Apex Legends’ first balance patch is now live, implementing nerfs to both the Wingman and Peacekeeper weapons.
Wingman is a very powerful pistol that can kill an enemy with three headshots if its holder is accurate enough, or just two if they have the Skullpiercer Rifling attachment, and Respawn is looking to scale its ferocity back a bit, so they’ve reduced its rate of fire from 3.1 shots per second to 2.6 shots per second and reduced the Skullpiercer Headshot damage multiplier from 2.5 to 2.25. Firing from the hip has been nerfed too, with base hip fire spread being increased and the rate at which hip fire spread decays being slowed down.
The Peacekeeper, meanwhile, is only being nerfed when it has the Shotgun Bolt attachment equipped, having its reload speed slowed down to give players “a larger window of vulnerability if they miss their shot”. Respawn obviously feels that the two weapons are too readily available too, so both have had their availability reduced in all zones. Respawn also think that energy weapons are currently difficult to main due to their relative lack of availability, so the availability of both energy weapons and energy ammo has been increased in all zones.
Respawn has also noted that they will be aiming to make “less frequent, better tested, higher impact changes” moving forward, so don’t expect to have to read article after article of me rabbiting on about new balance patches. The developers also briefly spoke about the upcoming Season 1 of the game, and although there is currently no set start date for it they did share some brief glimpses at some character balance changes that they’ll be making for Season 1, which include slight changes to Caustic’s Traps and Lifeline’s Care Package.
You can read the full patch notes and the upcoming changes here. The changes to Peacekeeper and Wingman are live now.
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