Apex Legends' Season 8 content is almost here and fans are eager to jump in and see all the tweaks and changes coming to the game with the newest season. Recently, Respawn revealed some Season 8 patch notes ahead of the full release, giving players a taste of what's to come.

Now, Respawn has released the full Season 8 patch notes and there are a ton of major and minor changes coming to Apex Legends this season. Alongside a brand new Legend and weapon, Season 8 will add an updated King's Canyon map, a damage counter to the HUD, updates to the Ping System, and much more.

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Of course, the biggest portion of the Season 8 patch notes covers the full details on the new Legend, Fuse, and the new weapon, the 30-30 Repeater. Though Apex Legends released a trailer that broke down all of Fuse's abilities, the patch notes spells them all out again in further detail. The patch notes also detail the 30-30 Repeater, which also got a full breakdown thanks to Apex Legends and content creator Dazs. Finally, a decent portion of the notes are dedicated to the updated King's Canyon map coming back to the rotation, which sees huge changes to the overall layout and design of many locations.

However, a large bulk of the patch notes cover the nerfs and buffs across the various Legends. First and foremost, Respawn details the changes made to Wraith, which focus on adjusting her hitbox to make her slightly bulkier around her torso and legs and overall easier to hit. Wraith still remains small and she will retain Low Profile, but Respawn will be monitoring her very closely this season. Next, Rampart also got some substantial buffs seeing as she has been the least picked Legend for quite some time.

Respawn increased Shiela's angle from 120 degrees to 180 which should give Rampart's mini-gun much more coverage. Additionally, Rampart's Wall health was increased from 1 HP to 45 HP during its building phase, though sniper rounds still pierce it. Next, Horizon's Gravity Lift tactical cooldown increased from 21 seconds to 25, teams can no longer stick arc starts to friendly Crypto drones, Loba can now see loot inside unopened care packages and can be grabbed from her Black Market Boutique, Caustic's gas disappears completely after his squad is eliminated, and Mirage's decoys now create footstep audio. Additionally, changes were made to Octane's launch pad trajectory depending on how players approach it.

Developer notes were also attached to some of the Legends with bigger changes, so interested players should definitely check them out. The patch notes also detail the upcoming gold magazines coming to Apex Legends' loot pool, while the gold barrel stabilizer and the Double Tab Hop-Up are getting removed. The weapon meta is also changing, as the fully-kitted Wingman, Sentinel, Havoc, G7, and Alternator are getting swapped out for the R-301, 30-30 Repeater, Mozambique, Longbow DMR, and Spitfire. Finally, the patch notes detail weapon changes for a variety of guns such as the Spitfire and Eva-8, alongside a host of bug fixes and quality of life changes. All in all, it looks like the Season 7 meta is about to see a lot of shakeups in the wake of Season 8.

The full patch notes for Apex Legends Season 8 are listed below:

New Legend: Fuse

Meet Fuse: a mercenary-turned-cage fighter who never turns down a good dust-up. His affinity for explosions allows him to carry extra grenades and to throw them faster and further. He can launch a cluster bomb with airburst explosives. And when it’s time to really bring the boom, Fuse uses “Wally” to launch a bombardment that encircles an area in a ring of flames.

Passive - Grenadier

Stack an extra grenade per inventory slot. Fire grenades farther, faster, and more accurately.

Tactical - Knuckle Cluster

Launch a cluster bomb that continuously expels airburst explosives on impact.

Ultimate - The Motherlode

Launch a bombardment that encircles a target area in a wall of flames.

New Weapon: 30-30 Repeater

This heavy ammo lever-action repeater boasts hard-hitting rounds that’ll nail a fleeing Mirage at 200 paces.

The 30-30 is the benchmark for reliability, designed to withstand whipping sandstorms and temporal instability, which made it an obvious choice for the Apex Games.

Disciplined Trigger Finger

The 30-30 Repeater requires the user to rechamber their rounds between shots which brings a methodic rhythm to the rifle, an analogue elegance that the modern weapons of the Outlands just can’t quite capture.

To further tempt those itchy trigger fingers, the 30-30 Repeater has a built-in charge giving players an opportunity to deal increased damage with each shot at the cost of a short build-up.

The 30-30 reloads one round at a time, which makes for some very interesting resource management you won’t find anywhere else, even on the Mastiff.

The 30-30’s engagement range allows unique opportunities to reload individual rounds between shots. This gives the Repeater the ability to lay down consistent precision ranged pressure, something weapons with full reloads can sometimes struggle with.

Kings Canyon Map Update

Season 8 once again sees changes to Kings Canyon. The main new point of interest shows the devastation from the ship crashing into the map. Players can now explore beyond Artillery, Spotted Lakes takes over the Slums and some new observation towers for basic recon or a sniper’s nest. Read more on the map changes in the map blog here.

Legendary Magazines

Season 8 introduces the Gold-tier magazines. Attaching it to a weapon automatically reloads your stowed weapons after a brief delay. The Gold magazine has the same capacity as Purple mags, and is available for Light, Heavy, Snipers, and Energy Weapons.

Quality of Life Updates

Damage counter

• We have now added a damage counter to the HUD. This was a highly requested feature, so we’re excited to allow people easier tracking for chasing those badges and challenges!

Pinging Ammo

• Pinging weapons or ammo in your inventory displays your current ammo count along with "player wants ammo" in quick chat.

Color Blind update

• Healing and reviving will now follow colorblind rules when colorblind settings are enabled

Lore Blurbs on Canon Skins

• Some of our skins are canon, and some are just for fun. For the skins that represent an important part of that character's backstory, we've added a small blurb to describe the significance of that skin in the Legend's life.

Legend Meta

Wraith:

• Hitbox adjustments.

Dev Note:

We know Wraith will always be a popular pick considering the amount of combat utility in her kit. After many tweaks to her abilities and animations, the fact remains that her win rate continues to be at the very top as it has since day one. With Season 7 hitbox adjustments to Pathfinder, we were able to control his power without nerfing his kit. We hope to do the same with Wraith.

Wraith now has a slightly larger hitbox than her fellow small legends, but the changes stay true to her model. As you can see in the before and after comparison, we’re adding some width mostly in the torso and leg areas.

Even with these changes, Wraith remains small and hard to hit. She will retain Low Profile as we monitor her usage and win rates to see if power can be given back in other ways in the future.

Rampart:

• Sheila angle increase from 120° to 180°
• Wall health in build phase increased from 1hp to 45hp (sniper rounds still pierce through)

Dev Note:

Rampart has remained at the bottom across our performance metrics since her release. Her kit is very much built around proactively setting up a powerful position, but in a game as fast-moving as Apex, we determined her walls should have some reactive power as well. We’re keeping a careful eye on this one.

Horizon:

• Gravity Lift effective cooldown increased from 21s to 25s. The 15s cooldown timer will now start when the Gravity Lift disappears.

Dev Note:

Horizon released strong, to the point where she rivals Wraith in win rate and pick rate. For the time being, we are monitoring her usage and checking whether or not the cooldown changes have a significant effect.

Octane:

Launch Pad Remastered: Many players may have known about Octane’s “super-jump” that was possible with a well-timed jump while hitting the pad. Once the double-jump option was introduced, there was an input clash that led to unreliable usage. We decided to add some launch options that are better defined than the old super-jump.

• Hitting the jump pad from a standing position will launch players along a high arc (the speed and trajectory of the old super-jump).
• From a crouched position, players will launch along a low arc, meaning they’ll fly lower but farther in the horizontal direction.

Crypto:

• Remove ability to stick arc stars to friendly drones.

Loba:

• Loot inside unopened care packages is now visible with Eye for Quality and accessible through the Black Market Boutique.

Caustic:

• All gas now dissipates as soon as Caustic’s team is eliminated.

Mirage:

• Mirage decoys create footstep sounds.

Dev Note:

This change was mistakenly mentioned in the Fight Night patch notes when it was in fact coming with this patch. Mirage decoys will now have footstep audio in a limited capacity. There won’t be a footstep tornado if an enemy Mirage ults nearby, but it should be slightly harder to pick out the real Mirage from audio cues alone.

Weapon Meta

Fully Kitted Rotation

• Removed: Wingman, Sentinel, Havoc, G7, Alternator
• Added: R-301, 30-30 Repeater, Mozambique, Longbow DMR, Spitfire

Attachments

• We are removing the Gold Barrel from the loot pool

Hop Ups

• The Double Tap hop up will be removed from the loot pool
• The Anvil Rounds hop up will be added into the loot pool

Volt

• Bullet damage decreased from 16 to 15

Alternator

• Bullet damage increased from 15 to 16

Spitfire

• Bullet damage increased from 18 to 19
• Reload speed increased from 2.8 seconds to 3.2
• Empty Reload speed increased from 3.33 seconds to 3.8

EVA 8

• Fire rate increased from 2.0 to 2.1

Bug Fixes

Caustic

• Sonar abilities no longer stop Caustic’s highlight vision.

Loba

• Fixed a few exploitable areas on Kings Canyon that Loba was able to reach via her Bracelet.

Rampart

• Jumpads in Octane’s town takeover no longer allow Rampart to place Sheila on them.
• Fixed an issue with Rampart's passive persisting even after changing characters in Firing Range

Havoc

• Fixed an issue causing the Havoc to have 100% accuracy when hip-fired through Rampart’s Amped Cover.

Peacekeeper

• Fixed a POV issue that occurred when using Horizon’s abilities, then immediately going into ADS with a Peacekeeper.

Clubs

• Re-enabled ability to invite friends to club from friends list
• Fixed an issue causing some users who have opted out of "Last Squad Invites" to not appear in club event timelines when placing in the top 5 of a match
• Failing to connect to the club database no longer leads to a misleading "Kicked from club" message
• Players will no longer be kicked from clubs when switching to another profile on Xbox.

MISC

• Fixed an issue with crowds not cheering in Pathfinder’s Town takeover.
• Fixed an issue preventing some heirlooms from appearing in the heirloom shop.
• Fixed an issue that allowed Thermites to deal damage through certain walls on Olympus.

Apex Legends is on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and has a Switch version in development.

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Source: Apex Legends