest win rate across all skill levels.

• Knuckle Cluster: Fuse now has two stacks of Knuckle Cluster. Reduced cooldown from 25s to 20s.

The main change is to his tactical, Knuckle Cluster, which has two charges now, and the cooldown for one charge is only 18 seconds (reduced from 25 seconds). The damage is the same, but with two charges, you could say it’s been doubled.

Respawn noted that they “want to be very careful with how we buff him,” while also confirming that further buffs would be on the way once they can assess the impact this specific change has on the Legend.

Bloodhound: Eye of the Allfather nerfed

The Bloodhound change in this update is relatively minor in terms of the Legend’s in-game impact; players will no longer receiver assists from using the Eye of the Allfather ability.

This adjustment is more so to balance out the implications that assists have in Ranked play – since Bloodhound’s scan is already so strong, it may have become too much for the ability to also provide valuable assists for Ranked Points.

Crypto: Changes to Drone

With the nerf to Bloodhound’s scan, Crypto will now remain the only Legend who can get assists for non-damaging abilities. That said, however, the Season 9 update is making changes to his drone:

• Crypto’s drone can now scan and open care packages.
• Can no longer use his drone to “hijack” a respawn beacon that’s already in use.

Bangalore: Smoke thickened

Bangalore’s Smoke Launcher is receiving a change that will make the smoke thicker. However, this isn’t really a buff or nerf, per se, since Respawn are simply trying to get the smoke back to the original visuals after a recent update accidentally thinned out the particles while trying to optimize them.

Low Profile removed in Apex Legends Season 9

Since we’re on the topic of changes to Legends in Season 9, it’s important to note that the Low Profile ability is being removed from Wraith, Lifeline, and Wattson in the Legacy update.

“After our successful experiment with Wraith’s hitboxes, we are now confident that we can solve balance issues between smaller and larger Legends through changes to their kits and hitboxes,” the devs wrote in the patch notes.

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There you have it, all of the Legend buffs and nerfs coming in the Season 9 update. For more information about everything else that’s changing, make sure to check out our Apex Legends Legacy patch notes here.