Apex Legends weakens Wraith's "get out of jail free card"
Hard to a-void.
As a Pathfinder main, I'm still reeling from the last major change to the Apex Legends meta, which saw the poor robot get his wings clipped after his grapple ability was nerfed. And next to get a nerf is Wraith: another player favourite thanks to her ability to quickly duck out of a firefight. Until now, that is, and it looks like Octane and Lifeline are moving up the ranks instead.
As part of the Lost Treasures Collection Event update, Respawn is shaking up the meta with some tweaks to several characters. As a character with an "exceedingly high win rate and kill rate", Respawn had previously attempted to weaken Wraith by increasing the cooldown on her tactical ability phase walk, but this seemingly wasn't enough. Instead of it being a "get out of jail free" card, Respawn wants this to be used as a repositioning and scouting ability: meaning phase walk will now take 1.25 seconds to enable. Wraith will also receive a 20 per cent move slow while activating the ability - but on the plus side, she'll be 30 per cent faster when actually in phase walk, and she'll be able to see other players while in the void.
One of the big winners of the update is Octane, whose tactical will now remove any movement-impairing effects, and allow him to sprint 10 per cent faster. His ultimate, meanwhile, sounds like it will now allow for some true aerial acrobatics - with the ability to double jump and change direction mid-air.
In Lifeline's case, the changes are more of a mixed bag, and it's somewhat debatable as to whether her buff outweighs the change to her passive. If you enjoy using Lifeline for her fast-healing abilities, I have bad news, as that's being swapped out for the ability to place a D.O.C. to revive teammates while still being able to move around. It shifts her into a more healing-focused role, but means she'll likely be less useful without a team. Lifeline's care packages have also been changed to have more goodies, so your squadmates will be able to steal even more of your hard-earned loot.
There's a bunch of other tweaks to the characters, so if you want to read up on your main, you can find the patch notes here.
Alongside the changes to the legends, the collection event introduces a new town takeover (this time Cryto-themed), a twist on the classic sniper-shotgun LTM Armed & Dangerous with EVO shields and the new mobile respawn beacons, and a Mirage heirloom - which is a trophy of... himself. Looks little like that statue of Cristiano Ronaldo, in my opinion.