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I’m saying this as a fan of the game who only recently joined Respawn. I have 10k kills on Wraith, about a third of my total kills in the game. To all the sweaty wraith mains out there, I have your back. Wraith’s kit has been nerfed and tweaked more than any other legend’s, but her win rate and encounter win rate has remained an anomaly. The common argument is that mechanically gifted players are drawn to her kit, but when we filter by skill brackets (rank, average damage, you name it) she’s still head and shoulders above everyone. So what does this mean?
Well, let’s take a look at Path. His grapple cooldown has changed more than any other ability in the game. Through it all, his win rate and encounter win rate remained relatively stagnant, up there as an outlier with Wraith. What did change, however, was people’s enjoyment while playing as him. I often play with a 20k kill Path and he was a hollow shell of a man when the grapple had a flat 35 second cooldown. I saw plenty of streamers making jokes about how they used their one grapple for the game. That’s not fun. We never want to nerf legends to the point where they lose their identity.
The most recent hit box change to Path was the first time we conclusively saw his win rate and encounter win rate come down from the stratosphere a bit. Anecdotally, my sweaty Path friend is having a blast with him again, even though he claims he gets beamed more easily now. That trade-off seems worth it to me. If hit boxes and animations can be tuned for balancing, that's something worth exploring. That could even allow for buffs to strong characters. I'm not advocating for hit boxes to not match character models; if you look at the side-by-side for Path's hitbox from the Season 7 Patch Notes, it's a small change to how the character feels to play that has healthy balancing results. "Healthy balance" isn't even pick rates/win rates across the board, but pulling in outliers on either end is the goal as long as our highly scientific measurement of fun doesn't drop. Feeling good is the number one balancing metric in my book, more so than quantitative data points (I come from a data analysis background, so I'm aware of the risks associated with interpreting data in a meaningful way).
To be honest, the past couple seasons I felt burnt out on Wraith and had an identity crisis. I'm having more fun than I thought I would trying to master multiple legends, and no longer think of myself as having a main. For an in-depth look into a designer's perspective, I highly recommend giving the latest episode of The Third Party podcast a listen. Daniel Klein, who's been mostly responsible improving the legend balance of Apex for the past year, nerds out with a couple of die-hard Apex fans about each legend. It should be a reassuring listen to anyone who fears that we may be out of touch with our legend identities. I have played this game nearly everyday since launch and understand that Wraith is a posterchild for Apex. I even compared her to Michael Jordan in my interview, and as the game evolves, a LeBron James could make it onto the scene. But trust me, no one wants to see a Wizards Michael Jordan version of Wraith, and that is not the goal of future balancing changes. Similar to MJ taking a year off for baseball, we might put Wraith in the care package for a season though ;)
I’m saying this as a fan of the game who only recently joined Respawn. I have 10k kills on Wraith, about a third of my total kills in the game. To all the sweaty wraith mains out there, I have your back. Wraith’s kit has been nerfed and tweaked more than any other legend’s, but her win rate and encounter win rate has remained an anomaly. The common argument is that mechanically gifted players are drawn to her kit, but when we filter by skill brackets (rank, average damage, you name it) she’s still head and shoulders above everyone. So what does this mean?
Edit: I think I know what this means, but 75% of my comment is missing because I don't think reddit liked how long it was. Trying to get that cleaned up with the mods
I’m saying this as a fan of the game who only recently joined Respawn. I have 10k kills on Wraith, about a third of my total kills in the game. To all the sweaty wraith mains out there, I have your back. Wraith’s kit has been nerfed and tweaked more than any other legend’s, but her win rate and encounter win rate has remained an anomaly. The common argument is that mechanically gifted players are drawn to her kit, but when we filter by skill brackets (rank, average damage, you name it) she’s still head and shoulders above everyone. So what does this mean?
Edit: I think I know what this means, but 75% of my comment is missing because I don't think reddit liked how long it was. Trying to get that cleaned up with the mods
Well, let’s take a look at Path. His grapple cooldown has changed more than any other ability in the game. Through it all, his win rate and encounter win rate remained relatively stagnant, up there as an outlier with Wraith. What did change, however, was people’s enjoyment while playing as him. I often play with a 20k kill Path and he was a hollow shell of a man when the grapple had a flat 35 second cooldown. I saw plenty of streamers making jokes about how they used their one grapple for the game. That’s not fun. We never want to nerf legends to the point where they lose their identity.
The most recent hit box change to Path was the first time we conclusively saw his win rate and encounter win rate come down from the stratosphere a bit. Anecdotally, my sweaty Path friend is having a blast with him again, even though he claims he gets beamed more easily now. That trade-off seems worth it to me. If hit boxes and animations can be tuned for balancing, that's something worth exploring. That could even allow for buffs to strong characters. I'm not advocating for hit boxes to not match character models; if you look at the side-by-side for Path's hitbox from the Season 7 Patch Notes, it's a small change to how the character feels to play that has healthy balancing results. "Healthy balance" isn't even pick rates/win rates across the board, but pulling in outliers on either end is the goal as long as our highly scientific measurement of fun doesn't drop. Feeling good is the number one balancing metric in my book, more so than quantitative data points (I come from a data analysis background, so I'm aware of the risks associated with interpreting data in a meaningful way).
To be honest, the past couple seasons I felt burnt out on Wraith and had an identity crisis. I'm having more fun than I thought I would trying to master multiple legends, and no longer think of myself as having a main. For an in-depth look into a designer's perspective, I highly recommend giving the latest episode of The Third Party podcast a listen. Daniel Klein, who's been mostly responsible improving the legend balance of Apex for the past year, nerds out with a couple of die-hard Apex fans about each legend. It should be a reassuring listen to anyone who fears that we may be out of touch with our legend identities. I have played this game nearly everyday since launch and understand that Wraith is a posterchild for Apex. I even compared her to Michael Jordan in my interview, and as the game evolves, a LeBron James could make it onto the scene. But trust me, no one wants to see a Wizards Michael Jordan version of Wraith, and that is not the goal of future balancing changes. Similar to MJ taking a year off for baseball, we might put Wraith in the care package for a season though ;)