Since not long after its recent launch, Apex Legends fans have been complaining that the game’s biggest player characters are much easier to hit than its smallest characters. Developer Respawn Entertainment has been listening, and on Reddit announced it would soon be making changes in the near future to rebalance several characters.
Respawn’s post on Reddit covered a new update that’s already in the game, which makes weapon changes, and explained that the studio’s approach to making those design alterations is to be cautious and make sure they’re thoroughly tested when they go live. A few changes are part of the most recent update, but the ones that address character hit boxes are being held back until later this month, when they’ve been more thoroughly vetted.
A “hit box” is the invisible area on a video game character that registers impacts; when a bullet hits a character inside the hit box, the character takes damage, but if a shot lands outside the box, the hit doesn’t count. Big characters in Apex have similarly large hit boxes–Gibraltar has the largest one, followed by Caustic and Pathfinder. That means it’s easier to hit them than smaller characters, but that’s partially by design. Respawn means for those characters’ larger surface area to be balanced by their abilities, so that all the characters in the game have roughly the same power, viability, and win rate.
Still, players have debated whether the hit boxes on the biggest characters are too big, and players testing hits have discovered that some hit boxes are a bit wonky. For instance, the robot Pathfinder’s hit box is slightly larger than his actual character model, extending down between his legs a little lower than his actual frame.
Respawn wrote that it’s making changes to those bigger characters. Caustic, Pathfinder, and Gibraltar are all getting their hit boxes sized down and better optimized to match their character models. Respawn also said it’ll make further changes if necessary, but those could include powering up those characters’ abilities, since messing with hit boxes are big adjustments that take players a long time to get used to.
Other characters are getting some minor tweaks as well. Both Wraith and Bangalore are getting their escape abilities reduced a bit. Bangalore’s passive ability which increases her run speed while under fire, is being reduced from a 40% speed increase to 30%, and the cooldown on Wraith’s Into The Void ability that makes her invulnerable is getting increased from 20 seconds to 25 seconds.
You can check out the full list of character balance changes below. One remaining question is when these changes will actually hit the game. Respawn hasn’t announced just when Season One will start for Apex, and therefore it’s not yet clear when the rebalancing update that goes with it will go live. Meanwhile, check out our character guides, which can help you make the most of all the Legends in Apex.
Major Balance Changes
- Hit box size reductions and optimizations for Caustic, Pathfinder and Gibraltar
Minor balance changes
- Caustic
- Traps – Reduced cooldown to 25 seconds from 30 seconds
- Traps – Increased radius and proximity radius by about 10%
- Traps – Removed a 1 second delay on the smoke dealing damage to players
- Pathfinder
- Insider Knowledge – Increased the number of beacons in the world to 12 from 10
- Lifeline
- Care Package – Removed slight chance that level 4 armor and helmets will drop
- Wraith
- Into The Void – Cooldown increased from 20 -> 25 seconds
- Bangalore
- Double Time – Reduced move speed bonus to 30% from 40%