TL;DRBelow, we’ll provide insight into meta changes coming in our next season, Marked. We’ll discuss our goals and rationale for the changes for each of the following:Bloodhound’s ReworkLoba’s BuffRampart’s BuffValkyrie’s NerfAxle’s NerfSeer’s NerfWeapon UI Stats OverhaulNEW Corrupted AttachmentsRevamped Power JourneyINTRODUCTIONWelcome to Designer’s Notes for our next season - MARKED. We appreciate all the time you spent playing in the most recent season, and the feedback that you’ve provided. Using your feedback and our internal match data, we have been hard at work, tuning and adjusting to get ready for our next update.This season we are excited to bring a much anticipated update to Bloodhound. We know there has been a lot of chatter about giving them a refresh and we are finally ready to reveal all the hard work that has gone into making Bloodhound a more competitively viable pick amongst the Legend roster. However, Bloodhound isn’t the only Legend getting updates. We have incoming buffs for Rampart and Loba to help make them more attractive picks, and changes to Valkyrie, Seer, and Axle to assuage some player frustrations.We have significant changes coming to weapons and loot this season. We’ve refreshed our weapon and attachment UI to better help you understand the effects of each potential piece in your arsenal. Speaking of attachments, we are adding a new wave of attachments called “Corrupted Attachments.” These attachments have powerful buffs, but also noteworthy drawbacks. We are looking to create interesting risk-reward choices around the attachment meta and we’re excited to see how you leverage them in your in-game strategy.In another big change: we are removing energy ammo from the loot pool. That’s right, energy weapons will now regenerate their ammo. This was done in an effort to create a unique way of playing with energy weapons and to give you more options for how you decide to manage your backpack. With this change, we are looking to provide more variety of choice and player expression, and want to see how you integrate this new system into your squad’s strategy.Thank you for all the time you spend playing Apex. We appreciate all the feedback you give and look forward to hearing from you on what you think of our latest update. See you in the dropship!LEGEND BUFFSBLOODHOUND REWORKBack in Season 28, we brought in a package of buffs to help Bloodhound’s pick rate while we worked on some bigger changes intended to make Bloodhound a more viable pick at all skill levels. Despite those changes, Bloodhound remains nearly invisible at middle-to-high tiers; they have the lowest pick rate once you get to Gold tier and above. It’s been a long time coming, but we’ve made substantial changes to each ability in their kit to help you truly live out the true hunter fantasy.*Data from Plat+ Ranked gameplay from 11-1-2025 through 7-6-2026PassiveBloodhound’s passive creates lingering trails behind enemies that you can follow to track and eliminate your opponents. You can also activate your White Ravens more easily by glancing at them for a short time.TacticalBloodhound’s Tactical now shows additional “snapshot” scans after the initial scan finishes, increasing the amount of time you can track enemy locations (without being a full wallhack). UltimateBloodhound is boasting a brand new Ultimate: Allfather’s Cloak. Activating their Ult will deploy a device that cloaks everyone — squadmates and enemies — who approaches it. The cloak persists for 12 seconds after leaving the Ult’s space and breaks after using your weapons or taking damage. While you aren’t fully invisible, you are much harder to see and track, allowing you to set ambushes for enemy squads or escape tricky situations.  New UpgradesHidden Sight: refreshes your Tactical when you use your Ultimate, and hides your scanning pulse from enemies while cloaked allowing you to survey the scene without notifying enemies to your whereaboutsBird’s Eye: allows your White Ravens to split off and mark two different enemies at the same time, identifying your two nearest threatsTrue Predator: allows you to recloak after firing your weapon, enhancing your ability to hit-and-run after using your Ultimate.LOBALoba’s loot-oriented kit has seen her popularity decline over time, particularly as amps and arsenals provide other ways to build healthy loadouts. While we expect Loba’s usefulness to rise with the loot changes coming in season 30 (more on that below), it still felt like she could use additional buffs to help keep her relevant.*Data from Ranked and Trios gameplay from 10-1-2024 through 7-6-2026TacticalThe main change we’re making to Loba is reducing how long it takes to deploy her Tactical. - We’re reducing the activation time from 0.6s to 0.4s, increasing the projectile speed by ~30% so it lands more quickly, and adding a 15% range increase.  UltimateTo make Loba’s Ult a bit more alluring, we’re shaving some time off of its cooldown, bringing it down from 150s to 120s, to help your squad stay ahead of other squads in terms of resources as the game progresses.RAMPARTDespite significant changes in Season 27, Rampart remains near the bottom of pick rate graphs at every skill level. While she can be particularly powerful in late-game when set up in a great spot, her setup still feels slow and she’s too challenging to play throughout most of a match. As such, we have a handful of changes we’re making to hopefully pull up her pick rate a bit.PassiveRampart is gaining a new element to her Battle Modder passive: she progresses Locked Hop-Ups 50% faster to unlock more powerful weapons earlier in the match.  TacticalWe have increased the health of Rampart’s walls, particularly at earlier EVO levels.  UltimateRampart is also getting a movement buff for her Ultimate: she now moves significantly faster while spinning up or shooting Sheila.Back to TopLEGEND NERFSVALKYRIEEveryone’s favorite fighter pilot has remained in a strong position for a while now. As we work to manage power creep in our game, we felt Valk could use some slight nerfs to bring her in line.*Data from Ranked gameplay from 8-1-2025 through 7-6-2026Our first goal is to reduce her “artillery” potential - she can do significant poke damage from long range while having extra utility and mobility that others don’t.  TacticalWe’re reducing her missile damage, as well as adjusting the trajectory of her missiles so they can’t get over top of high cover as easily.  UltimateAdditionally, we want to reduce her Ultimate’s ability to keep her and her squad far above the fight while also knowing exactly where everyone is. To accomplish this we’re lowering the height by 15% and nerfing two Upgrades. UpgradesEye in the Sky: Reduced through-wall scans base distance to 100mSupersonic: Slightly nerfed the speed improvement when blasting off from 2.5 seconds to 3.0 secondsAXLEAxle’s pick rate has been trending in a healthier direction with each subsequent nerf following her race to the top on release. Her Kickstart drone is still too oppressive in too many contexts, and we’re continuing to evaluate how to increase counterplay opportunities. Now that she’ll be affected by her own ult, Axle players should think twice before deploying it in close-quarters skirmishes. She can no longer stack two Ult charges, and we’ve reined in the overall range that players can super slide with her Nitro Gates. Quantitative data isn’t everything; we’re still keeping a close eye on player sentiment when it comes to Nitro Gate and Kickstart usage and will continue to adjust if needed.*Data from Ranked gameplay from 5-1-2026 through 7-6-2026TacticalTo restrict the range that players can slide, we’re reducing the max slide boost time from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.UltimateTo force players to be more selective when choosing to use Axle’s Ult, it will now affect self & allies (similar to Mad Maggie, Bangalore, and Gibraltar ultimates)Axle (self) gets damaged, stunned, and displaced (same as enemies)Allies get stunned and displaced, but won’t take damageUpgradesReplace Automata with Long Haul, which brings the Tac max slide time back up to 5 seconds.Shuffled orderLvl 2: Sliding Shooter vs Long HaulLvl 3: Jump Gate vs Super SliderSEERSeer’s back in the spotlight after our most recent round of buffs, and he’s been hard to ignore! Seer is a tricky Legend to balance, frequently yo-yo-ing between the absolute bottom and top of pick rate charts. He’s on a knife’s edge where a buff will either do very little, or make him entirely OP.The last time Seer hit the heights of the top 3 Legends in terms of pick rate, he dropped off on his own naturally after about a week. It seems our Artist-in-Residence has more staying power this time around, and not everyone is a fan.We already took a swipe at Seer’s Tactical uptime by reworking his Upgrade tree as part of a quick hotfix after the mid-season split. His new Level 3 Upgrade choices are much more evenly split than they were before in terms of pick-rate.However, it seems like Tactical uptime alone wasn’t the root of the problem, and we needed to roll back some of the new strength of the Tactical. Specifically, turn slow (slowing the rate at which you can rotate your Legend) was added to his ability at the mid-Season split, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of frustration. As a result, we will be making the turn slow much more subtle in Season 30.Our intent with Seer, and other ‘counter-movement’ Legends was to give tools to players that can counter the more mobile Legends of the roster. However, it seems like in practice all Legends were getting caught in Seer’s net. We will revisit how we implement these kinds of slows in the future to try and be more targeted towards just the speediest Legends of our cast.Back to TopWEAPONS & LOOTUI STAT OVERHAUL“What does a stock do?” This is the question the weapons team has been answering for the past 7 years. Sure, there is technically a block of text on each and...