APEX Legends Season 7: Horizon’s Abilities and Balance Changes

The next season of APEX Legends, which the developers call the biggest in the game’s history, is launching in few days. Besides the new map Olympus, the first vehicle type in the game Trident, and Clubs system, the Ascension update will also introduce a new legend Horizon and a number of balance changes for existing legends and weapons.

New Legend – Horizon

Horizon is described as a scientist and master of gravity manipulations. Her abilities are as follows:

• [Passive] Spacewalk: Increase air control and reduce fall impacts with Horizon’s custom spacesuit.
• [Tactical] Gravity Lift: Reverse the flow of gravity, lifting players upward and boosting them outward when they exit.
• [Ultimate] Black Hole: Deploy NEWT to create a micro black hole that sucks in nearby Legends.

Legend Balance Changes:

Bangalore

• Rolling Thunder: Reduced the time it takes for explosion from 8 seconds to 6 seconds.

Caustic

• Nox Gas Trap/Nox Gas Grenade: Legends no longer get a blurred vision effect while in the gas. Damage updated from 4-10 ticks of damage to 6-12 ticks of damage.

Mirage

• Psyche Out/Life of the Party: Decoys now have 45 health

Octane

• Swift Mend: Doubled healing rate (from 0.5 hp/s to 1.0 hp/s)

Wattson

• Perimeter Security: Increased damage per touch from 10 to 15.

Loba

• Black Market: Ammo taken no longer counts towards Black Market’s maximum. You can scoop up all the ammo in range.

Rampart

• Sheila: Now takes 1.25 seconds to fully spin up, down from 2 seconds.
• Amped Wall: Now takes 3 seconds to fully build, down from 4 seconds.

Pathfinder

• Grappling Hook: the maximum cooldown grapple can be set to was lowered to 30 seconds, from 35 seconds; the maximum amount of travel time before a new cooldown is set is now 5 seconds, rather than being uncapped.
• Hitbox has been slightly increased.

Weapon Balance Changes:

Supply Drop

• The prowler is replacing the R99 in the supply drop. Despite the Selectfire hop-up being removed from the loot pool this season, the Prowler will still have the ability to change between 5 round bursts and full-auto.

Fully Kitted Weapons

• Removed: Devotion, Mastiff, Triple Take, Flatline, Volt
• New: Wingman, Sentinel, Havoc, G7, Alternator

Hemlok

• Increasing horizontal recoil of the first 3 shots slightly to the right (first burst when in burst mode)
• Increasing recoil magnitude in the later stages of the pattern
• Reducing recoil multiplier in single fire mode to help compensate for additional recoil in pattern. Recoil should mostly be increased in burst mode rather than single fire mode
• Reducing headshot multiplier 2.0 -> 1.75 (44 -> 39 damage headshot against no helmet base character)

Havoc

• Updated recoil pattern. Kicks up, then right, then left, then up again.

L-Star

• LSTAR has a new recoil pattern that kicks horizontally at first and then settles into a relatively consistent upward recoil. Players who feather the trigger will be able to keep the LSTAR in the good portion of the recoil pattern.
• LSTAR venting time after letting go of the trigger has been reduced 0.4s -> 0.15s.
• LSTAR will now reduce heat faster when not overheated -- 1.15s from 99.9% to 0% charge if not overheated, still 2.45s if overheated.

Sentinel

• Energized Sentinel now has a pure damage increase, instead of bonus damage only vs shields
• Energized Sentinel base damage 70 -> 88

Triple Take

• Fire rate 1.3 -> 1.2

Hop-Ups

• Quickdraw Holster Hop-up: This new hop-up attaches to the RE-45 and Wingman. When equipped, the gun becomes quicker to raise and lower, takes less time to ADS, and has reduced hipfire spread (particularly when not actively moving). This should open up new opportunities to use the two weapons, especially in close-quarters combat.
• The Selectfire Receiver hop-up will be removed from the loot pool to make room.

Besides that, the update also increases the requirements to evolve Armor and decreases ring damage. Full list of changes can be found on the official website.