Season 4 – Assimilation – has gone live for Apex Legends, and the patch notes detail revamps to World’s Edge, the new Legend, and a surprising change to snipers. While some of the information has become common knowledge over the last few weeks, that hasn’t stopped Respawn from throwing a few twists into play.
World’s Edge has seen alterations, Revenant is the new legend, and Snipers now get their own ammo.
For anyone following Apex Legends, the new Planet Harvester in World’s Edge and the inclusion of Revenant are old news. The change to sniper ammo found in the patch notes, however, comes as a bit of a shock. Respawn has decided to add a new lootable item to the game – sniper ammo. What this means is that all sniper-class weapons (the Sentinel, Longbow DMR, TripleTake, and Charge Rifle) have their own ammo pack to pick up now, forcing long-ranged assassins to be more judicious with their shots. The theory is simple: by making snipers use their own ammo Respawn can better balance their use without affecting SMGs or LMGs that formerly shared similar ammo.
That said, the patch notes show energy ammo has been boosted to 30 ammo per pickup over 20, and the G7 Scout has been reclassified as an assault rife (meaning it can no longer install sniper optics). In addition to these impactful balance tweaks, the turbocharger hop-up and extended energy magazines have been removed. Furthermore, the L-Star is no longer a crate weapon, swapping places with the Devotion.
Outside of these changes, there have been general balance passes made to each of the weapons (the R99 saw a damage reduction), and assists now have a 7.5 second window instead of 5. Players can even set a rotating list of favorite skins now, which has been a requested feature for some time.
Below is the Battle Pass trailer for this season, for those interested. The full patch notes can be found here. For those leaving the dropship, it looks to be another exciting season for Apex Legends, and I am excited to see how the updated map, Revenant, and the sniper ammo economy shake up the meta. Happy hunting, Legends.
