The Charge Rifle is dead, long live the Charge Rifle. Apex Legends Season 18: Resurrection is making a lot of changes, but nerfs to the game’s most annoying sniper are undoubtedly a personal favourite. The Charge Rifle, previously the battle royale’s only hitscan weapon, will remain its strongest long range weapon according to Respawn, but the changes aim to make it less of a pest taking out your armour from across the map and more technically difficult to use.
Season 18 also brings Revenant Reborn, a series of huge changes to Apex’s robot assassin that have been long expected since Seer took his silence abilities in a smaller rework last season. Ranked mode is getting a much-needed tweak, and many weapons will be looked over to manipulate the meta.
But first, the Charge Rifle. That hitscan beam will no longer be the easy damage farmer it once was, as now the sniper will have bullet drop and take time to fly through the air like every other weapon in the game. Instead of just clicking heads, now you have to hold the trigger to charge up the beam, giving the rifle a unique flavour once again. Release early and you won’t get full power.
Another twist on the sniper is that it gets more powerful the farther from the target you are. If you can manage your recoil and take bullet drop into account, this will dish out the game’s “most effective long-range damage”, according to lead weapons designer Eric Cavanese. On top of that, it will only use one ammo per shot, down from two in previous seasons, and it can take extended magazines again.
The other big change for weapons is the return of Disruptor Rounds, the hop-up that boosts damage against shielded opponents. The Alternator and Peacekeeper will have access to the attachment, the latter of which will be brutally powerful in the right hands. This is a part of a move to buff shotguns across the board, a move which sees the Mastiff’s spread reduced and all SMGs nerfed by reducing your strafe speed while using them. The R99 is on the receiving end of an extra nerf, with its ammo capacity reduced by one in every magazine and its vertical recoil increased.
The Prowler gains the Selectfire Receiver to make it fully automatic, but goes into the Care Package as a result. The Hemlok drops to the floor, with a significant buff from the last time it was ground loot.
Most interestingly, Cavanese says that Respawn is “very happy with where the Nemesis is”, so the powerful assault rifle remains unchanged in Season 18. It does, however, enter the Crafter with the Mozambique, which is available with Hammerpoint Rounds. We might see less of it this season thanks to that change, and us Volt Enjoyers might be able to find energy ammo on the floor again.
Most of the Season 18 ranked changes were explained in a recent dev blog, but lead game designer Chirs Cleroux explains that Respawn has “scaled back” tuning on Master’s players, and hopes that in the new system, anyone ranked Diamond and above “should be sweating it out to advance.”
He also notes that the team is removing dive trails as rewards, because they “resulted in some toxic behaviours” – Predator level players often find themselves swarmed upon landing, and punched out before they can play the game, something that should occur no longer. Instead of dive trails, cosmetics like banner frames will denote a player’s prowess.
The map team has also been hard at work removing the rat spots that players have been using to game the new system, and ring updates will hopefully eliminate this practice too. The ring will now spend more time moving and less time static, doing more damage in the early stages of the game and less in the later periods, comparatively to previous seasons. Design director Evan Nikolich says that the “ALGS could use a pace increase” to keep viewers engaged, and this will be a byproduct of these changes. Edge teams and those who like to spend long periods of the early game crafting in zone will likely need to adapt before the next competition.
With faster paced games and shotguns receiving a buff, Apex Legends Season 18 might be time for close-range weapons to shine. While players will likely be testing out the new Charge Rifle in the early stages of the season, it might be the shotgun’s time to shine. Whether that will affect Maggie’s pick rate remains to be seen.