Check out the details from our latest Reddit AMA
Hey Legends,
It’s time to chat about the recent changes to Legends / Weapons from our Midseason Patch. Check out the full AMA here or dive straight into the questions below!
Here’s our Weapons and Legends team members on deck:
- u/RSPN_Caseroos: Casey, Weapons Game Designer (Hemlok + other weapons)
- u/RSPN_Jello: John, Legends Game Designer (Gibraltar, Wraith, & Wattson)
Q: Did you expect the Hemlok to be as strong and prevalent as it’s been since the change? Is the design to have elite weapons be arguably the strongest floor gun?
We were certainly expecting the Hemlok to be fairly popular, the hope was that it would be competing with the R301 for AR dominance, but I don't think we were expecting to be just so loved by the community, so thanks yall <3
Since Elite Weapons are limited time, we want them to release hot so they make their mark on the weapon meta, and are a memorable moment in Apex's timeline. We are keeping an eye on the Hemlok's position in the meta and will make changes accordingly.
Q: I'm quite happy with legend changes. But will the hemmy receive more nerfs? Even with the tiny nerf it had it still feels incredibly strong. Like I'm actively throwing if I don't use it.
Also can we expect pathfinder to be more viable again soon? He is so fun to play but I never want to play him because he feels so weak
We did see some movement in the data after the Hemloks first round of nerfs, which is quite promising, and we will continue to evaluate and make changes accordingly. You haven't heard the last of us regarding the Hemlok!
Yeah we also feel like Pathy has fallen a bit behind, hopefully he'll get some love soon.
Q: Will Wraith receive a Passive ability rework/buff?
I believe it was hinted at a while ago, and I expected it to happen with her last set of buffs, but now she seems to be in a very good shape except for her very lacking passive ability. I'd love to at least see her passive perk be incorporated into her base kit.
She's doing pretty well with her buffs this season but it's still something we're considering.
Q: Would it be possible to change a character’s class for a little while like one season a bit like elite weapons?
If it makes sense, we have done that in the past. We moved Mirage and Rev but these weren't short term moves.
Q: Weapons questions!
For the Hemlock, is increasing base weapons recoil and making the silencer level up in rarity with the rest of your attachments something that is possible? All blue or all purple attachments gives you blue/purple silencer for better recoil control. Otherwise I’ve enjoyed the weapon and its alt fire for different ways to play.
you guys have been doing a great job with making a lot of guns similar in power and viable. Any plans for LMGs without making them the must use gun?
It's an interesting idea to balance out the Hemlok for sure, although it is unlikely that a change like that will come to the weapon before its time is up. In general, hidden style of information like "leveling up with your other attachments" can be a little confusing to convey. We found this happened with the change to the Devotion a few seasons back to activate Turbocharger with all purple attachments. Moving forward, we are really trying to ensure our weapon mechanics can be easily conveyed and understood by all players, and not just those who read the patch notes.
As for LMGs, they are certainly on our radar to take a look at in upcoming patches.
Q: Did you guys considered giving wraith her instant phase back? Do you guys like the current state that ash is in?
Wraith is already pretty strong and you can upgrade into the faster tactical. We were a bit worried about giving that back to the base.
Ash is doing fine but she has fallen a lot, she did have a long run on top though so we might give other legends their time in the sun.
Q: Why is every legend getting Conduit’s Passive? First it was Skirmishers then Crypto, now it’s Gibraltar. Will Conduit’s passive be reworked in the future?
It's a good passive and is a great way to try have the slower legends keep up, but I agree does make it so Conduits passive isn't very unique. We will be looking at her in the future.
Q: Is the overall powercreep in movement set to continue? It feels like the current bandaid solution to an underperforming legend is giving them a movement ability, but I also understand that slowing players down is boring for them.
We are also very aware of the movement powercreep and are always talking about how we could address it. The tricky part is movement is fun and we see that with our pick rates. When we do add movement abilities we always consider the conterplay, we try to use audio and VFX to help with tracking.
We also agree, we don't want to just give every legend a movement ability just so they can keep up. It needs to make sense for the Legend. We need to find ways to make the non-movement legends feel like they can compete.
Q: Do you guys have any plans for trying to keep future guns balanced upon launch? there seems to be a huge imbalance upon every launch, one new gun dominates meta for a split, then gets nerfed into the ground, do you have any future plans to try and fix this immediate domination of meta upon launch?
I can certainly acknowledge that recent weapon meta changes have contained quite spikey changes for some of our weapon roster. What I will also say is that, a perfectly balanced meta can quickly become quite un-fun, and creating perfect balance across all weapons isn't technically possible. Each weapon has their own identity, damage profile, range engagement. There will always be something that sets one gun apart from another, and metas will always evolve through communty engagement and conversation.
Q: How come it seems like smgs are consistently strong and always receiving changes and attention when not competitive. But shotguns are kept weak except for brief periods of time. For example the peace keeper, in the past year it was out of the game for 2 seasons then super buffed for one split then immediately triple nerfed and is now the worst preforming gun in the game and the only balance pass it got was the disrupters. The same thing also happened with the eva 8 and mozambs but not to the same highs and lows.
Great question. Shotguns are one of our more tempestuous weapon classes, as very strong shotgun metas are known to be frustrating (you called out the Peacekeeper meta already). Due to their nature, the damage of shotguns can be quite spikey, and the feeling of "I died out of nowhere" is easily felt, which is quite frustrating. Due to this, we keep a very close eye on our shotguns to ensure they don't overstay their welcome, and action accordingly.
SMGs are one of our easier weapon classes to learn, and tend to be the most popular weapon class next to ARs. The fast rate of fire, the range, the damage profile, lends itself well to players of many different play styles and skill levels. When we see a weapon fall behind the curve, we evaluate and give it some love accordingly. For SMGs, even the smallest of taps can resonate a lot with the players, and their usage rate may spike more than say, a pistol, getting a comparable change.
Q: Hey ya'll. No real questions from me, I just want to make sure my Hemlock eventually goes back to burst. I have 6000 kills with Hemlock alone, 4000 hours in the game. I use Hemlock every single game.
I dont mind a change up, I just dont want to see this be changed permanently. 🤞🏻
Hey there! I'll give some context for you regarding the permanent change to the RE-45 and what's next for the Hemlok.
We kinda mentioned this in the Designer's Notes blog, but the reason RE-45 stayed in its energy variant was many reasons, but one of them being that the light version of the gun was competing in a highly saturated niche of high fire rate, automatic, light ammo weapons. The energy variant felt more unique both in identity and gameplay style, so we made the call to have it stick around for good. Hemlok Burst AR on the other hand has it's own niche and identity, and we don't want to permanently remove that, so you can expect to see it return as it's normal three round burst in the future.
Q: Are there any plans to nerf octane more than he already is? his pick rate has absolutely skyrocketed and the octane meta is getting a little old
We're monitoring him after the most recent nerfs, we are seeing stabalize in pick rate but if he continues to be an outlier we will adjust.
Q: Will Apex Legends ever get a flashbang grenade? Could a future legend use a flashbang like Bangalore does her smoke?
While I can't speak to any new content, I'll give some of my thoughts regarding a flashbang grenade. In general, when you are throwing a grenade in Apex, you are not always thinking about what you are throwing (sometimes you do, sometimes you don't). You normally just equip and YEET. There is an expectation there that damage will be done to the enemies, especially with those perfect sky-nades, so, if we had a grenade that was more of a tactical style of throwable, there would be a level of disappointment when those large damage numbers don't appear. So, while we will never say never, a standard flashbang grenade doesn't align with our current design philosophy around grenades.
Q: Will the breach charge be added to other weapons? It feels like the hemlock is a must have because of his useful the charge is (and because it's good).
Breaking open doors and traps is too good to only be on one weapon. Maybe it could be on all assault rifles (having it on shotguns and smgs would be too strong imo)
Great question. It's something we will be internally evaluating as the Hemlok meta shakes out to see if Breach Charge is a viable addition to the game permanently. The Breach Charge was designed with the season of Breach and Hardlight in mind, so when the Hemlok Breach AR's time comes to its end, we might preserve some elements of the kit in other ways so the counter play it offers remains. This is in no way a promise, but letting you know we are keeping ideas like this front of mind in our meta discussions :)
Q: Thanks for the balance efforts and recent transparency - really appreciated. I have 2 questions:
- We had similar situations in previous seasons where guns felt “necessary” (see: mozam meta, p20 meta, devo meta) and it quickly becomes stale; action was taken eventually to reel those guns in. How much data, therefore, is required before more action is taken to bring a weapon into balance if it’s largely seen by the community to be overpowered/“necessary” to use to be competitive? The Hemlock-only meta is getting old fast, even with the most recent (albeit appreciated) nerfs.
- Will controller characters be buffed so that the reinforced mesh and doors take more than just one grenade blast with the Hemlock to break? Or will the Hemlock be nerfed to make it so the grenade launcher isn’t as strong? The controller buffs are almost useless when someone can one shot a window or door that’s reinforced.
Thanks again for all your hard work and efforts.
Oh great question! Love talking about data when I can.
As a primer, recently we have been much more reactive and willing to make changes when we see a weapon be a particular outlier in the data and community sentiment. Which is why you have seen us send out a lot more meta hot fixes as of late.
To answer the data question: it depends. We normally like to get a few weeks of data before making a change, to allow the change to settle into the meta, and to ensure we are not being too reactive. Sometimes though, we see data and sentiment spike so highly, that we action sooner. The Hemlok Breach AR being one of those instances, and we took action after only one week of data. We are still continuing to evaluate the Hemlok and based on the new sets of data, we will be actioning accordingly.
Q: In the designer notes post, you mentioned that making Gibraltar's hitbox smaller is not an option. Could elaborate further? His kit is very strong, always has been, but his hitbox always held him back.
His size is part of his identity, scaling him down would change the character drastically. We also don't like to change hit boxes since they are pretty tied to the model. Once there is a mismatch it can cause gameplay confusion.
Q: Does the silencer on the Hemlock affect recoil in the same way as a barrel stabilizer does or is it just exist to explain the very low audio signature of the gun? Compared to other ARs especially that have no stabilizer equipped the Hemlock has much easier to control recoil. In a test at 75m with a 3x on one of the blue square targets, I was able to hit 100% of shots with the Nerfed Hemlock elite. My next best with an AR was 90% with the Nemesis. My thought is either the Hemlock has very forgiving recoil or the Silencer also acts as a stabilizer.
Are silencers planned to be part of the ground loot in the future?
Yes it does! Since the Hemlok cannot take a standard barrel stabilizer, the silencer does give some amount of recoil improvements that a normal barrel stabilizer would. Its values right now are akin to that of a blue barrel stabilizer on another AR.
Elite Weapons give us a cool and temporary runway to try out a design and see how the game reacts to it, so while there are no current plans to bring silencers to the wider roster, it is certainly something we will evaluate as we see how the Hemlok meta plays out.
Q: The Midseason update notes showed that Horizon has by far the highest win rate of any legend despite a low pick rate. What do you think is causing her win rate to be such an outlier?
Horizon is a very hard legend to pin down. The ability to use the lift to reset and escape is very powerful. I think she is difficult to master, which could contribute to her pick rate and win rate.
Q: What factor leads to complete weapon reworks like hemlok and re45?
When we decide what weapon to go Elite, we look at a lot of different factors, like the weapons current usage rate, as well as just any cool ideas we have in our heads that could be well implemented on an existing weapon. This time, the Hemlok happened to fit into the perfect spot for all of these things.
As a funny aside, I'm just thinking now on what a Breach Charge would look like firing from a tiny P2020 and giggling to myself :D
Q: Are there any thoughts on allowing the Re-45 to run light or energy similarly to the CAR? I miss my full auto side kick.
I've actually seen a few community members suggest this, and it's an interesting idea for sure! The team can definitely evaluate it, but no promises :D
Community Manager