Apex Legends Season 21 Patch Notes Overview: Weapons, Maps, and More
On May 6, the day before the release of the new season, we finally had the opportunity to read the Apex Legends Season 21 Patch Notes. Let’s take a look!
Table of Contents
New Apex Legend: Alter
Alter’s real name is YingLing Lui (雷盈灵). In fact, this is all that is known about her for sure. She’s an interdimensional traveler, bringing destruction and chaos to the worlds, or just having fun there.
Alter’s Abilities:
- Passive “Gift from the Rift” — Can remotely interact with a Death Box to claim one item. Cannot be a shield core.
Alter’s Passive works within 75 meters.
- Tactical “Void Passage” — Creates a portal passageway through a surface.
The standard cooldown of Alter’s Tactical is 30 seconds, portal depth is 20 meters.
- Ultimate “Void Nexus” — Create a regroup point that all allies can remotely interact with to open a phase tunnel back to that location.
The standard cooldown of Alter’s Ultimate is 3.5 minutes, the portal device lasts for 2 minutes, and works within a radius of 200 meters.
Judging by Alter’s Abilities, she may well take a place in the S-tier Season 21 Character Tier List. Let us remind you that in Apex Season 20 Respawn added a new feature, Legend Upgrades, which works during the Battle Royale match.
Alter’s Legend Upgrades:
Level 2 Upgrade Options:
- “Ultimate Cooldown” — Reduces Ultimate Cooldown by 30s.
- “Void Vision” — Extends highlights and see health bars after exiting Tactical.
Level 3 Upgrade Options:
- “Eternal Nexus” — Void Nexus no longer times out.
- “Tactical Cooldown+” — Reduce Tactical Cooldown by 10s.
Apex Legends Season 21: Solo Mode
Apex Solo is a Limited Time Mode (LTM) that was initially introduced in Season 2 during the Iron Crown Collection Event (August 13, 2019 – August 27, 2019). This time Solos will be taking over Duos from May 7 to June 24. In Season 21, Respawn tried to take into account past mistakes and improve the Solo mode, and not just remove your teammates from Battle Royale.
As you could see in the Apex Legends Season 21 leaks, this time the developers added passive health regeneration to all Legends outside of fight, pre-kitted weapons and attachments, and second chance: one Respawn Token that can return you to the battlefield one time before fourth Ring. In addition, the developers added Battle Sense, which is designed to replace teammates. This feature allows you to identify enemies within 50m. The mode will be for 50 players.
Apex Legends Season 21: Maps Changes
For the first half of the season, the map rotation for Public and Ranked Battle Royale matches is:
- Broken Moon
- Kings Canyon
- World’s Edge
At first, most likely, only Broken Moon will be in the rotation, since this map has been changed. Also, all maps received new possible Ring Console, Survey Beacon, and Replicator spawn locations.
Broken Moon Update
From the Season 20 plot, it became clear that the Colony of Hope (Broken Moon map itself), which was part of Boreas’s moon Cleo, has now separated from Cleo too. Apparently, for the further destruction of the moon after Seer and Silva’s policies, the new Legend, Alter is to blame.
Therefore, new Points of Interest (POI) have appeared on Broken Moon to replace the old ones. After the collapse of the Stasis Array Node, which protected the moon from meteorites and debris, they crashed onto the North and South Promenade. Thus, the very center of Broken Moon, where the hot drop of fans of early battles was located, was destroyed and replaced by a new POI Quarantine Zone.
Backup Atmostation (northeast edge of the map) was also destroyed by debris, now in its place will be Breaker Wharf. Breaker Wharf itself (northwest edge of the map) has now been reduced in size and replaced with the Space Port POI.
Cliff Side is the new POI that sits in between the Quarantine Zone and Stasis Array. Solar Pods is the new bridge POI between Foundry and Cultivation as a new POI (southwest edge of the map). Smaller POI Underpass and Experimental Labs have also been added.
Respawn also added more varied rotations between locations, removing the annoying Zip Rails in some places. For example, the Hazmat Tunnel is a new rotation that connects the Quarantine Zone and Terraformer.
Apex Legends Season 21: Balance Changes
Weapons Changes
Wingman goes back to the floor as Devotion LMG goes into the Care Package.
Fully-kitted Gold weapons rotation in Season 21:
- Nemesis Burst AR
- Triple-Take
- Peacekeeper
- Prowler PDW
- Longbow DMR
In this season, Respawn decided to once again nerf the 30-30 Repeater and buff Charge Rifle, Longbow DMR, and Triple-Take. They are also removing Skullpiercer from the rotation and bringing back Boosted Loader Hop-Ups.
Bad news for all Bangalore mainers: Developers decided to remove 1x Digital Threat Optic (Gold Optic) from the loot pool and all locked set weapons. This optic was already nerfed last season, only compatible with pistols and shotguns, but now Respawn felt that it was still very disruptive to the balance of the game and temporarily removed it until they figured out how to weave it into the current meta in a healthier way.
Legends Changes
Ash buffed: she can now throw her Tactical with her left hand without interrupting the shooting or consuming.
Ballistic buffed: the damage from the Tactical smart bullet has been increased from 5 to 10.
Catalyst buffed: Tactical cooldown reduced from 25 to 20 seconds, and throw range increased by 40%. Ult length increased from 40 to 45 meters.
Crypto buffed: added features to his Passive. Squadcount banners are now visible anytime his drone is in a deployed state. Deploying the drone calls out the number of squads in the area.
Newcastle buffed: Tactical throw speed increased. The Ult, while energized, will destroy enemy projectiles (as Wattson’s Ult), but will not destroy allied projectiles fired from behind the Ult. Ult energized duration increased from 30 to 60 seconds.
Wraith buffed: nearby enemies will be highlighted for players traveling through the Void (her Tactical and Ult).
Bloodhound nerfed: Ultimate charging time increased from 3 to 4 minutes. Knocks during Ultimate no longer extend its duration.
Caustic nerfed: gas damage ramps from 4 up to 10 (was from 5 and uncapped), damage on knocked players down to from 5 to flat 4. Also gas damage and slow now stops immediately after Caustic’s squad is eliminated.
Conduit nerfed: she can no longer target Revenant with her Tactical while he’s in his Ultimate (to avoid stacking temporary shields).
Fuse, Octane, and Wattson: also received minor changes to their Legend Upgrades.
Apex Legends Season 21: Quality of Life Changes
- The first loot bin opened by an unarmed player will always contain a weapon.
- Collecting a banner from Death Boxes will no longer have an animation that interrupts all player actions.
- Airdropped Replicators received a separate beam (most likely purple) to differentiate them from other Airdrops.
- Death Boxes landed from Flyers will automatically ping to players.
- Pings now will go through all translucent surfaces like windows.
- Players now could request grenades (similar to healing items requests).
Conclusions
The new Apex Legends Season 21 “Upheaval” will feature many changes, a new Legend, and a map update. What updates are you most looking forward to? What changes were missing for you? Share it in the comments!
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