Apex Legends Escape patch notes for Season 11 finally buff Wattson and nerf the L-STAR

The Apex Legends Escape patch notes are live in preparation for the launch of Season 11 next week. The update patch notes are full of information on balance updates and changes for Wattson, supply drop weapons, and the L-STAR to shift the meta around across Battle Royale and Arenas. Ranked modes are also getting a few adjustments too. Of course, you’ll also be able to try out new Legend Ash, dive into Storm Point, and eliminate your foes with the CAR SMG when the Apex Legends Season 11 Escape update drops on November 2. If you want more after reading the patch notes, you can check out our Apex Legends Escape hands-on preview too. Here are the most important changes coming with Season 11 in the Apex Legends Escape patch notes.

Wattson is getting a pretty major rework in Apex Legends Season 11

While she might be the only Legend getting any sort of balance update with the Apex Legends Escape update, Wattson is getting a fairly major rework to her kit. The changes are intended to make Wattson more active to play, and more effective and adaptable overall with things like shorter cooldowns for her fences and reverting to having a single pylon with no time limit. Wattson is a difficult Legend to balance since she has a very high win rate, but very low pick rate, so hopefully these changes mean more players are enticed by the electric Legend without making her an overpowered must-pick.

General Wattson changes:

• Improved the reliability and responsiveness of placing Wattson's Tactical Ability fences and Ultimate Ability pylon.
• Wattson can place her Tactical and Ultimate objects on valid surfaces above Wattson's eye level (to a reasonable extent).
• Increased the size of her hitbox to compensate for the removal of low profile in the Legacy Season 10 update.

Perimeter Defense Tactical Ability:

Wattson’s fences are now much more deadly and on a faster cooldown, so you’ll be able to set up traps and defenses far quicker.

• Increased damage on crossing a Fence from 15 to 20.
• Increased slow/stun debuff duration on crossing a Fence from 1.5 to 3 seconds
• Increased the time allowance to be hit again by a subsequent Fence effect from 0.5 to one second.
• Decreased cooldown time from 30 to 15 seconds.
• Increased placement range by 50%.
• Decreased the delay between Fences shutting off and reactivating after an ally passes through them from one second to 0.4 seconds)
• Wattson now moves at unarmed-speed while readying/placing Fence nodes.
• Fence nodes can now be placed as soon as they are readied, instead of waiting for the animation to finish.

Interception Pylon Ultimate Ability:

The Pylon is now quite different but has also seen a lot of changes reverted to how it was originally, mainly that Wattson can only have one pylon active at a time.

• Wattson can now have only one pylon active at a time, but it now lasts forever rather than self-destructing after 90 seconds.
• The Pylon now has a pool of 250 Shields that can be distributed to nearby players, instead of infinite shield regeneration.
• The Pylon now regenerates players’ shields quicker at a rate of one shield point every 0.2 seconds, bringing the overall shield regeneration rate up from two shields per second to five shields per second.
• When a Pylon is out of Shields, it no longer recharges players' Shields, but can still zap incoming ordnance.
• Taking damage while the pylon is regenerating your Shields imposes a one second delay for the Shield regeneration to start again
• The UI on the ground and HUD elements now displays the amount of Shields that remain in the Pylon
• Pinging a friendly Pylon will now display the percentage of Shields remaining in the Pylon.
• Pylon ordnance-zapping has been moderately reworked. Ordnance is now zapped when the Pylon detects that it would hit any surface within range and line of sight of the Pylon, instead of being zapped as soon as it comes within range. Current issues where the Pylon doesn't reliably zap ordnance – particularly concerning airstrike abilities and ordnance that bounced off surfaces near the Pylon – should now be addressed.

Weapon buffs and nerfs in the Apex Legends Escape patch notes

Quite a few changes to weapons are being introduced with the Season 11 launch update. The L-STAR has proven to be very potent recently, so it’s getting reined in a bit, and supply drop weapons are changing again.

Supply Drop weapons:

• The Triple Take returns as ground loot and now uses Energy ammo because it is a Marksman weapon. Its choke charge time is back up to its pre-supply drop upgrade at 1.1 seconds and it now consumes three Energy rounds per shot.
• The G7 Scout is now a Supply Drop weapon. Its damage per shot has been upped from 34 to 36 and it come with its old Double Tap Trigger Hop-Up which allows it to fire two bullets in rapid succession per trigger pull.
• Supply Drops have an increased chance of including a weapon across all stages of a Battle Royale match. Early-game drops have a 50% chance of including a weapon, mid-game drops have a 75% chance, and late-game drops are guaranteed to have a weapon inside.

Weapon balance changes:

• EVA-8: Fire rate reduced from 2.1 to 2.0.
• Peacekeeper: Slightly increased pellet size, choke charge time has been reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1.25 seconds, and the choke is maintained for slightly longer after exiting aiming down the sights.
• Longbow: Damage reduced from 60 to 55 per shot.
• L-STAR: Barrel Stabilizers of any rarity are slightly less effective now, the damage per shot has been reduced by one to 17, and the projectile collision hitbox size has been lowered

Loot and Crafting changes:

• There is now more gold tier loot in Hot Zones
• When crafting ammo at a crafting station, you get a full stack of 60 rounds for Light, Heavy, and Energy ammo, and 1.5 stacks for Arrows, Shotgun, and Sniper ammo. The cost has been increased to 10 Crafting Materials per weapon, however, so crafting ammo for both weapons will now cost 20 materials.
• Crafting an EVO Armor upgrade now costs 50 Crafting Materials but you now gain 150 damage points instead of 100. That’s enough to upgrade White Armor to Blue Armor in one go.
• 25% of damage dealt to Prowlers on World’s Edge and Flyers on Kings Canyon goes towards upgrading your EVO Armor.
• Teammates more clearly show that they are self-reviving on their nametags in game
• Voice over has been added specifically to communicate that you have run out of ammo

Ranked Battle Royale RP changes in the Apex Legends Escape patch notes

Apex Legends Season 11 is changing up the number of points you get from kills in Ranked Battle Royale quite a bit. Just to catch you up, here’s how things currently work. Apex Legends Ranked imposes a hard limit of six kills and/or assists when it comes to awarding points. You get at least 10 points per kill, but this can go up due to a point multiplier which increased based your placement in a match – winning a match would give you 25 points per kills or assists. You also get a flat bonus depending on your final placement, so winning a match with six kills would get you the maximum RP of 250 points, minus any entry costs based on your current rank.

Now the rank of your opponents is considered when you eliminate them and gain points. In short, eliminating enemy players of a lower rank awards fewer points, while eliminating opponents of a high rank awards more points. Eliminating an opponent of the same rank awards the base 10 points but eliminating an opponent that is a rank lower than you (for example, you’re a Gold ranked player and you defeat a Silver ranked player), you will only get eight points. Similarly, if you were a Platinum ranked player and you defeated a Diamond ranked player, you would get 12 points for the kill. Note that Apex Predator and Master count as the same rank. Because of this varying value in kills, the maximum amount of RP you can gain in a Ranked match is now 175, effectively making it a 7 kill and/or assist cap using the current system.

The way you gain extra points from kills based on your placement is changing too. The placement multiplier is gone and now you gain a flat bonus per kill that increases based on your placement, although the flat bonus creates the same result of the current multiplier system. If you win a match, you get 15 bonus points per kill which works out at 25 points per kill, exactly like the current system, assuming everyone you kill is of the same rank as you.

With all these changes considered, it should mean you’ll be better rewarded for your matches even if you don’t get very many kills. If you’re able to bring down a few higher ranked players before your squad is out, you should still get a decent number of points. The opposite should also be true in that stomping on lower ranked enemies will be slightly less rewarding,

As for Ranked Arenas, the most major change is that it is getting a mid-season split exactly like Battle Royale Ranked. You’ll have a slight reset on your MMR, and you’ll have to five more placement matches to get your rank.

Regular Arenas is getting a few changes too with the Season 11 update. Battle Royale maps are totally out of rotation now that Arenas has four bespoke maps, and cost adjustments, particularly reductions, are coming for weapons like the R-99, Hemlok, and Prowler.

Remember, Apex Legends Season 11 will also include the arrival of new Legend Ash, Storm Point, and the CAR SMG. For the full Apex Legends Escape patch notes, you can read them on the Apex Legends blog here.

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