Apex Legends Season 6 Patch Notes Reveal Recon Character Adjustments

The full patch notes for Apex Legends Season 6: Boosted have been released, revealing some intriguing ability changes to recon characters--namely Bloodhound and Crypto. The rest of the patch notes confirm what we already know, that Season 6 isn't implementing in-game changes as big as the ones in Season 5. However, there are some balancing adjustments that are worth noting. The patch went live between August 17 and August 18, depending on your region. You can see all these changes for yourself now. An additional patch on August 20 was released to correct several errors, as well, including issues with Rampart's finisher line, as well as reducing the number of Devotions and Turbochargers spawned. More changes could be coming over the next few weeks.

Starting in Season 6, all three recon characters (Pathfinder, Bloodhound, and Crypto) will be able to access survey beacons around the map to see where future circle closures will be. This ability was previously Pathfinder's unique passive, but now every recon character can use it. If done through his drone, Crypto can get the information instantly without having to take the time to jack into the beacon.

"Giving all Recon legends access to survey beacons makes Pathfinder less unique, and obviously we don't love that," Respawn writes in the patch notes. "For now, we're giving our friendly robot a small buff to his ultimate cooldown when he uses a survey beacon, but in the future we will take another look at Pathfinder to see what else we could do to make him feel more unique."

For now, Pathfinder's new passive ability is that he lowers his cooldown timer on his ultimate ability every time he uses a survey beacon, a passive he can use up to six times per match. Each time he uses a survey beacon, the cooldown on Pathfinder's ultimate ability lowers by 10 seconds. So though it starts at 120 seconds, you can lower the cooldown on Pathfinder's ultimate ability to just 60 seconds.

Bloodhound and Crypto have also gotten some nice buffs. Bloodhound's ultimate ability is now extended by 15 seconds with every knockdown instead of only five, and their tactical ability can be used faster and more often while their ultimate is in effect. Crypto's drone will now have 60 HP instead of 30 and Crypto can now use it to both pick up a teammate's banner card from their death box and drop it off at a respawn beacon. Additionally, if Crypto respawns an ally through his drone as opposed to handing it in himself, they can hand in the banner card instantly instead of the process taking a few seconds to take effect.

Below, we've listed the big changes from the Apex Legends Season 6 patch notes.

Apex Legends Season 6: Boosted Update Patch Notes

Recon Class

• All Recon legends (Bloodhound, Crypto, and Pathfinder) can now use Survey Beacons to get the next ring location. Crypto can use his drone to instantly get this information.
• Pathfinder:
  • Context: Giving all Recon legends access to survey beacons makes Pathfinder less unique, and obviously we don’t love that. For now, we’re giving our friendly robot a small buff to his ultimate cooldown when he uses a survey beacon, but in the future we will take another look at Pathfinder to see what else we could do to make him feel more unique.
  • Passive: Each time Pathfinder scans a survey beacon, the total cooldown of Zipline Gun is reduced.
    • Numbers: Zipline Gun cooldown reduced by 10s each time Pathfinder scans a beacon. Up to 6 rings per game means the total cooldown of Zipline Gun can go from 120s to 60s.
• Bloodhound:
  • Context: Bloodhound fulfills a very clear role in Apex Legends: they’re the information gatherer and tracker, but currently their performance leaves a lot to be desired. In this patch, we wanted to double down on their ultimate being their big moment of becoming a god-like tracker. Bloodhound already gives up some information to the enemy when they scan or use the ultimate (it makes a noticeable sound), so we think there is room for a lot more power during the ultimate.
  • Beast of the Hunt: Now gains even more duration when Bloodhound scores a knockdown or kill with the ultimate about to run out.
  • Eye of the Allfather: During Beast of the Hunt, Eye of the Allfather now comes out twice as fast and has a much shorter cooldown.
    • Numbers:
      • Beast of the Hunt duration extension 5s → [5s - 15s] based on remaining duration
      • Eye of the Allfather CD during Beast of the Hunt: 25s → 6s
      • Eye of the Allfather total use time during Beast of the Hunt: 1.8s → 0.9s
• Crypto:
  • Context: Crypto is a particularly interesting recon character: the amount of information he can gather for his team with the drone is very high, but the fact that he has to switch over to his drone leaves him vulnerable and often at a great distance from his team. Because he has no abilities without his drone, we figure there’s room for even more power when he’s in his drone.
  • Surveillance drone:
    • Crypto can now activate respawn and survey beacons from his drone. Doing so is instant instead of requiring a prolonged use.
    • Made the surveillance drone slightly more consistent to hit but also doubled its hitpoints.
  • Drone EMP:
    • EMP will now slow teammates caught in the blast, even if they had no shields. This means that players who have used Revenant’s Death Totem will also be slowed.
      • Numbers:
        • Surveillance Drone 30HP → 60HP
        • Surveillance Drone hitbox size: cube of edge length 16 → cube of edge length 24

Other Legends

• Revenant:
  • Context: We’re happy to see that dropping the range restriction on Death Totem brought a lot more Revenants into play, but we’ve been watching a particularly frustrating combo play out in professional level play involving a squad of Revenant, Wraith, and Crypto, where using the three ultimates together resulted in two back to back runs at the enemy team that they could do very little about. We’ve attacked part of that in the Crypto EMP change, but here’s the other part aimed at making this play less overwhelming.
  • Death Totem:
    • For 2s after being recalled by the Death Totem, players cannot use Wraith’s Dimensional Rift.
• Octane:
  • Stim: Can now use Stim while healing, but stim will not remove the slow you incur from healing.
• Loba:
  • Context: While Loba was initially very popular, she’s been struggling to keep up more recently, so we’re tossing her a little buff. If you’re curious why we’ve chosen to buff her ultimate rather than her tactical: we’re seeing that she has decent combat success but that teams with her on them don’t win as much as, say, teams with Lifeline or Wattson. This suggests to us that her out of combat utility (that is to say, how she funnels loot to her team) isn’t doing enough.
  • Black Market:
    • Lowered cooldown from 3min to 90s
• Gibraltar:
  • Defensive Bombardment:
    • Increased cooldown from 3 minutes to 4.5 minutes
• Bangalore:
  • Rolling Thunder:
    • Decreased cooldown from 4.5 minutes to 3 minutes
• Wattson:
  • Interception Pylon
    • Trophy system will now shoot down Caustic barrels in flight if they would have landed inside the range of the trophy.

Loot

• Added:
  • Extended Energy Mags.
  • Turbocharger Hop-up
• Updated:
  • Precision Choke - Removed Precision Choke from loot pool, but it will now be integrated into the Triple Take and Peacekeeper by default. Fire select toggles on/off the choke
• In Supply Drop:
  • R99
    • Damage increased from 11 to 12
    • Increased magazine size to 32
    • Ammo Reserve: 160
• Out of Supply Drop- Into Ground Loot:
  • Devotion
    • Clip size reduced back to original values (36/40/44/48).
• Fully Kitted Weapon Swaps
  • Removed:
    • DMR
    • Hemlok
    • Spitfire
    • EVA-8
    • RE-45
  • Added:
    • Devotion
    • Mastiff
    • Triple Take
    • Flatline
    • Volt
• Updated Weapon
  • Sniper ammo
    • Increased pick up from 8 to 12
    • Increased Stack Size from 16 to 24
  • Energy Ammo
    • Reduce amount picked up from 30 to 20.

Weapon Updates

• Hemlok:
  • Reduced vertical recoil in burst mod
  • Slightly reducing recoil in pattern on 2nd and 3rd shot so first burst kicks less
  • Burst mode time between bursts .32 -> .28
• Charge Rifle
  • Will now use 2 ammo per shot.
  • Increased mag size from 4 to 8
• Triple Take Buff:
  • Increase fire rate 1.25 -> 1.4
  • Increased Mag size from (5/6/7/8) to (6/7/8/9)
  • Built the Choke hop up into the weapon by default. Toggle select-fire to enable/disable the Choke
  • PK
  • Built the Choke hop up into the weapon by default. Toggle select-fire to enable/disable the Choke
• Spitfire
  • Improve recoil controllability
• Havoc
  • Updated Havoc with a new recoil pattern
  • Designer Note: The Havoc's existing recoil pattern had constant horizontal movement. This means it would either be too difficult to control if there was too much recoil, or far too easy to control if there was too little recoil. Updating to a new pattern which is more consistent in style with existing recoil patterns.
• Mozambique
  • Increased clip size from 3 to 4.
• P2020
  • Increased Damage from 13 to 15
  • Decreased Hammerpoint damage multiplier from 2.7 to 2.35. This will leave Hammerpoint P2020 damage unchanged in most scenarios..
  • Increased mag size from (10/13/15/18) to (12/14/16/18)
• Sentinel
  • Only requires one shield cell to charge if the player has the gold armor.
• Prowler
  • Slightly Reduce vertical recoil in burst mode
  • Increase horizontal recoil in Auto Mode

Quality of Life

• Supply Drop Weapons are now Heirloom Tier (red) to avoid confusion with fully kitted guns which will remain gold.
• World's Edge received performance improvements, especially around The Tree, The Dome and Skyhook, looking towards the center of the map.
• Alterations were made to The Ring to prevent late zones from centering on unplayable terrain and reduce the predictability of the zone's pull.

Bug Fixes

• Bangalore
  • Fixed an issue with the La Catrina and Killing Machine skins obscuring views when ADS with the holo, 2x, 2-4x or 3x scopes.
  • Fixed an exploit with being able to see through smoke when looking through a chain link fence.
• Bloodhound
  • Fixed an issue with bloodhound being able to get an additional Ult when using a wraith ultimate.
• Caustic
  • Fixed an issue with gas traps clipping into mobile Respawn beacons.
  • Fixed an issue with Revenant and Pathfinder taking less damage from Nox Gas
• Crypto
  • Fixed an issue VFX show false positive when hitting Crypto’s Drone.
  • Fixed an issue with Crypto being able to use his drone while using Loba’s Black Market.
  • Fixed an issue with EMP not destroying Loba’s Black Market.
  • Did a geo pass to help prevent Crypto's drone from clipping into walls
• Gibraltar
  • Fixed an issue Gibraltar air strike markers sometimes appearing inside buildings.
• Loba
  • Fixed an issue with Loba’s Black market not being pingable.
  • Fixed an issue with enemies getting teleported with Loba when they melee her when she teleports.
• Mirage
  • Fixed an issue with decoy flying rapidly across the ground when player takes control of it before a jump tower or geyser.
  • Fixed an issue with decoys not looking natural when player uses a zipline
  • Fixed and issue with Decoys getting launched into air while player enters Wraith’s Portal.
  • Fixed bug where Mirage’s decoys would sometimes not deploy while skydiving
• Octane
  • Fixed an issue with jump pads disappearing when placed on ordinances
  • Fixed an issue with jump pads disappearing when placed under loot ticks.
• Pathfinder
  • Hi Friend!
• Revenant
  • Fixed an issue with enemies getting teleported with Revenant when they melee him before he teleports back to death totem.
• Wraith
  • Fixed an issue with wraith portals pushing players beneath geo when a death box is on the other end
  • Fixed an issue with Wraith’s tactical losing velocity when pressing the fire button during the tactical.
  • Fixed an issue for when a death totem and portal are too close to each other causing players to auto enter a portal upon death totem recall.
• General
  • Fixed an issue with evo armor doubling the effect of leveling up. This caused some brightness on screen.
  • Fixed an issue with the train killing players when coming out of a wraith portal on the train.
  • Fixed an issue with some vertical zip lines not correctly placing players once they get off the line.
  • Fixed an issue with spectator view pinging last pings when swapping through views (Private Match Issue).
  • Fixed an issue for knockdown state not eliminating the squad when no one had a gold shield.
  • Fixed an issue where death protection runs out with an active DOC medic nearby, DOC would not start healing you.