Highlights
- EA and Respawn surprised players with buffs to Wattson and Ash in Apex Legends that weren't revealed in the patch notes.
- Wattson's shield regeneration and Ash's Ultimate ability received significant improvements.
- Bloodhound was majorly nerfed, causing frustration among players and potential meta shifts.
EA and Respawn have shadow buffed Wattson and Ash in the latest patch, but the changes were not mentioned in the Apex Legends mid-season patch notes. Apex Legends is quite well known for surprising players with hidden secrets, easter eggs, buffs, and nerfs to keep them intrigued and invested in the game. As part of that, the devs released these unexpected buffs, which will definitely change how Apex matches play out and may affect the existing meta.
It's been quite some time since the launch of Apex's Season 21: Upheaval, which introduced the new legend, Alter. Apex Legends released Double Take, the mid-season collection event, on June 25, which marks the beginning of the second ranked split in the season. This mid-season patch introduced several changes to gameplay and mechanics, which included several weapon buffs, along with changes to character abilities and level upgrades. On top of that, players are now discovering secret buffs to their favorite legends.
Wattson's buff involves her Passive ability, Spark of Genius, which recharges the body shield when she's out of combat for more than six seconds. Previously, Wattson's Passive used to recharge one shield HP every two seconds, which took 50 seconds to recharge one shield bar, which equals 25 shield HP. With the secret new buff, the recharge time is cut down to half, meaning Wattson will now recharge one shield HP per second, taking her just 25 seconds to regenerate one shield bar. This means recharging a full red body shield will now take only 125 seconds, while it took 250 seconds before the buff. This will make playing with Wattson in Apex Legends a lot more effective.
Apex Players Discover Shadow Buffs to Ash and Wattson
Ash, the 122-year-old scientist, has received a buff to her Ultimate ability, Phase Breach, which tears open a portal. Before the shadow buff, the maximum length of the portal used to be 63 meters. After the mid-season patch, Ash's portal can now be 77 meters long, which is a huge change in terms of distance in the game. This is a game changer for Ash mains in Apex Legends, as they can now make a portal that's pretty much half the length of Wraith's portal. While Wraith's portal can only reach places where she can go on foot, Ash's portal can reach places where she can't physically go without the portal, giving Ash mains a great advantage.
Though these buffs are great, the same can't be said for all the changes in the Double Take collection event patch. Apex Legends' Bloodhound has received a big nerf in this patch, which is making the players very frustrated. Some of them even think that this nerf will make the recon legend useless and totally change the existing meta involving Bloodhound. It seems like players will be busy inventing new strategies and team compositions for the rest of the season. Apex Legends players are hoping that these changes won't affect the meta to the point where a legend becomes useless, making the gameplay experience worse.
Platform(s) PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , PC , iOS , Android , Switch Released February 4, 2019 Developer(s) Respawn Entertainment Publisher(s) Electronic Arts Platforms That Support Crossplay PC, PS4, Switch & Xbox One See at Official SiteSee at Xbox Games StoreSee at Playstation StoreSee at Steam