Apex Legends™: Marked Midseason Patch Notes

Welcome back to Split 2 of Apex Legends: Marked. To start the second half of the season, we’ve got Legend balancing changes, some adjustment to loot availability (including more healing items), buffs to a trio of long range weapons, and the usual array of tweaks, fixes and adjustments. Split 2 starts on September 15th, so assemble your squad and get ready to jump back into Marked!

In the leadup to Split 2, we implemented significant, new systems to detect players using unauthorized controller hardware or software in Apex Legends on all platforms including: PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch 2.

Prior to implementation, we spent several months thoroughly validating these systems to ensure they can accurately identify prohibited behavior. Players that trigger these detections will be actioned upon and may be banned accordingly upon review. Playing on console does not make you exempt from detection or enforcement.

This is just the beginning for these new systems which we will continue to improve to keep pace with evolving cheating methods.

We want the community to know that we are actively working to identify and remove cheaters at every level of play — including the highest ranks. Thank you to everyone who reports suspicious behavior and helps us keep Apex Legends fair. 

For more anti-cheat information, check out our most recent {LINK REMOVED}update!

Dev note: Our main goal is to give Conduit players more avenues for skill expression and to ensure her abilities feel functional, readable, and fluid. Apex’s Shield Healer saw a big uptick in her success throughout Season 29 thanks to some overhauls to her Tactical and its associated upgrades. Despite Conduit receiving a few nerfs since then, we still wanted to come back to her this Season to focus on polishing and refining her Ultimate, as mentioned in the Season 29 Designer’s Notes. Beyond her base kit, we wanted to give Conduit two brand new Level 2 Upgrades that are now fully unique to her and emphasize different aspects of her aggressive support style.

Tactical

• Added preview visuals on the shield bar to indicate how much Temp Shield will be generated by the end of the regen period.

Ultimate

• Various aspects of the Ultimate’s deployment have been smoothed out, meaning it fires faster and gets you back to guns sooner.

• Can now toggle orientation while targeting to deploy jammers in a forward line.

• Added a new HUD element to better inform players if their deployment location will cause jammers to break.

  • Also, individual jammer indicators now turn red if they would break at the current targeting location.

• Jammers now spawn higher and slightly closer together, creating a tighter formation that covers more vertical space.

• Jammers activate significantly faster, establishing the barricade’s threat area quicker.

Upgrades

• Both Level 2 Upgrades, Battpack and Bigger Jam, have been removed.

• NEW: Concurrency (Level 2)

• Refire Energy Barricade once with no cooldown within 10s of initial firing.

• Jammers spawn in a tighter formation with 2 less jammers.

• NEW: Jammed Up (Level 2)

Energy Barricade’s jammers have a 25% larger radius and enemies damaged by them have their HUD jammed for 10s.

Dev note: Though this grenadier has seen a gradual increase in play over time since his rework in Season 28, we wanted to revisit him to address the community feedback that we didn’t hit the efficacy, impact, and responsiveness expected of a new Motherlode. We’re also making some big shakeups to his Upgrade configuration that impact the rest of his kit, including incorporating Wreckless and Knuckle Cluster into his base kit (with some nerfs). Rest assured, we’ll be keeping a close eye on him, as our intention is to add more hype tech to Fuse’s toolbox without pushing him toward being a Legend defined by his movement. He will always be Apex’s explosives expert first and foremost!

Passive

• Added 25% Explosive Damage Resistance at base and can see ordinances highlighted in the world within 30m of him.

Tactical

• Fuse can now Knuckle Jump at base.

  • Jumping no longer provides Tactical cooldown reduction.

  • Jump power moderately decreased, so Fuse will gain less momentum when jumping.

  • Now displays a visual indicator that signifies the radius where the jump can be activated.

• Significantly decreased the time it takes to return to guns after firing.

• Players can now ADS while aiming to zoom.

Ultimate

• Slightly decreased the raise time.

• Adjusted the firing arc with the focus on the main explosive projectile landing more quickly and responsively.

  • Added an indicator to visualize the radius of the initial and subsequent explosions.

• Decreased the time it takes for the mini-bombs to explode, speeding up the rollout of explosions.

• Decreased the damage falloff on the initial explosion, meaning enemies closer to the edge of the radius will take a higher percentage of the maximum damage.

Upgrades

• Knuckle Jumper (Level 2) and Wreckless (Level 3) have been removed.

• Reignition has been moved from Level 3 to Level 2.

• Pyro Techniques (Level 2)

  • Doubled the radius of the persistent flames.

• Reignition (Level 2)

  • Decreased Ultimate Recharge Rate from 1s per 2 explosive damage to 1s per 3 explosive damage.

• NEW: Big Bang (Level 3)

  • Knuckle Cluster’s explosions cover a 50% larger area.

• NEW: Sticky Bomb (Level 3)

  • Knuckle Cluster’s initial projectile is 25% larger and sticks to enemies. Every 7 hits on an enemy reduces Knuckle Cluster’s cooldown by 1s.

Dev note: Catalyst saw a small boost in pick rate after her buffs in Season 28, but we felt she needed more love using a slightly different approach since her stats didn’t hold. This Season, we’re focusing more holistically on smoothing out the tension of moving from base to base amongst the fast pace of action. We want Cat’s building experience to be fun and flexible, so giving her more options to customize her space and adding in some longtime community-requested quality-of-life features will empower players to feel rewarded for putting in the work to master her. We’re also making big swings on shuffling up her upgrades, including a new Level 3 upgrade, Ferro-Frenzy, that will really shake up how we see players approach their setup.

Passive

• Catalyst is no longer immune to other Catalysts’ abilities.

Tactical

• Now automatically reinforces or rebuilds doors if colliding with a valid door or doorway on placement.

• Decreased Cooldown from 20s to 15s.

• Increased Spike Height, meaning that players can less easily jump over them. 

• Hitting enemies with the projectile will now deal damage to them.

Ultimate

• Significantly decreased firing time, making it smoother to deploy and raise the wall.

• Allies are no longer slowed or blinded when passing through the wall.

Upgrades

• Sole Piercer (Level 2) has been removed.

• Hidden Spikes has been moved from Level 2 to Level 3.

• Resilient Veil and Ferro-Door have been moved from Level 3 to Level 2.

• Ferro-Door (Level 2)

  • Now also increases max reinforced doors from 4 to 6.

• Resilient Veil (Level 2)

  • Now also decreases Ultimate Cooldown from 150s to 120s.

• NEW: Ferro-Frenzy (Level 3)

  • Your max Spike count is increased by 1. Spikes are 50% smaller, but deal faster tick damage.

Dev note: Bloodhound got some significant changes for this season but they haven’t been as impactful on their pick and encounter win rates as we hoped. With these updates we’re hoping to add some improvements to their Ultimate and Tactical. We’ll continue to monitor Bloodhound’s performance and adjust if needed.

From 8/25 Hotfix:

Ultimate

• Reduced cloak visibility while in dome.

• Ring damage no longer drops cloak.

Tactical

• Added 1 extra second on scan length.

• Tweaked to provide more frequent snapshots, but the snapshots fade over time. 

New:

Tactical

• Sonar snapshots begin fading more quickly.

• Sonar snapshots should disappear more readily when seeing the head of either the snapshot or the player being tracked.

Back to Top

Dev note: For an ability with a short cooldown that can have a devastating effect on one target, the Kickstart drone needs more counterplay options. Even when the victim decides to destroy the drone, the high health pool often makes that hard to do, especially in close quarters when Axle is quickly following up, herself. For cases when destroying it isn’t an option, at least the victim should be able to have more agency about where they get displaced with the knockback nerf and decreased stun.

From 8/25 Hotfix:

Tactical

• Nitro Gate launch speed reduced from 750 to 700.

Ultimate

• Ultimate HP reduced from 200 to 150.

• Base Ultimate cooldown increased from 90s to 120s.

• Ultimate knockback arc widened and max height reduced.

• Ultimate stun duration reduced from 1.5s to 0.25s.

Upgrades

• Jump Gate replaced with a new Drone Deployer Upgrade that brings the Ult cooldown back down to 90s.

Dev note: The turn slow punishment on the Seer tactical was very frustrating to fight against. We’ve decided to remove the turn slow since the tactical output is still strong without it.

From 8/25 Hotfix:

• Removed turn slow when hit by the Tactical 

Back to Top

Dev Note: Last season, we made a huge change to loot distribution and spawning (read our retrospective in this update’s designer’s notes!). After reviewing the data and feedback from the community, we are making some minor adjustments to healing, ammo, and weapon availability. Healing was becoming scarcer than intended, and due to the removal of energy ammo, the other ammo types were spawning ammo boxes at higher rates than intended.

Bin Resets have been adjusted to be closer to its pre-Season 30 version but keeps the original intent of reducing its overall spike to player power. The Season 30 version was not providing the density of necessities needed to quickly re-stock for the end game. Reset Bins now have more items on average with healing, ammo, survival slot items, and amps spawning more frequently inside.

The Weapon Assist feature previously only included a small selection of pistols, shotguns and the Alternator. To help players find higher quality weapons off the drop, we are expanding this to now include all available weapons.

These adjustments help to address some of the pain points we have been seeing while maintaining the overall goal of last update’s changes of creating an overall healthier loot curve as the game progresses.

We will continue to monitor your feedback and make adjustments as quickly as we can!

Loot Pool Spawn Rates (Pre-Bin Reset)

• Increased availability of healing items.

• Slightly decreased availability of ammo.

Loot Bin Reset

• Increased average count of items spawned per bin

• Increased availability of:

  • Healing

  • Ammo

  • Survival Slot items

  • Amps

Loot Bin Logic

• Updated loot bin logic to significantly reduce the possibility of empty loot bins spawning in game.

• The weapon pool for Weapon Assist (opening your first loot bin of the match while having no weapons in your inventory) now has the chance to spawn all base weapons.

  • Previously could only spawn a selection of pistols, shotguns, and the Alternator.

Dev Note: Season 30 was a large shakeup to the weapon meta and we want to let things settle a bit more before making any big changes. We are buffing a few weapons that were previously falling behind and have continued to fall after Season 30.

Triple Take

• Increased rate of fire while in ADS.

• Blue magazine increased from 8 to 9.

Bocek Compound Bow

• Increased arrow stockpile from 40 to 60.

• Increased explosive arrows per energize from 7 to 10.

• Adjusted Sparrow’s Quiver accordingly:

  • Increased arrow stockpile from 50 to 70.

  • Increased explosive arrows per energize from 9 to 12.

Charge Rifle

• Increased max distance damage from 99 to 110.

• Max damage occurs at >200m.

• Decreased selectfire damage penalty from 40% to 25%.

Dev Note: Mach 1 Gibby was really funny, but unintentional. Now, both he and Maggie should move as intended with their respective movement speed buffs and the Agile Standard Stock.

(Previously Hotfixed) Agile Standard Stock \[Corrupted]

• The movement speed increase no longer stacks with:

  • Maggie's Warlord's Ire passive

  • Maggie's Gunrunning legend upgrade

  • Gibraltar's Fast Shotties legend upgrade

Dev note: Heavy hitting shotguns can be inconsistent with their damage, either with chunky hits or lots of 11s. As such, it can be more difficult to unlock their respective hop-ups when compared to a full auto-weapon. Thus we are lowering the cost to unlock.

Executioner

• Reduced cost to unlock from 375 to 275.

Back to Top

Dev note: In this patch, we’re rolling out over 150 map-related Quality of Life fixes across the Outlands with a massive chunk of that polish going straight to World’s Edge. We’ve smoothed out sticky collisions to keep wall-bouncing and rotations fluid, patched up geo holes that were occasionally swallowing loot and Legends, and permanently closed off several unintended rat spots to maintain competitive integrity. Alongside these tweaks we’ve also cleaned up some clipping issues related to Alter’s Ultimate.

Massive shoutout to our community for continuing to report these back to the team. Finding every hole, ledge or rat spot across the Outlands is a huge undertaking and the clips and bug reports you share are exactly what helps us track them down. Your feedback directly shapes the map health of Apex so keep sharing your clips.

Pubs Map Rotation

• World’s Edge

• Olympus

• Broken Moon

Ranked Map Rotation

• World’s Edge

• Olympus

• Broken Moon

Mixtape

• 9/15/26 - 11/3/26

  • TDM: Fragment, Skull Town, Monument, Estates

  • Control: Production Yard, Labs, Barometer, Caustic

  • Gun Run: Monument, Estates, Fragment, Skull Town

Back to Top

Wildcard Updates

• EVO gained when no weapons are equipped will now grant that EVO towards progression on the first weapon you equip.

Map Rotation

• Kings Canyon Wildcard 

• Olympus Wildcard 

• District Wildcard

Back to Top

Ranked Ladders (coming later this split)

Back to Top

Dev note: We understand how crucial game audio can be to the outcome of a fight or match. With new chatty weapon skins in the Cyberpunk collab, we wanted to make sure we provided you with more control over these audio options.

• Added a new audio menu option to toggle weapon dialogue on/off. It will appear if you own a talking weapon skin

Dev note: We have received community reports pointing to a few interior spaces that were abnormally loud (particularly in Olympus and E-District). Thank you, and please continue sending us your feedback.

• Resolved an issue resulting in abnormally loud audio in interior spaces on Olympus and E-District

Back to Top

• Mixtape:

  • Smoke trails (from effects like Valk’s Ult) now match the color of your squad (for example, orange for Tiger Squad). Previously, every squad’s smoke trail was a slightly different shade of blue.

• Respawn from Deathbox:

  • Fixed an issue where players could get persistent Infinite Ammo after being respawned.

  • Fixed an issue where players could activate Respawn from Deathbox from behind a wall.

  • Fixed an issue where Locked Hop-Ups would not always grant the correct point value after respawning.

• Bloodhound: Fixed a bug with True Predator where the timer UI would not show up in certain situations where you were uncloaked but eligible to re-cloak.

• Bloodhound: Fixed some issues where the Allies Cloaked stat tracker was counting improperly.

• Catalyst: Fixed Hidden Spikes not revealing themselves after applying a slow to an enemy that did not have line of sight to the core.

• Catalyst: Fixed being unable to pick up Piercing Spikes from range after they had been activated, then deactivated.

• Catalyst: Fixed several Friendly Fire interactions in the Firing Range.

• Catalyst: Fixed Piercing Spikes not affecting Firing Range Dummies.

• Conduit: Fixed Energy Barricade repeatedly applying overlapping third-person VFX to enemies who took successive damage hits.

• Fuse: Fixed Fuse being able to Knuckle Jump while in phase.

• Fuse: Fixed Knuckle Jumping toward the end of the jump window causing a loss of momentum.

• Fuse: Fixed The Motherlode not dispersing smoke and gas.

• Fuse: Fixed Pyro Techniques not dealing damage to enemies that stood still in the center flames.

• Fuse: Fixed Pyro Techniques not dealing damage to Mirage decoys.

• Fuse: Fixed The Motherlode’s initial projectile passing through enemies when fired at a breachable surface while in breach mode.

• Wattson: Fixed Fuse’s The Motherlode not being intercepted by Interception Pylon.

• P2020: Fixed a bug where the Tactical Laser sight would not properly reduce the recoil control.

• World’s Edge

• East Village: Fixed a hole in terrain where players could hide.

• East Village: Added and adjusted some cover.

• Monument/Fragment: Restored missing railings on the bottom level of construction stacks.

• Sorting Factory: Fixed a bug where players could clip into the moving crates using an Alter portal.

• Fixed inconsistent behavior with vertical ziplines at East Village, Tree Settlement and Sorting Factory.

• Fixed bug with cloak rendering on consoles and PC with TSAA enabled, making it consistent for all visual options.

• Fixed bug where joining another player's party could sometimes fail and leave you stuck in a zero-player party.

• Fixed missing footstep audio during 3rd person movement when using Sparrow’s Hunt Target upgrade.

• Fixed overly loud interior spaces in Olympus and District.

• Valkyrie: Improved the responsiveness of the enemy targeting while skydiving.