Part of the appeal of Apex Legends is the diverse set of characters available to play, each with their own abilities to help the squad turn the tide in battle. With a new legend added to the game seemingly each season, it also doesn't appear that developer Respawn Entertainment has any intentions of stopping this trend. In fact, the studio recently admitted that it has the next four characters already planned out through the next few seasons.
While Apex Legends continues to change on a seasonal basis, one character that remains near the top of the pyramid is the speedster Octane. Since his introduction in Season 1, Octane has been a near constant pick for teams thanks to his ability to his high mobility, ability to get out of trouble fairly easily, and the fact that he can regenerate his health over time. It seems the character's dominance hasn't gone unnoticed by the Respawn developers as they've been tracking his stats for some time and are planning on nerfing how good he actually is.
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The news originally appeared on the Chaos Theory patch notes thread on the Apex Legends subReddit where Daniel Klein confirmed the team was looking into Octane. Since then, the studio has decided on a course of action to take revealing that the use of his stim will now damage the character by 20, which is up from 12. However, the studio doesn't want to ultimately break the character with the change, so another change was made to offset the damage a bit.
While Octane now takes more damage when using the stim, the cooldown on the ability has also changes. Currently, the stim has a 3-4 second cooldown after use, but when the change is made, the ability cooldown will only take 1 second. His passive regeneration ability hasn't been adjusted and will work exactly the same. It's unknown how these changes will ultimately impact one of the most picked characters in Apex Legends, but with an extra 8 hit points needed to use the stim, players will want to be careful as it could mean the difference between life and death.
It seems Octane isn't the only legend that's current in line for a few changes. Respawn has recently confirmed adjustments for a handful of characters when Season 14 finally arrives in a couple weeks. Revenant may be getting a couple buffs at the cost of his ultimate ability, which has led to many online complaints. Lifeline, the game's only true medic, is also getting a handful of reworks to her passive, tactical, and ultimate. Respawn has confirmed that the revive shield is being removed for her drone, though her tactical will be getting a 60% boost to make up for it. Her ultimate will also be giving guaranteed upgrades instead of mostly lower tier gear.
Apex Legends is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
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