Earlier today, Respawn released the first significant balance-changing update for Apex Legends and it’s nerfed two of the most powerful weapons.
Of course, we’re talking about the Peacekeeper and Wingman, both of which often come up in conversations about which guns are over-powered. We all knew a nerf was coming, then, and now it’s here, with each weapon having their stats reduced and various tweaks made to their functions with the developer also reducing the availability of both.
For more, here’s a full list of what was changed with the latest update for Apex Legends:
- Wingman
- Rate of fire reduced from 3.1 -> 2.6 shots per second.
- Skullpiercer Headshot damage multiplier reduced from 2.5 -> 2.25
- Increased base hip fire spread and decreased the rate at which hip fire spread decays (shrinks back down).
- Peacekeeper
- Shotgun Bolt rechamber rate has been reduced for the Peacekeeper only.
- Level 1 mitigation 10% -> 7.5%
- Level 2 mitigation 20% -> 13%
- Level 3 mitigation 25% -> 16%
- Wingman and Peacekeeper availability has been reduced in all zone tiers.
- Increased availability of energy weapons & ammo in all zone tiers.
Additionally, Respawn also issued the following statement, explaining the changes:
“We’ve found that the Skullpiercer Wingman has been on the stronger end, but it’s designed to be a weapon with a higher skill ceiling. Our adjustments are attempting to move it more into the hand cannon space and away from full auto Deagle. We’ve also adjusted the rate of fire of the Peacekeeper with Shotgun Bolt attachment, so players will have a larger window of vulnerability if they miss their shot. Additionally, the scarcity of energy ammo and lower number of energy weapons overall has made those weapons difficult to main, so we’ve increased energy weapon and ammo availability.”
As far as we can tell, there were no new weapons, characters or anything else added to the game with this update, as we presume that’s all coming next week with the first Battle Pass. But still, it’s nice to see Respawn taking the constructive criticism from fans to heart and addressing it in a timely manner.
Of course, there’s quite a long list of things that need to be tweaked, nerfed and/or changed, but we’ve no doubt that the developer will continue to improve Apex Legends as time goes on and with the first season not even having kicked off yet, it appears that the best is truly yet to come.