Apex Legends Season 19 patch notes: Ignite, new legend, weapon balancing, more

The full Apex Legends Season 19 patch notes are now live from the developers, detailing all the changes, big and small, to Legends, maps, weapons and more. Check out the full notes for the Ignite update below.

Season 19 of Apex Legends goes live on October 31, with the highlight of the new season being Conduit, a new support legend, after last season skipped out on a new character.

There are also updates to the Storm Point map, as well as a host of weapon and Legend balancing tweaks.

These are the full patched notes for Season 19 from Respawn Entertainment, which also include anti-cheat and Ranked changes, and a list of bug fixes.

Season 19 patch notes for Apex Legends

PATCH NOTES

• Cross Progression will be rolling out in phases across existing platforms
• Holosprays can now be deployed while skydiving

Rolling out the new Rendering Hardware Interface (RHI) code on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S—more background info on RHI can be found via our Reddit post here.

BALANCE UPDATES

Crafting Rotation

• RE-45 and 30-30 Repeater leave the crafter and are back on the floor
• R-301 and Volt enter the crafter
• Boosted Loader removed from crafting rotation
• Digital Threat optic removed from crafting rotation
• Hammerpoint Rounds added to crafting rotation

Care Package Weapon Rotation

• L-Star EMG returns to the floor
  • Removed Disruptor Rounds
  • Projectile size reduced
  • Improved recoil pattern
  • Reduced randomness in the early part of the recoil pattern
  • Damage increased to 17 (was 16)
  • Barrel attachment improved to match other weapons
• Wingman enters the care package
  • New hop-up – Skullpiercer Elite: ignores helmet headshot damage reduction
  • Boosted Loader hop-up attached
  • Base damage increased to 50 (was 45)
  • Projectile size increased
  • 110 ammo

Care Packages

• Care Packages will now always have 1 weapon at all stages of the game

Gold Weapons Rotation

• Havoc, RE-45, C.A.R. SMG, L-Star, Longbow DMR

Hop-Ups

• Boosted Loader: removed from floor loot
• Turbocharger: Removed 1 damage reduction when equipped

WEAPONS

30-30 Repeater

• Increased hipfire spread

Bocek Bow

• Faster initial draw speed
• Select Fire button now toggles Shatter Caps
• Tightened Shatter Caps blast pattern

Charge Rifle

• Improved bullet drop ballistics
• Increased projectile size

Hemlok

• Damage reduced to 21 (was 22)

Longbow DMR

• Increased projectile size

Sentinel

• Increased Amped Shot projectile size

LEGENDS

Respawn Entertainment

Bangalore

• Double Time: reduced duration to 2s (was 3s)
• Smoke Launcher: smoke lifetime reduced to 18s (was 23s)
• Rolling Thunder: stun duration reduced to 6s (was 8s)

Catalyst

• Piercing Spikes
  • Core no longer blocks projectiles, allowing bullets to pass through
  • Max in-world count reduced to 2 (was 3)
  • Throw range decreased by about 50%
• Dark Veil
  • Cooldown now starts after the wall comes down
  • Reduced lifetime to 25s (was 30s)

Passive Updates

• Pathfinder’s Insider Knowledge: can now scan Care Packages after allies have already scanned them
• Wraith’s Voices from the Void: reduced look time required to trigger (feels more reliable/consistent)

Ultimate Updates

• Newcastle’s Castle Wall
  • Reduced recovery time on landing
  • Increased max leap height
• Revenant’s Forged Shadows: reduced time extension window for assists to 3s (was 30s)
• Vantage’s Sniper’s Mark: bullet count increased to 6 (was 5)

MAPS

Olympus

• Addressed a number of bugs and rat spots
• Addressed known exploits to get underneath the map

Kings Canyon

• Addressed multiple rat spots
• Fixed geo holes in world between Relic and Caustic Treatment

Storm Point

• Added two Mixtape maps based on new POIs (ZEUS Station and Wattson’s Pylon)
• Addressed a number of bugs and rat spots

RANKED

NEW FEATURE: PROMOTIONAL TRIALS

In Season 19, players will enter a Promotional Trial state when they reach the peak of their tier. During a Trial, LP loss and gains are frozen, allowing the player to focus on completing the trial:

• Completing the conditions of a Trial within the given match count limit (either by winning a game or completing the alternative) will allow promotion into the next tier with a 250 LP promotional bonus
• Failing to complete the Trial within the match limit results in the Trial ending and a loss of LP based on the player’s performance
• Trials are time limited to 5 matches, increasing by 1 game each time a player fails and then reenters the same Trial, up to a max of 10 retries
• Promotional Trials are skipped during Provisional matches

RANKED TUNING

If you missed our recent reddit Dev Team Update, we’ve made some tuning adjustments for Ignite’s Ranked:

• Increasing the amount of Rating Bonus given to help players’ ranking catch up to their skill bracket
• Reduce the bonus that is withheld and thus the difficulty of climbing, when players are actively pushing against their skill ceiling
• Provisional Bonuses are adjusted to land players closer to the expected statistical 1.5 tier drop at the end of their 10 provisional games

Ranking difference restrictions for 3 stack premades has been REMOVED. Players will now be able to play with friends no matter where they are on their climbs—with the caveat that your squad will face more difficult battles if there’s a bigger discrepancy between your skill.

WORLD SYSTEMS

• Players now respawn with the shields and weapons that they had when they were eliminated
  • Body shield and helmet level are preserved
  • Knockdown shield is reset to white
  • Backpacks are removed
  • Inventory will contain some ammo for their weapons, two syringes, and two shield cells
  • Weapons are maintained, unless that weapon was a care package weapon, and all weapon attachments are removed, including from kitted weapons
• Replicator, Ring Console, and Survey Beacon spawn rates have returned to being even across all POIs

MODES

Mixtape Map Rotation

• Control
  • Caustic Treatment and Siphon are out
  • Barometer and Production Yard are in
• Gun Run
  • Skulltown and Fragment are out
  • The Core is in
  • New map: Wattson Treatment
• TDM
  • Fragment and Habitat are out
  • Phase Runner is in
  • New Map: Zeus Station

BUG FIXES

• Closed an exploit that allowed players to survive ring damage longer than expected using the Phase Runner on Olympus
• Death Boxes can no longer fall into unreachable areas – or lava
• Heat Shields can no longer stick to Tridents
• Heat Shields no longer provide protection above them on higher ground
• Holster weapon UI no longer appears when healing outside the ring
• Knockdown Shield FX no longer remains on while spectating
• Longbow’s Dawn’s Awakening skin no longer has visible barrel with scopes
• Nemesis’ Demon’s Whisper skin no longer obstructs player view
• Provisional badge icon restored on Ranked match summary screen
• Rarity display now updates after equipping from store or pack opening
• Resolved occasional “[UI] Array index 100000000 is out of range (array size 45)” error when launching the game
• Revenant now faces direction he is shooting in third person view
• Skydiving into an exiting respawn dropship will no longer propel the player along with it
• Squad sorting now consistent between HUD and Inventory
• Swapping to lower tiered armor after taking damage no longer requires refreshing the Death Box

AUDIO

• Resolved rare cases where the priority system would kill certain local player weapon sounds at an incorrect time

GRAPHICS

• Fixed squads’ animated poses sometimes ghost slightly on each other
• PC
  • Fixed Intel ARC graphics cards defaulting to suboptimal video settings
  • Fixed issue with low resolution textures when using adaptive supersampling or after changing resolution
• PC DX12: fixed occasional bad triangle rendering on AMD cards

LEGENDS

• Loba: Tactical is no longer canceled when thrown on a tower near Containment
• Mirage: resolved not breaking cloak sometimes when switching weapons
• Revenant
  • Assassin’s instinct
  • Digital threats now highlight enemies after being highlighted by Assassin’s Instinct
  • Fixed cases where enemies were not being highlighted correctly
  • Highlight no longer interferes with other legend highlights
  • Highlight now applies to Mirage decoys
  • Forged Shadows shroud no longer gets stuck on indefinitely (previous hotfix)
• Wattson: fences now collapse when the round ends, preventing ongoing damage audio in post-match screen

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Added Offscreen Portraits setting
• Caustic: restored “Shield Cracked” VO in German
• Firing Range: blue Nessie stays hidden for now… but a new challenger has appeared
• Implemented additional security measures
• Improved PC controller support
  • Controller input will no longer be processed when a different window has focus
  • Added native support for PS4 and PS5 Bluetooth-connected controllers. Players who have been relying on Steam Input to use PS4 and PS5 controllers over Bluetooth should disable that setting in Steam.
• Mixtape: assists are now awarded for Assisted Kills by ALL Teammates in modes where multiple squads are teamed together
• Pings
  • Ping Enemies on the map: double-clicking the Ping Button will place an Enemy Ping on the map at that position
  • Reply to Enemy Pings with Ok, Hold On, and Wait ping reply options
• Rampart: players can now pick up their amped walls while in placement mode
• Revenant 
  • Add vibration support when Forged Shadows shield is damaged, and when the shield reforms or breaks
  • Improve vibration support when charging Shadow Pounce

LOCALIZED AUDIO

Localized audio is being moved out of the base game package on Playstation. Users who play Apex Legends in languages other than English will need to download the free Additional Content pack that contains the audio for their preferred language. In-game text is not impacted by this change.