Apex Legends Season 7 is chock full of new content for gamers to explore on PS4, Xbox One and PC.
And when the new patch is released, it will even herald the arrival of the popular free-to-play Battle Royale experience on Steam.
The good news is we know when everything is being released, and we even know what big behind-the-scenes changes are coming with it.
As revealed in the latest patch notes released by Respawn Entertainment, most Legends characters will see tweaks during Season 7.
The list of affected playable characters includes Bangalore, Caustic, Mirage, Octane, Wattson, Loba, Rampart, and Pathfinder.
Here’s when we can expect Apex Legends Season 7 to begin this week in Apex Legends.
WHAT TIME DOES APEX LEGENDS UPDATE?
Developers Respawn Entertainment has revealed that the next Apex Legends update will be released on Wednesday, November 4, 2020, in the United States.
Meanwhile, the Apex Legends update time has been scheduled for 8pm PDT on Wednesday, which means a later launch in other regions.
For Apex fans in the UK, Apex Legends Season 7 will be starting at 4am GMT, on Thursday, November 5, 2020.
It’s unclear at this point why Respawn has chosen such a late start time for its latest content patch.
It could be that the development team are trying to avoid server strain, but it will be worth keeping an eye on the game’s official social media feeds just in case last-minute changes are made to the schedule.
As always, there’s a long list of patch notes to check out, including details covering the new vehicle, map and Horizon character.
But below, we have chosen to focus on the other changes being made to the game, including what’s happening to the existing Legends.
APEX LEGENDS PATCH NOTES
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
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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.
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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
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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.
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All of the airdrops’ landing area FX while it’s coming down matches their colors.
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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
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The Arc Star now shows an Arc Star model when one is thrown near you, instead of a grenade.
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Added a new VO line when you are using a Phoenix Kit
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Added a new VO line when you drop a Holo Spray
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You can now ping ammo in your inventory to request more from your squad
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Made modifications to The Ring to reduce the amount of unplayable space in the circles.
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.
Bangalore
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
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
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
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
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
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
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Sheila: Now takes 1.25 seconds to fully spin up, down from 2 seconds.
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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.
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Pathfinder no longer needs to be on the ground for Grappling Hook to be considered finished.
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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
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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.
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The amount of distance you can travel before you hit maximum cooldown was roughly doubled.
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.
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.
Fully Kitted Weapons
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Removed: Devotion, Mastiff, Triple Take, Flatline, Volt
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New: Wingman, Sentinel, Havoc, G7, Alternator
Hemlok
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Increasing horizontal recoil of the first 3 shots slightly to the right (first burst when in burst mode)
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Increasing recoil magnitude in the later stages of the pattern
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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LSTAR venting time after letting go of the trigger has been reduced 0.4s -> 0.15s.
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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
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Energized Sentinel now has a pure damage increase, instead of bonus damage only vs shields
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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
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
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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.
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.
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Level 0 -> 1 : 100 damage (from 50)
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Level 1 -> 2 : 150 damage (from 125)
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Level 2 -> 3 : 300 damage (from 250)
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Level 3 -> 4 : 750 damage (from 500)
Ring damage reduced
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Ring 1: 2% per tick (same)
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Ring 2: 3% per tick (from 5%)
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Ring 3: 5% per tick (from 10%)
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Ring 4: 10% per tick (from 20%)
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Ring 5: 10% per tick (from 20%)
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Ring 6: 15% per tick (from 25%)
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Ring 7: 15% per tick (from 25%)
Audio
Pathfinder
Wraith
Octane
Crypto
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Fixed an issue with his drone being able to drop items from Crypto’s inventory.
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Fixed an issue with his drone not being able to fit through certain windows.
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Fixed an issue with his drone marking friendly Mirage decoys as enemies.
