Apex Legends Season 17 brings a new legend, map changes, and QoL features. However, it's not all about new additions since there are also new changes. The new season, Arsenal, goes heavy on balancing changes, having a ton of buffs and nerfs on various weapons and legends, alongside adjustments for the loot on the ground, crate, and crafter.
L-Star EMG has replaced RE-45 as a crate weapon, and the crafter now contains Alternator and Sentinel, instead of EVA-8 and 30-30 Repeater. Vault loot is improved with chances of gold loot increased and light mags added to spawn loot.
Cargo Bot Loot also saw major improvements, including the removal of small healing items, Mobile Respawn Beacons, White Armor, and White Backpacks from the loot table. The spawns of Large Healing items and Heatshields have been adjusted as well. Furthermore, gold weapons are now exclusively found in gold-tier Cargo Bots, and their spawn chance in this tier is increased as well.
Flatline, Triple Take, Spitfire, Mastiff, and Volt are the five weapons selected this season as Gold Weapons. Some of the changes are mentioned below.
Weapons
L-Star EMG [Crate]
- Added Disruptor Rounds: 60% damage increase against shields
- Base Damage Reduced to 16 (was 17)
- Projectiles now have passthrough: 60% damage retained
- Projectile growth increased
- Improved recoil pattern
- Removed barrel
- Ammo Stockpile: 324
- Reduced VFX brightness when hitting unarmored targets
Triple Take
- Projectile size increased
- Improved hipfire spread
- Tightened bullet pattern when fully choked
- Ammo per shot reduced to 1 (was 3)
- Magazines sizes adjusted to match the new ammo costs
- Purple Mag: Increased to 10 shots (was 9)
R-99 SMG
- Removed 1 bullet from base and all magazines
- No Magazine reduced to 19 (was 20)
- White Magazine reduced to 21 (was 22)
- Blue Magazine reduced to 24 (was 25)
- Purple & Gold magazine reduced to 27 (was 28)
Legends
Assault Class
- Smart loot gains have been adjusted to reduce skipping an upgrade tier
- It will now be less likely to jump from White to Purple or Blue to Gold
- Optics are now given based on team rather than just Assault Legend who opens them
- Added special drop rate for Gold Optics
Support Class
- Support Bins will now guarantee at least one Battery in one of the Secret Compartment slots
- Support Bins will now award MRBs if your ally is dead, even if you don't have their banner card.
- Legend Banners can now be crafted by ANY player who has a Support Class Legend in their Squad
MIXTAPE
- New Podium screens for Gun Run and Control
- Display a message in the Kill Feed if Leaver Penalties are disabled for the match due to an unfair match
- Control and Gun Run will indicate the team's MVPs on the intro podium
- Control and TDM have updated loadouts (Crate Weapon changes and updates based on weapon meta/pick rates/kill rates)
- Gun Run and TDM now have XP Bonuses for Match Completion and Match Completion after Join in Progress
Control
- Map rotation: Barometer is out, Olympus: Hammond Labs is in
- Weapon Evo Change: No longer Evo weapons automatically when a new Rating Tier is reached. Players now reach the new tier and their weapon will Evo when the player holsters and then unholsters their weapon in any form (reload, weapon switch, manual holster, rides a zipline, performs a skydive, etc)
Gun Run
- Weapon Track update for new crate weapons.
- Added an additional XP bonus on the last weapon knife kill
You can check out the complete patch notes via the official site. PC players can play Apex Legends for free via Steam.
