[2020] Season 5 | Patch Notes

Official link: https://www.ea.com/games/apex-legends/news/season-5-patch-notes

Hey Legends,

We’re as excited as you are about the upcoming launch of Season 5 – Fortune’s Favor. From new Legend Loba, to the extensive updates to Kings Canyon, to the new Season Quests, we wanted to give you a high-level overview of all the changes we’re bringing to the game when Season 5 launches. We’re also making plenty of smaller buffs, tweaks, and fixes too. 

Be sure to check those out and give yourself an edge before you drop in to pursue your fortune on May 12!

NEW LEGEND: LOBA

Loba

Stylish, sophisticated, and resourceful, Loba uses her Jump Drive bracelet to teleport where she pleases and takes what she wants.

Tactical - Burglar’s Best Friend

• Teleport to hard-to-reach places or escape trouble quickly by throwing your Jump Drive bracelet. 

Ultimate - Black Market Boutique

• Place a portable device that allows you to teleport nearby loot to your inventory. Each friendly or enemy Legend can take up to two items. 

Passive - Eye for Quality

• Nearby epic and Legendary loot can be seen through walls.
• The range is the same as Black Market Boutique. 

Learn more about Loba on her Lore page here.

MAP UPDATE: KINGS CANYON

Goodbye Skulltown

Skulltown and Thunderdome have fallen. A new POI, Salvage, has been added to the Broken Coast. Across the map, the Offshore Rig connects to the former Relay and Wetlands. Wetlands has been replaced by the excavation of the Capacitor, which has a new underground pathway to Singh Labs. Nesting Grounds has continued to regrow into the Reclaimed Forest, which features an expanded Singh Labs exterior and a small camp outside of The Cage. Check out our blog post here for more information on these changes!

Kings Canyon will be the only map available for two weeks after the season launch, so players can have time to fully explore the changes and meta shift. After the two week honeymoon period, Map Rotation will start rotating World’s Edge Season 4 into the mix.

CHARGE TOWERS

Charge it up

Charge Towers are new devices unearthed in the excavation of Kings Canyon. Activate them to grant a full Ultimate charge to any Legends standing on the platform when the charge blast goes out.

SEASON QUEST: “THE BROKEN GHOST”

Introduces Apex’s first Quest - a season-long search for 9 pieces of a mysterious relic. Find your first daily Treasure Pack in any competitive match to get started on your hunt, and enjoy free weekly drops of new Story, Gameplay, and Rewards along the way. Learn more about Quests in our blog post here.

SEASON TAB

All seasonal content has been moved into its own tab in the lobby. Here, you can find the Battle Pass, Quest, and Challenges tabs. Future events in this season will show up here as well.

Quests!

BATTLE PASS S5

Skins!

Fight your way to glory with the Season 5 Battle Pass. Complete Daily and Weekly challenges to unlock over 100 exclusive items including exclusive Legendary skins, gun charms, skydive emotes, Apex Packs, XP Boosts, load screens, and more.

RANKED SERIES 4

This new season starts a new Ranked Series! This season we are sticking to mostly the same format but have also introduced a key feature, Reconnect.

RECONNECT

Players that leave a match unexpectedly can now rejoin their match in progress. "Unexpected" means exiting the match through any means other than the system menu, including crashing, using alt+f4 on PC, or "dashboarding" to close the game on console. To reconnect, simply restart the game and enter the lobby. The game will automatically attempt to reconnect you if the match is still valid, your squad is still alive, and your chance to reconnect hasn't timed out. Reconnect will be available for all competitive modes. 

Disconnected players' characters remain in the state they were in while the player was connected. To their teammates, it will look a bit like the disconnected player has gone afk (with an icon next to their name to indicate disconnection). This means when the player reconnects, they can immediately continue where they left off. Unless, that is, they were killed beforehand. Player characters can be knocked out and eliminated while the player is disconnected. Disconnected players whose characters have died can be respawned normally, by taking their banner to a respawn beacon, before or after the player has reconnected.

If a player doesn't reconnect in time,  the disconnected player's character is removed as normal, and the game will treat their disconnect as an abandonment. There is a limited time window in which a player can reconnect and failing to do so in Ranked will result in a loss penalty. Loss forgiveness does not activate until a player is fully removed from the game, so don't drop from a ranked match when your squadmates have a chance to reconnect!

To read more on Series 4 Ranked, Read the blog here.

CONDITIONAL LEGEND CHATTER

Under certain pairings, Legends will speak to each other differently when prompted with normal dialogue cues. How does Loba thank Revenant for a revive? She sure doesn’t say “Thank you.”

There are many pairings if you are interested in hearing what everyone has to say. Experiment!

LEGEND UPDATES

Mirage!

Mirage 

Now it’s a party! Your favorite trickster has learned a few new tricks to bamboozle his enemies in this new rework for Season 5.

Designer Note: The hope for this rework is that it gives more depth to Mirage gameplay by giving Mirage players avenues to get better at Bamboozling people.

• Tactical: Psyche Out
  • Pressing the character utility action button allows Mirage to gain control of his decoy.
  • When controlling the decoy, it will mimic Mirage’s every move.
  • Decoys now last for 60 seconds.
  • Releasing another decoy will remove the previous decoy.
• Ultimate: Life of the Party
  • Mirage deploys a team of decoys that mimic his every move (think “Emergency Dance Party" from DUMMIEs Big Day).
  • Cooldown 60 seconds.
• Passive: Now You See Me…
  • In addition to cloaking when downed, Mirage also cloaks while using a respawn beacon and reviving a teammate (the teammate is also cloaked).
• Mirage’s “You got Bamboozled” line will now trigger when you bamboozle an enemy, instead of when you release a decoy.

Bloodhound

• Tactical: Eye of the Allfather
  • Increased Sonar Detection from 3 seconds to 4 seconds.
  • Decreased Cooldown from 35 seconds to 25 seconds.

Crypto

• Tactical: Drone
  • Crypto can now ping banners, while in drone, to warn teammates of nearby squads.

Lifeline

• Increased Lifeline bin ratio to 20%
• Removed Knockdown Shields from Secret Compartment loot pool

Caustic

Designer note: this is something that is a bit of an experiment.  We will be keeping an eye out to make sure this change doesn’t cause any degenerate player behavior.

• Friendly gas no longer slows teammates.
• Caustic traps are no longer triggered from the other side of a door.

Octane

Designer note: This is a first step in pushing more team utility for Octane. We have more updates planned but they didn’t make the cutoff for this patch.

• Launch Pad cooldown is reduced from 90 seconds to now 60 seconds.

Gibraltar

Designer note: Internal data shows that Gibraltar’s performance in individual fights is in a good place, but we want to bring down his power a bit in team fights.

• Reduced Dome Shield duration from 18s to 12s.

Pathfinder

Designer note: Given the power of quick repositioning in Apex, being able to use Pathfinder’s Grappling Hook multiple times in a fight is both too powerful and muddies combat legibility.

• The cooldown for Grappling Hook has been increased from 15 seconds to 35 seconds.

WEAPON AND LOOT UPDATES

Season 5 is the first season Apex doesn't get a new weapon. We stepped back and asked ourselves, does Apex need a new weapon every season? If we continue to add new weapons, the weapon pool will become saturated. We believe there is a "right" amount of weapons in the loot pool, and we think we are currently in that sweet spot. Vaulting weapons is not an option (because players have purchased skins), so we are forced to be more creative. We have some ideas on how to address it, but we need some time to test them and make sure they are healthy for Apex. We also want to make sure that weapons we add have real value to the gameplay. We have some fun stuff in the works. Our weapons team is hard at work. In the meantime, we hope the changes listed below can get you excited to learn and master the Season 5 weapon meta.

Season 5 Fully-kitted Gold Weapons

• Longbow DMR
• Hemlok
• Spitfire
• EVA-8
• RE-45

Mastiff

• The Mastiff is being rotated out of the care package to a regular weapon with its power reduced accordingly. 
• Reduced damage per pellet from 18 to 13. 
• Reduced headshot multiplier from 2.0 to 1.25. 
• Increased blast pattern distances for the outer pairs of pellets. 
• Increased blast pattern scale ADS multiplier from 0.5 to 0.55. 
• Reduced fire rate from 1.3 to 1.0. 
• Reduced projectile size to be more in line with other regular shotguns.
• Increased shell count from 4 to 6.
• Increased projectile speed to standard shotgun speed.

Peacekeeper

• Peacekeeper is being rotated out of a regular weapon and into the care package weapon with its power being increased accordingly.
• Tightened pellet spread pattern.
• Reduced rechamber time from 1.2 to 0.9.
• Reduced reload times from 2.65 to 2.45 base and 3.6 to 3.35 empty.
• Increased projectile size to improve consistency at close range.

Alternator

• Increased Mag size from 16 to 19. Level 1 Extended mag is now 22, Level 2 is now 25, and Level 3 is now 27. 

RE-45 

• Increased damage from 11 to 12.
• Reduced reload time from 1.74 to 1.5 base and 2.12 to 1.95 empty

Havoc

• Vertical recoil increased.
• Horizontal recoil slightly increased.
• Recoil on the first 2 shots increased.

Longbow DMR

• Headshot scale reduced from 2.15 to 2.1.

Wingman

• Headshot scale reduced from 2.1 to 2.0. 

Hop Ups

• Adding Skullpiercer Hopup for DMR and Wingman.DMR w/ Skullpiercer - Headshot scale 2.1 -> 2.5Wingman w/ Skullpiercer - Headshot scale 2.0 -> 2.25
• Vaulted Anvil Receiver.

Gold Armor

• Added Perk: Shield Cells & Syringes give double the amount per use.
• Removed Perk: Removed 50% heal speed.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed various conditions causing prediction errors.
• Fixed looting in pillboxes being difficult around weapons.
• Fixed aiming speed during zooming lerp to be consistent with hipfire and ADS speed.
• Fixed disabling Melee Target Compensation.
• Fixed Legend banners having a black box when having AA disabled.
• Fixed a condition where the third character model would be missing on screens with three Legend banners.
• Fixed sometimes erroneously pinging enemies while skydiving or in the plane.
• Fixed exploitable spots against Prowlers in Bloodhound Trial.
• Fixed Prowlers not attacking Gibraltar's Dome Shield.
• Fixed deathboxes sometimes not moving on the train. 
• Fixed subtitles in Russian showing up as English in the Bloodhound Trial area. 
• Fixed Havoc VFX while on the train. 
• Fixed depth of field when selecting charms in the loadout menu. 
• Fixed lighting on Legends sometimes being dark throughout the menus.
• Fixed tooltips not appearing correctly when highlighting items in the menus. 
• Fixed the Charge Rifle beam shooting from the scope while using the Hard coded skin. 
• Fixed melee not doing any damage when interrupting the Sentinel charge animation.
• Fixed Wingman having higher than normal hipfire accuracy while crouched. 
• Fixed Golden Barrel attachment having more muzzle flash than intended.
• Stability fixes to reduce crashing and script errors.
• Crypto’s EMP now affects D.U.M.M.I.E. in the Firing Range.
• Fixed Revenant’s Death Totem being visible through smoke or gas. 
• Fixed a few Pathfinder banner poses that caused corrupted art. 
• Adjusted Octane’s Jump pad to make it harder to fall through cracks when deploying. 
• Fixed Caustic's Ultimate not deploying when thrown under small surfaces. 
• Fixed Bangalore’s smoke canisters getting stuck under the Train.

QOL

• We’ve overhauled the Deathbox UI to compartmentalize loot better so you can find what you need faster.
• Crypto can now ping banners while in drone to warn teammates of nearby squads.
• Added voice over for pinging enemies who are reviving.
• Favorite option now available for Weapon Skins.
• Observer Highlights for Tournament Matches. 
• Removed location based Weekly Challenges. These caused players to have mixed motivations from their squadmates, and didn’t work well with map rotation.
• Optimized CPU usage.
• Improved texture streaming quality on GPUs reporting less memory than advertised.
• We're excited to announce that at the start of Season 5 we will be adding Apex servers to the Middle East as we look to further support our fans in the region. 

External link →