The Apex Legends Arsenal Patch introduces a new legend named Ballistic, with a history rooted in the brutal Thunderdome Games. The sibling fighters Sok Leng and Kit Siang Phua once dominated the arena with their partner August Brinkman, Sok Leng’s husband. However, Kit Siang’s death due to August’s selfish playstyle led to August’s retreat from the games and his family. Decades later, when his son Nate decides to follow in his family’s footsteps, August returns to the arena to strike a deal, reentering the games in Nate’s place.
Ballistic’s abilities include a Passive ability called “Sling,” allowing the storage of a third weapon without attachments, accessed via inventory or the Character Utility Action Button. The Tactical ability, “Whistler,” shoots a projectile that heats up an enemy’s gun as they shoot, causing damage with an overheat effect. Ballistic’s Ultimate, “Tempest,” provides nearby teammates with faster reloads, faster-armed move speed, and infinite ammo, while upgrading the sling weapon to gold.
The patch also brings updates to the World’s Edge map, with detailed breakdowns available in the full blog post. Significant changes to the ranked system include new matchmaking based on hidden skill ratings, a new scoring system, and a new bonus system. The ranked mode now requires an account level of 50 to play, and there are no more split resets. The full breakdown of changes can be found in the blog post.
The new Weapon Mastery system incentivizes learning about the strengths and character of all weapons in Apex Legends. Players start at level 1 with each weapon and progress by using them in any game mode. Weapon XP is earned through various actions, and weapon-specific trials are unlocked every 20 levels. Players can earn weapon-specific badges, lifetime performance trackers, legendary weapon mastery banner frames, and a Legendary Weapon Apex Pack for each weapon.
Firing Range updates are also detailed in the blog post, along with the introduction of a new survival slot item called the Evac Tower. This portable Jump Tower can offer a quick escape or setup for a deadly assault. However, be cautious as players can destroy the Evac Tower.
The ping system sees updates with the removal of low-usage rate pings and the addition of new pings. The default Ping Wheel now includes “Avoid Area,” “Enemy Audio,” and “Regroup” pings, with an expanded set of options when downed or in Dropship for the initial drop into the battle royale. The pinging system also sees quality of life improvements.
The patch notes detail a variety of balance updates, including crate rotation, weapon crafting rotation, gold weapon rotation, and loot spawns. Weapon-specific updates and changes are also listed, along with legend updates and mixtape improvements. Bug fixes and quality of life updates have been implemented to enhance the gaming experience.
Here’s a look at all of the official details from the patch notes:
BALANCE UPDATES
Crate Rotation
- L-Star EMG enters the crate
- RE-45 returns to the floor
Weapon Crafting Rotation
- Alternator SMG enters the crafter
- Sentinel enters the crafter
- EVA-8 returns to the floor
- 30-30 Repeater returns to the floor
Gold Weapon Rotation
- Flatline, Triple Take, Spitfire, Mastiff, Volt
Loot Spawns
- Improved Vault Loot
- Increased chances of gold loot
- Added light mags to spawn pool
- Improved Cargo Bot Loot
- Removed small healing items, Mobile Respawn Beacon, White Armor, White Backpack
- Adjusted Large Healing and Heatshield spawns to allow for more desirable loot spawns
- Removed gold weapons from purple tier Cargo Bots but increased spawn chance in gold tier
WEAPONS
L-Star EMG [Crate]
- Added Disruptor Rounds: 60% damage increase against shields
- Base Damage Reduced to 16 (was 17)
- Projectiles now have passthrough: 60% damage retained
- Projectile growth increased
- Improved recoil pattern
- Removed barrel
- Ammo Stockpile: 324
- Reduced VFX brightness when hitting unarmored targets
30-30 Repeater
- Projectile size increased when fully charged
Triple Take
- Projectile size increased
- Improved hipfire spread
- Tightened bullet pattern when fully choked
- Ammo per shot reduced to 1 (was 3)
- Magazines sizes adjusted to match the new ammo costs
- Purple Mag: Increased to 10 shots (was 9)
R-99 SMG
- Removed 1 bullet from base and all magazines
- No Magazine reduced to 19 (was 20)
- White Magazine reduced to 21 (was 22)
- Blue Magazine reduced to 24 (was 25)
- Purple & Gold magazine reduced to 27 (was 28)
Charge Rifle
- Reduced shots per magazine to 3 (was 4)
- Reduced spawn rate
LEGENDS
Catalyst
- Dark Veil
- Scan Highlights & Diamonds are no longer visible through the Dark Veil
Mirage
- Class changed from Skirmisher to Support
Ash
- Now gets slowed to weapon sprint speed instead of weapon walk speed when targeting with her tac
Assault Class
- Smart loot gains have been adjusted to reduce skipping an upgrade tier
- It will now be less likely to jump from White to Purple or Blue to Gold
- Optics are now given based on team rather than just Assault Legend who opens them
- Added special drop rate for Gold Optics
Skirmisher Class
- Care packages are now automatically pinged for the team on reveal.
- This includes empty Care Packages that have already been looted by another team
Support Class
- Support Bins will now guarantee at least one Battery in one of the Secret Compartment slots
- Support Bins will now award MRBs if your ally is dead, even if you don’t have their banner card.
- Legend Banners can now be crafted by ANY player who has a Support Class Legend in their Squad
MIXTAPE
- New Podium screens for Gun Run and Control
- Display a message in the Kill Feed if Leaver Penalties are disabled for the match due to an unfair match
- Control and Gun Run will indicate the team’s MVPs on the intro podium
- Control and TDM have updated loadouts (Crate Weapon changes and updates based on weapon meta/pick rates/kill rates)
- Gun Run and TDM now have XP Bonuses for Match Completion and Match Completion after Join in Progress
Control
- Map rotation: Barometer is out, Olympus: Hammond Labs is in
- Weapon Evo Change: No longer Evo weapons automatically when a new Rating Tier is reached. Players now reach the new tier and their weapon will Evo when the player holsters and then unholsters their weapon in any form (reload, weapon switch, manual holster, rides a zipline, performs a skydive, etc)
Gun Run
- Weapon Track update for new crate weapons.
- Added an additional XP bonus on the last weapon knife kill
Team Deathmatch
- Map rotation: Skulltown is out, Phase Runner is in
BUG FIXES
- Prowler: fixed ADS while crouching
- IMC Armories: fixed spectres taking too much damage from arc stars
- Fixed Duos showing NBR challenges instead of BR challenges
- Fixed comms wheel not being usable when a game is over
- Fixed players glitching inside of loot bins
- Fixed spectators not receiving audio queues for all types of launch pads/jump pads
- Fixed flickering of banners during victory and end of match screens
- Scoreboard is saved when a game is finished now, not post-podium sequence
- Lifetime Stats numbers no longer overlap for more than 7 digits
- Various lobby ultrawide UI improvements
LEGENDS
- Ash:
- Steps are no longer louder if heirloom is equipped
- Fixed UI loop when crouch inspect is canceled early
- Ultimate will now persist for the entire duration even if Ash dies while it is active and while players are still traveling through it
- Bloodhound: White Ravens already in flight can no longer be scanned for free Tacticals and Ult charge
- Caustic: Fixed traps destroying when placed near closed doors that are then opened
- Crypto:
- Drone can no longer be accessed after being knocked
- Drone no longer occasionally teleports behind a wall after you throw it
- Fixed drone sometimes spawning in the middle of the world when thrown into a wall
- Loba:
- Fixed visibility issue with Black Market when Bangalore’s smoke is behind
- Amount head peeks over cover while crouching adjusted to match other Legends
- Mad Maggie: Improved reliability when hitting objects that the ball will damage or destroy
- Octane: Removed the double jump hint from the Launch Pad in cases where it would incorrectly show as an option (e.g. after a Pathfinder grapple)
- Rampart: multiple cover walls can no longer be placed in the same spot on a Trident
- Seer: Dummies in the firing range will now have the same footstep behavior as other players when moving inside of Seer’s Ultimate instead of behaving like other AI (Prowlers, Spiders)
- Valkyrie: Ultimate cooldown no longer set to 75% after being canceled while in Death Totem protection
- Wraith:
- Fixed ultimate being usable while ziplining
- Mythic finisher “Whiplash” no longer pushes players outside of play area
MODES
- Mixtape
- Fixed shields dropped by killed enemies being empty
- Fixed players leaving a match will no longer try to join the same match if its join-in-progress window is still active
- Team Deathmatch
- Fixed grenades not dropping on player death
- Fixed Estates map image displaying the night variant of the map in the Lobby
- Control
- Fixed Custom Match Observer issue where it was difficult to close the Map Screen if an Observer had it opened before players spawned in the match
- Fixed teammates death icon not appearing on the map if the map wasn’t open when the teammate died
- Fixed ordnance not auto-equipping to the ordnance slot if the player spawned out of bounds
- Fixed reserve ammo counter not displaying when switching weapons from Rampart or Vantage’s ultimate ability
QUALITY OF LIFE UPDATES
- Removed Auto-Taunt Prompt on Enemy Killed
- Can now ride ziplines while playing the banner pickup animation
- Bullet impact VFX on snow reduced
LIVEAPI IMPROVEMENTS AND DOCUMENTATION
This season will have some updates to the LiveAPI based on player and developer feedback. These include improvements to existing functionality and messages, new events, and extensive additions to documentation including some examples in Python.
- Support for Secure WebSockets (WSS) server connections
- Configurable SSL verification, to allow self-signed certificates
- Request validation through pre-shared key mechanism that can be specified through `cl_liveapi_requests_psk`
- Newly added game event broadcast delay that affects only real-time WebSocket connections, configurable through `cl_liveapi_ws_event_delay`
- Additional documentation and snippets added to events.proto file
- Includes sample values, code snippets in Python and expected API behavior
- Change for API request acknowledgements not behaving as intended
- Introduction of the RequestStatus message for more detailed explanations
- Fix for 4KB message payload truncation seen mostly when using JSON data format
- Fix for PlayerRevive event where the revived player field was incorrectly typed as a string instead of a Player message
- New WarpGateUsed and ObserverAnnotation events
- Downgrade of most uint64 fields to uint32 to ensure serialization as numbers and not strings in JSON
- All timestamp fields remain as uint64. Developers should take note when using JSON data format instead of Protobuf.
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