Apex Legends dev explains why they’re struggling to buff Revenant

One of Respawn’s lead designers working on Apex Legends has explained the difficulties they have buffing Revenant, as mains of the Season 4 Legend continue to call for improvements.

Revenant, like a few other late additions to Apex Legends, has fallen some way down the pecking order. Alongside Rampart and Crypto, the Synthetic Nightmare has struggled to make a long-term impact to the battle royale’s meta, finding himself among the lowest pick rates going into Season 8.

The response from Revenant players has, quite understandably, been to call on Respawn to provide a buff to the deadly assassin. His current abilities, detailed below, are generally considered to be too weak in the game’s evolved meta.

However, Daniel Klein, Respawn’s lead game designer on Apex, has explained just why he’s so difficult to strengthen.

One Redditor, during Respawn’s recent AMA, suggested that one thing they’ve noticed more than ever in this season is the relative weakness of Revenant’s tactical.

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However, Klein explained that they don’t want the abilities of legends to become their primary way to deal damage. “We do wanna be very careful not to position abilities as primary damage dealers,” Klein said. “Revenant’s tac is pretty reliably hittable, so probably not a great candidate for more damage.”

In short, simply enabling Revenant’s tactical to do more damage is pretty far down the list on potential buffs he will receive.

Another player echoed Klein’s comments, saying that Revenant’s tactical is already very strong, and shouldn’t receive a buff. They finished: “Don’t get me wrong, Revenant needs some help, but his tactical is not the area to buff.”

Replying to this comment, Klein explained that this is Respawn’s struggle: “That’s what makes buffing him so hard; it’s clear he needs buffs, but it’s also equally clear that [his] tac and ult shouldn’t be straight up buffed.”

One potential avenue for a buff would be his Passive, but the impact of a faster crouch-walk would be pretty negligible in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps another idea would be to make his climbing abilities even stronger, allowing him to reach hard to reach spots quickly.

Back in Season 7, Respawn said they were looking into some tweaks to his hitbox too, which could make him a harder target.

The admission that Revenant needs a buff will be music to the ears of his mains, but it remains to be seen exactly what form a buff would take.