A Day-One Player’s Frustration with the Season 28 Octane Meta
I've been playing Apex since day one. I completely understand the need to change, reshape, and refresh the Legend meta over time to keep the game alive, but I'm reaching my breaking point with the current Octane meta.
My main frustration stems from a pure combat perspective. Octane has always been harder to kill if played by someone with good movement, but with his recent reworks carrying into Season 28, fighting him is just exhausting. With the stim surge changes, its not just speed anymore, it's a legend who gets the fortified, bullet-slow immunity, and can run at crazy speed while using meds. Along with the swift mend buff scaling up to 9 HP/s when he’s low on health, and it feels like every fight is stacked against me. Unless I manage to perfectly nail him with an arc star, punishing an out-of-position Octane is virtually impossible.
My second major frustration is how his kit actively degrades the team element of Apex. Octane players have always had a bad reputation for "playing too solo" or pushing by themselves, but his core kit is what enables and rewards it. By design, he is incredibly self-sufficient and powerful without the rest of the squad anywhere near him. I feel like this encourages a selfish playstyle that routinely kills a squad's odds of actually winning the match.
I can see the developer logic. Octane is designed to be a strong entry fragger with zero support or intel capabilities. In an ideal world, players would be aware of this, wait for their squad, and use his speed to make an opening. But in reality the adrenaline and the sheer speed of his current kit lead to tunnel vision. Teammates get lost in the mist of combat, overextend 90% of the time, and leave the rest of thir squad to catch up when he's either dead or somewhere else.
He needs a tweak. The line between entry fragger and tedious raid boss has been crossed for me.
This is definitely a matter of opinion, and as someone who doesn't play octane at all it's very much an outside perspective based on my observations. I just wanted to get it out there since the devs read this stuff.
TL;DR (AI generated cz I'm lazy):
Octane's S28 buffs (Fortified, Stim Surge, 9 HP/s healing) make him exhaustingly hard to win 1v1s against. Worse, his hyper-mobility tools actively encourage a selfish, tunnel-vision playstyle that ruins the squad dynamic and leaves slower teammates behind. He's crossed the line from entry fragger to an unkillable solo raid boss.
