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Apex Legends is always evolving, and with Season 9, the inclusion of a permanent new mode in the form of Arenas is poised to shake things up with Respawn's battle royale title.
On top of this, the expected arrival of a new Legend, more weapons, balance and map changes, and much more stuff are present with the beefy Season 9 patch notes, also known as the Legacy update.
Respawn Entertainment has presented via its official website everything we can expect moving forward when the update drops this upcoming 4th May.
Without further ado, we present to you the Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes.
Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes - Arenas
Arenas map - Party Crasher
Respawn mentioned that initially, the first three maps of Arenas would be taken from areas included in the battle royale maps, and now, they've shown the first exclusive Arenas, uh well, arena, called Party Crasher.
Arenas map - Phase Runner
The second map, Phase Runner, is the biggest Arenas map, with plenty of space for long-ranged combat compared to the other four areas.
Bi-weekly map rotations
While Phase Runner and Party Crasher will be permanently available in Arenas, Respawn has confirmed that areas taken from their BR maps will be put into a rotation. At the start you’ll get Artillery from Kings Canyon, Thermal Station from World’s Edge, and Golden Gardens from Olympus.
Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes - New Legend
As previously unveiled, Valkyrie will join the ranks of the Legends participating in the Apex Games, we'll update you with a complete guide including tips and tricks, but check out her abilities in the meantime:
- Passive: VTOL Jets - Use your jetpack to reposition or reach high places. You have limited fuel and cannot use weapons while flying.
- Tactical: Missile Swarm - Fire a swarm of mini-rockets which damage and disorient the enemy.
- Ultimate: Skyward dive - Take to the skies to reposition a long distance across the map. Your squadmates can join in.
- Class: Recon - Scanning Survey Beacons reveals the next circle’s location.
Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes - Bocek bow
The first bow to make it into the game will also bring with it a whole new set of ammo (Arrows, duh) which will be more scarce than regular ammo, however, they can be used multiple times.
Alongside it, the Bocek can be powered up via two new hop-ups: Shatter Caps and Deadeye’s Tempo, being the only weapon capable of dual-wielding hop-ups.
On top of this, the Bocek can be equipped with the 1x hcog classic, 1x holosight, 2x hcog, 1x-2x variable, and 3x hcog optics.
Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes - Olympus changes
It's not all about Arenas, as Olympus, the latest BR map, will also get some slight changes, with the Icarus ship landing on the massive sky island.
We'll have a more detailed look at the changes in the future so stay tuned.
Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes - Loot changes
Our prayers have been heard! Gone is the starting match scavenging for anything on the map, as players will not start with some basic goods to kick off every map.
These include:
- Level 1 EVO Shield
- Level 1 Knockdown Shield
- Level 1 Helmet
- Two shield cells
- Two syringes
On top of this, Level 1 Helmets and Knockdown shields have been removed from the pool, with Shields being significantly reduced. As such, the spawn rate of things like ammo has been increased, but not those of Level 2 Shields, Helmets, and beyond.
Apex Legends Season 9 patch notes - Balance changes
Finally, here are all the balance changes coming with Season 9:
LOW PROFILE CHARACTERS
- Low profile no longer exists! This trait has been removed from Wraith, Lifeline, and Wattson.
Dev Note
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. It is finally time for Low Profile to go the way of the dodo. (Sorry dodos.)
LIFELINE
- 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.
Dev Note
Lifeline’s kit was not in a particularly healthy place. The Passive shield was extremely strong to the point of frustration, while her Tactical and Ultimate seemed like they were becoming more and more obsolete. These changes are aimed to redistribute this big power differential between all of her abilities, making D.O.C. and Care Package more powerful and effective, while tamping down on the highly binary and situational Combat Revive.
OCTANE
- 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.
Dev Note
Octane continues to perform really well after the latest changes. Too well? We still love the frequency of the Jump Pad, but we’d like to make using Stim something Octane thinks about doing at the right time, instead of always slamming it by default.
LOBA
- 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: 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.
Dev Note
Horizon is powerful and popular, but that's not why we're making these changes. We believe that mistakes in Apex Legends should be punishable, and when Horizon could just get herself out of bad positioning while popping a whole battery, this just wasn't true. These changes have two goals: 1) make it much more possible for enemies to shoot Horizon as she sits in her gravity lift and 2) make gravity lift less of an impromptu sniper tower.
FUSE
- Knuckle Cluster: Fuse now has two stacks of Knuckle Cluster. Reduced cooldown from 25s to 20s.
Dev Note
More help is coming, but we want to be very careful how we buff him so that he doesn't just become the Legend that kills you with his abilities.
BANGALORE
- Smoke Launcher: Thickened Bangalore’s smoke.
Dev Note
Last patch we optimized Bangalore’s smoke particles and inadvertently thinned them out. This aims to get her back to the original visuals while keeping the optimizations.
BLOODHOUND
- No longer receives assists from Eye of the Allfather.
Dev Note
Bloodhound's scan is strong, but the goal of this change in particular is to reconsider assists and their implications for Ranked Points. There's enough intrinsic value in sonar scans, and it's a slippery slope to consider crediting assists for other non-damaging abilities. Crypto will remain an exception. The active nature of Crypto's drone scan is notably different from the passive option with Bloodhound. This should encourage Bloodhound players to act on the information they get from the scan, to eliminate instances where they might try to snag a quick assist without committing to a fight in the same way Crypto has to.
CRYPTO
- 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.
WEAPONS UPDATES
The G7 Scout and the 30-30 are currently in the Assault Rifle weapons category, but they are a bit strange in that category due to their firing style and some of their handling values. Similarly, the Triple Take felt a little out of place in the Sniper category.
With the introduction of the Bocek bow, we felt it was a good time to introduce a new weapons category, Marksman Weapons, which will include the G7, 30-30, Triple Take, and Bocek. Weapons in this category are precision weapons that are most effective up to medium-long range, and are the sort of in-betweens of Assault Rifles and Snipers. This allows us to begin moving the settings of these weapons towards more consistent value for the class, and make the settings of ARs and Snipers more consistent with less outliers.
For starters, we are increasing the movement speed while aiming down sights for marksman weapons; They were at sniper speeds, and will now be between sniper and AR speeds. Additionally, we have done some targeted normalization of hipfire spread amounts.
SUPPLY DROP ROTATION
This season, we’re taking the Peacekeeper out of the supply drop and putting the Triple Take in its place. Of course, with any supply drop change, these weapons will have their stats updated. See how each weapon changes down below.
Crate Weapon Drop Rates:
Since we are exchanging a shotgun with a marksman weapon, now was a good time to rebalance the drop rates of crate weapons. The Kraber will spawn less often in the early game and more often in the mid game to better accommodate its power. The Triple Take will be the most common early game crate weapon, with the Prowler being the most prominent late game crate weapon.
FULLY KITTED ROTATION
- Added: Wingman, Bocek, R99, Hemlock, and Sentinel
- Removed: R301, 30-30 Repeater, Mozambique, Longbow DMR, and Spitfire
HOP UPS
- Shatter Caps - Fire select to toggle between standard mode and shatter mode. In shatter mode, rounds split into a blast pattern on firing. This hop up will be equipable to the 30-30 Repeater and the Bocek.
- Deadeye’s Tempo - Firing at the perfect moment increases fire rate. This can currently be attached to the Sentinel and the Bocek.
- To make room, the Hammerpoint and Skullpiercer hop ups are being vaulted for now, and won’t be available.
ASSAULT RIFLES
- Reducing the headshot multiplier for all assault rifles from 2.0 to 1.75
Dev Note
This was already the case for the Hemlok, so the affected guns are the R301, Flatline, and Havoc.
PEACEKEEPER
- It comes with the Precision Choke by default, which can be toggled off
- Pellet damage reduced from 10 to 9
- Rechamber time increased from 0.9 seconds to 1.1 seconds
- Reload times increased (regular from 2.45 to 2.5, empty from 3.35 to 3.5)
- Pellet spread increased in general, and spread when charged increased for all charge levels (from 0.65/0.45/0.2 to 0.85/0.65/0.35)
- Quickly loses charge after leaving ADS
Dev Note
Since the Peacekeeper is coming out of the crate, we are bringing many of the stats back in line with their previous values. We are also reducing its damage potential and bringing in the effective range a bit since the Precision Choke is always available now.
TRIPLE TAKE
- As a crate weapon, it will come with a 9 ammo clip and 63 reserve ammo
- Fire rate increased from 1.2 to 1.3
- Time to full charge reduced from 1.1 seconds to 1 second
- Retains charge briefly after leaving ADS
- Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons -- faster than snipers, slower than ARs
- Increased spread while airborne and aiming down sights
HAVOC
- Increased recoil controllability early in the pattern
Dev Note
This should help make up for the reduced headshot multiplier and make it a bit more usable in mid-range fights.
SPITFIRE
- Reduced recoil controllability early in the pattern
Dev Note
The Spitfire is too strong at the moment, boasting good damage output with low recoil. Making it a bit harder to control early in the pattern should give more time for opponents to fight against it. That said, we’re prepared to make more changes to the Spitfire if it remains too powerful.
30-30 REPEATER
- Increased leg damage multiplier from 0.75 to 0.85
- Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons -- faster than snipers, slower than ARs
Dev Note
The 30-30 could use some love, so we’re bringing up the amount of leg damage it does. This should make it a bit more consistent without raising its high “best case” damage potential.
G7 SCOUT
- Move-speed while aiming down sights has been increased to match other marksman weapons -- faster than snipers, slower than ARs
- Increased hipfire spread size (reduced accuracy) to be more in line with other marksman weapons
Dev Note
The 30-30 Repeater and the Bocek Compound Bow have more accurate hipfire than the baseline marksman weapon values, so the G7 Scout will be less accurate in hipfire than these other weapons.
LONGBOW
- Increased headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15
WINGMAN
- Increased headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 2.15
Dev Note
As we’ve done before when the Skullpiercer is out of the loot pool, we’re giving the Longbow and Wingman a compensatory buff.
MOZAMBIQUE
- Increased magazine capacity from 4 to 6
- Moved the lower 2 pellets inward in the blast pattern
Dev Note
This brings up the baseline power level so “only” finding a Mozambique early in the match gives you more of a fighting chance, and makes up for the removal of Hammerpoints.
P2020
- Increased bullet damage from 15 to 18
- Lowered fire rate from 8.5 to 6.25
Dev Note
Similar to the Mozambique, we want to bring up the P2020’s baseline power level a bit. Most players couldn’t take advantage of the fast fire rate, so bringing that down while increasing the damage should help players win more early fights with the P2020.
ARC STARS
- Aim and movement slow removed from the initial stick.
Dev Note
Sticking someone should feel rewarding, considering it's a rare occurrence that's difficult to pull off. While an argument can be made that getting stuck should be a personal death sentence, the inability to at least relocate and spare teammates from the follow-up explosion makes it hard to counter against a coordinated team. This change should help mitigate that without stripping away the satisfaction of hitting a nice stick.
All images courtesy of Respawn Entertainment.