I’m told Apex Legends fans have been waiting on Valkyrie nerfs for a hot minute now. Well, rejoice, as the jetpack-powered demigod will be spending a bit more time on the ground in the future. Besides Valk nerfs, however, Mad Maggie and Newcastle actually got pretty big buffs. It’s all in the current list of patch notes for the new Apex Legends: Hunted season. Let’s get into some specifics!
In fact, let’s just drop the full list of patch notes for Valkyrie right here:
Valk
- VTOL Jets
- Acceleration on activation decreased by about 8%.
- Fuel consumption on activation increased by 33%.
- Aerial boosting & strafing take a 20% debuff when hit by slowing effects.
- Added a third orange state to the fuel meter UI between green (>60%) and red (<30%).
- Missile Swarm
- Aim/turn slow removed.
- Move slow duration decreased from 2.5s -> 2.0s.
- Reducing the explosion radius from 175 -> 125.
- Skyward Dive
- Height reduction of 25%.
- Launch time reduced from 5.5s -> 5.0s. Coupled with the height reduction, players in Valk ult now travel upward at a slightly slower speed.
If you’re not familiar with the character, Valk is a callback to (the excellent) Titanfall 2, which is set in the same world as Apex Legends. Her father was a high-flying boss enemy in that game, known as Viper. Now she’s taken up the mantle as an airborne menace in his place.
In terms of gameplay, this translates to super-high jumps that allow the Legend to float through the air. As you might imagine, this is a pretty potent ability in an open-ended battle royale, where finding line of sight on other players is a huge deal. Speaking of which: this same jetpack ability lets Valkyrie escape bad positions with very little consequence. Oh, and she can do it for her whole team, rocketing them into the sky for a quick redeployment.
The Valkyrie nerfs leave her with less fuel — meaning players must now consider when and where to use their jetpacks more carefully. Especially her ult. Since Skyward Dive is slower now, allies that get launched will be much easier to shoot out of the sky than they were before. At least in theory.
Interestingly, Seer has been completely left alone, despite some high-level players’ complaints. Though he’s never been quite the monster Valkyrie was until this Season 14 patch. Perhaps with more Legends rising up to fill the power vacuum developer Respawn Entertainment wants to see how the meta shakes out.
Further closing the power gap are Mad Maggie and Newcastle. Especially Mad Maggie. Riot Drill now travels twice as fast, allowing you to more reliably chew through enemy barriers. Her ultimate, Wrecking Ball, also goes twice as far and twice as fast now, while also damaging enemy structures. Most notably the Dome of Protection granted by Gibraltar. Wrecking Ball is now just one of two skills that does that — alongside Crypto’s EMP.
Newcastle, meanwhile, just seems more “solid” across the board, with faster movement while reviving allies. They also get more HP on their shields. That includes both white and blue Knockdown Shields.
Speaking of gear, there are also a metric ton of weapon and mod changes. As one would expect from a seasonal update. Self-revive has been entirely removed from the game, for example. The gold Knockdown Shield now gets Guardian Angel instead. Which was previously found on the gold backpack. The backpack, by contrast, now has an original perk called Deep Pockets, which lets you carry larger stacks of healing items (e.g. you can stack tow Phoenix Kits in the same slot).
Ranked play doesn’t seem to be changing much at all by comparison. You take a look for yourself:
14.0 Ranked Changes
- Entry Cost: +5 to all.
- Kill RP: Removed diminishing returns on eliminations.
- Rank Reset: No change. Resuming ranked reset of 6 divisions.
That’s it! Nothing major. Though Apex Legends Season 14 seems like it has plenty to tide players over in the meantime anyway. Let’s not forget Vantage: the new Legend being added this season. Maybe she’ll be the new Valkyrie! But let’s hope not…
