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Apex Legends Season 6: Everything you need to know about the latest Season
Respawn has dropped a new Season of Apex Legends this week – here's what you need to know about the changes to the meta, the Legends and the maps
It is that most wonderful time of the year – the time when a new season of Apex Legends arrives and shakes up the game in both subtle and overt ways. For Season Six, everything feels more lethal – more dangerous – and every weapon is coming into its own. Sure, you still aren’t going to want that P2020 in the final circle, but grabbing it on landing can be all you need to make it out of those spicy drops. Welcome to Apex Season 6: Boosted. Things are different here.
New Legends and Balance Changes
Rampart's zone denial skills are not to be sniffed at
© EA
The new Legend Respawn has introduced this season is Rampart: a scrappy builder from India with a mounted machine gun. She's a force to be reckoned with. Like Watson and Caustic, her abilities lend to a defensive style, though her flavour of defence is less “I’m here, come deal with me if you can” and more “come at me or hide. I’ll be waiting”.
When you're preparing for a defensive engagement you need to evaluate cover and positioning to ensure success. However, Rampart’s tactical ability builds cover for you, and this cover is a half barrier and five can be placed at any one time. The upper half of the barrier has an amped section that will block incoming damage while increasing damage going through it, too.
These walls can take a decent beating once they’re assembled, but are vulnerable during the first few seconds after placement. Using the ability wisely can give defensive teams a terrifying presence, and can also be used to draw fire briefly if you attack from a different angle. If you see a defensive encampment placed nearby, try and take it out before it is fully assembled, or else your opponents gain protection and damage that could have easily been denied.
Rampart's chain gun can be used by any player – even enemies
© EA
Rampart's passive ability is focused on putting down high volumes of fire. Called Modded Loader, the passive increases the magazine capacity and reload speed for all LMGs and her Ultimate minigun.
Speaking of Ultimates, Rampart creates a mounted machine gun called Sheila. She can place up to three of these and their high ammo capacity means they can suppress and lockdown wide angles of attack. Any player can use these – just be careful that they do not fall into enemy hands.
Other Legends have received changes, too, but the major balance updates revolve around the entire Recon class. This encompasses Crypto, Bloodhound, and Pathfinder. Now every Recon legend can use the Survey Beacon previously exclusive to Pathfinder. Crypto can even use his drone to do it instantly, skipping the few seconds of immobility. To compensate for Pathfinder's loss of a unique ability, he now receives a permanent reduction in his Ultimate cooldown for each beacon he scans.
Bloodhound has also received some buffs to their Beast of the Hunt Ultimate to increase its length after each kill or knockdown you get while it’s active. It also gives a big reduction to Bloodhound's passive, allowing for more uses to help track down targets and always remain aware of where nearby enemies are sitting.
New Weapons
The newest gun is a returning weapon from Titanfall
© EA
The Volt Submachine gun has been knocking around in datamined code for a long time, and since it was a staple of the Titanfall series, it's not a surprise that it came to the Apex games in the end.
This energy weapon can be found on the ground as world loot and is fuelled by the returning energy mags. It takes all the same attachments as the other submachine guns that have been in the game since launch, whilst having a unique and clear iron sight profile which makes it good to go without optics.
For the older weapons, Devotion is now back in the world loot pool, and the R99 has switched into the Supply Drop. With Devotion back in the world, the turbocharger has also resurfaced – keep an eye out for that, because it can swing the momentum of a firefight in a heartbeat.
Map Changes
The map changes bring some new dynamics to the existing maps
© EA
As with Kings Canyon last season, World’s Edge gets an overhaul in Season 6 with plenty of new locations and cut-throughs to shake up the flow of most locations. While Kings canyon received Ultimate charging pylons last season, now World’s Edge has a new mechanic: around the map, you can find structures with deployable walls that can deny oversight and routes of access which gives a large defensive boost to the team that gets there first.
Alongside these changes, a new crafting system has been introduced that allows players to gather materials from loot bins or new material stations. These can then be taken to a replicator to create loot. There are eight items available to craft, and some items will be rotated in and out weekly, while others are switched daily. If an item has entered the crafting rotation, it will be removed from the world spawns making them inaccessible without the use of a replicator. Replicators themselves are scattered across World’s Edge, as well as periodically being dropped in like supply drops.
To make things more consistent, players will now always spawn with an Evo shield. Additionally, the amount of health you gain from armour has been reduced by 25 at each level – this will reduce the time to kill on players (even with Red-tier armour!)
Battle Pass
The latest Season Pass introduces a couple of new cosmetics
© EA
A new Battle Pass has arrived that includes an evolving G7 skin at the top end. Throughout the tiers are skydive emotes, and a new hologram spray that can be placed in the world as a taunt to other players. There are also two legendary skins: one for Pathfinder and one for Bloodhound. At the first level of the Premium Pass, you will receive a neon green Sentinel skin.
