Apex Legends Season 2 Update – Patch notes, Battle Pass, Wattson, Map changes, Battle Charge

Apex Legends Season 2 is officially live, with a major update now live on PS4, Xbox One and PC, bringing major changes to the map, a brand-new legend in the form of Wattson, and a brand-new Battle Pass which will give players some brand new cosmetic items. 

Fans of the popular battle royale game have been anxious to get their hands on the second season of the title since Season 1 ended on June 18, with some huge improvements now live that should freshen it up after a disappointing first season.

The second season, which is titled “Battle Charge,” will continue the overarching storyline of the game, with Leviathians and flyers invading the island following an EMP which destroyed the repulsors which kept them at bay. Wattson has also been introduced as the latest Legend to take to the battlefield in search of victory. 

New Legend – Wattson

Just like the first season, Apex Legends Season 2 kicks off with a brand new character added to the game in the form of Wattson. The mastermind behind the arena in which the Legends do battle, Wattson uses electricity as her main weapon.

• Read More: Respawn CEO reveals “struggle” of meeting content demand in Apex Legends

While Wattson can use the power of electrical currents to do damage, her main role is as a support character, with her ultimate ability allowing her to place a pylon that repairs damaged shields on her teammates. Her tactical ability also lets her place an electrified fence, which slows down and damages her opponents, putting a dangerous barrier between her team and their enemies. 

Wattson’s full abilities are:

• Tactical Ability: Perimeter Security – Connect nodes to create electrified fences that damage and slow enemies.
• Passive Ability: Spark of Genius – Ultimate Accelerants fully charge your Ultimate Ability, and standing near interception pylons boosts your Tactical Ability recharge.
• Ultimate Ability: Interception Pylon – Place an electrified pylon that destroys incoming ordnance and repairs damaged shields as long as it stands. (Max: 3)

Apex Legends Season 2 Battle Pass

Many would agree that Season 1 had a pretty underwhelming Battle Pass, and Respawn worked as hard as possible to make sure fans were more excited by the second version by ramping up the cosmetics found inside. 

A major part of these improvements includes daily and weekly challenges. Much like rival game Fortnite, players will receieve brand-new challenges daily, alongside a number of weekly challenges that will be more challenging to complete than the daily ones, but provide a greater reward for your efforts. 

The developers also confirmed that the Season 2 Battle Pass will take less time to max out at Level 100, making it easier to receieve one of the three legendary skins that will be found in the Battle Pass. 

Apex Legends Season 2 map changes

The second season introduced several major changes to the Kings Canyon map, including two new named points-of-interest, a revamp of Shattered Forest, a lot of damage done to a variety of locations, and more.

You can check out the new locations and modifications by visiting our breakdown of all of the Season 2 map changes. 

Apex Legends Ranked Leagues

A major change going into Season 2 is the implementation of Ranked Leagues. Designed to reward players who are eager for a more competitive Apex Legends experience, players will be placed into one of six Ranked Leagues depending on their performance in-game, and can be promoted or relegated based on wins, kills, and score from matches you play. 

• Read More: Apex Legends: Everything we know about unreleased legend Crypto

The lowest rank in the game is Bronze, with the best labelled as Apex Predators. Players will be placed in matches with opponents of a similar level, so you won’t have to worry too much about facing the game’s greatest players if you find yourself struggling away in Bronze. 

Ranked Leagues kick off as soon as Season 2 launches, so players wont have long to wait until they can test their mettle against opponents. 

When is the Apex Legends Season 2 patch?

Apex Legends Season 2 officially kicked off on Tuesday, July 2. The update went live at 10 AM PST / 1PM EST / 6:00 PM BST. 

Console players on Xbox One and PS4 will need 20GB of space to download the Battle Charge patch, while those on PC will need to ensure they have 18GB of room on their hard drives if they want to get their hands on this update. 

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Apex Legends Season 2 Patch Notes

New Airdrop Weapon: L-STAR EMG [ watch it in action here ]

• Fires large high-damage plasma projectiles
• Will overheat if player fires for too long
• Comes with its own limited ammo supply
• Only available in Airdrops

New Hop-Up: Disruptor Rounds

• Increased damage to shielded targets.
• Compatibility: Alternator / RE-45

New Hop-Up: Hammerpoint Rounds

• Increased damage to unshielded targets.
• Compatibility: P2020, Mozambique.

New Attachments: Energy Mags

• Increases magazine capacity.
• Increases reload speed at rare and above.
• Compatibility: Havoc, Triple Take, Devotion.
• Reduced default mag sizes on compatible weapons.

Skullpiercer Hop-Up: Upgraded to gold tier & increased rarity.

Flatline:

• damage 16 -> 19

P2020:

• damage 12 -> 13

Triple Take x Precision Choke:

• choke time 1.5 -> 1.1

Alternator:

• damage 13 -> 15
• recoil mitigation increased for all barrel attachments.

Kraber:

• damage 125 -> 145
• headshot scale 2.0 -> 2.05
• leg damage scale 0.76 -> 0.8
• slightly increased rarity

Arc Star Tweaks

• Increased ignition delay from 2.5 to 2.8 seconds.
• Sticking a full health player with no armor will now down them.
• Players at the edge of the explosion no longer get their shields completely shredded.

Ammo Stack Sizes

• Shotgun max stack reduced from 64 to 16. Players now need multiple stacks of ammo to run a shotty.
• Energy max stack increased from 60 to 80; now matches Light/ Heavy ammo.

Rotated Gold Weapons

• Flatline
• Alternator
• RE45
• Mozambique
• P2020

Airdrop Weapon Spawn Rates

• L-STAR added to airdrop weapon loot tables.
• Airdrop weapon spawn rates now change based on early/ mid/ late game. For example, early game will spawn more Krabers, end game will spawn more Mastiffs.

Performance Optimizations

• Improved performance when firing weapons, especially for multi-projectile weapons like shotguns and Triple Take.
• In our testing this has contributed to delivering a smoother overall experience on both server and client, particularly during early game combat situations.

Bug fixes

• Fixed exploit where players could use weapon inspect to cancel out other weapon behaviors.
• EVA-8: ADS recoil now resettles back to starting point instead of a randomized offset of the starting point.
• Thermite Grenades: fixed an issue where players downed with thermite could be invincible to thermite after being revived.

General

• Fortified [ Gibraltar, Caustic ]
  • Damage reduction increased: 10% -> 15%
  • Fortified Legends are now immune to slow effects from weapon fire.
• Low Profile [ Wraith, Lifeline, Pathfinder ]
  • Low Profile increases incoming damage by 5%.

Bloodhound

• Eye of the Allfather
  • Enemies scanned now are tracked in real time instead of leaving a ghost image behind. The tracking lasts for 1.5 seconds.
  • Increased the angle of the scan to 110 from 90.
• Tracker
  • Increased clue duration to 90 seconds from 60 seconds.
  • Fixed a bug where energy weapons wouldn’t leave behind weapon fired clues.
  • Fixed a bug where movement clues would sometimes not be generated.

Mirage

• Vanishing Act
  • Mirage can now cancel out of his ultimate cloak early.
  • Mirage now has a small delay when disabling cloak.

Caustic

• Nox Gas
  • The magnitude of the slow is reduced by 50% when effecting teammates.

Gibraltar

• Dome of Protection
  • Increased the duration by 3 seconds.

Pathfinder

• Updated the hit box to better conform with the base model.
• We are also planning to make adjustments so his hitbox better reflects Legendary Skins as well for cases where it’s not matching up.

Lifeline

• D.O.C. heal drone now gets destroyed after 2 damage ticks by the circle.

STATS PAGE

• Added a stats page. You can access it by hovering over your name while in the Lobby and clicking it to inspect. The page will show you your overall account stats as well as access to your stats for each season and Ranked Series.
• We’re sure you all will have feedback on other stats you’d like to see here. What we’re shipping with Season 2 is just the start and we’re planning to build on it. We won’t promise anything but definitely let us know what other stats you want shown after you’ve played around with it.
• KNOWN ISSUES: There will be some stats [like assists for example] that will start counting for Season 2 but won’t account for progress before that. This is because until we added the feature, this stuff wasn’t being counted. We’re looking at future improvements to retroactively update these areas that we hope to address down the road.

THE RING

• With Season 2, we’ll trying out new circle closing speed, size, and damage that now applies to both Ranked Leagues and the normal Apex Queue.

• Ring Damage is now the following:
  • Round 1: 2% damage taken per tick.
  • Round 2: 5% damage taken per tick.
  • Round 3: 10% damage taken per tick.
  • Round 4: 20% damage taken per tick.
  • Round 5: 20% damage taken per tick.
  • Round 6 and beyond: 25% damage taken per tick.

• Ring start and closing speed is now the following:
  • First Circle
    • Starts closing after: 3 minutes.
    • Time to close: 2 minutes.
  • Second Circle
    • Starts closing after: 2 minutes 30 seconds.
    • Time to close: 2 minutes.
  • Third Circle
    • Starts closing after: 2 minutes 15 seconds.
    • Time to close: 2 minutes.
  • Fourth Circle
    • Starts closing after: 2 minutes.
    • Time to close: 2 minutes.
  • Fifth Circle
    • Starts closing after: 1 minute 30 seconds.
    • Time to close: 1 minutes 40 seconds.
  • Sixth Circle
    • Starts closing after: 1 minute 30 seconds.
    • Time to close: 1 minutes 40 seconds.
  • Seventh Circle
    • Starts closing after: 2 minutes.
    • Time to close: 1 minute 20 seconds.
  • Eighth Circle
    • Starts closing after: 20 seconds.
    • Time to close: 1 minute 20 seconds.

• Ring radius for the first circle has been slightly reduced [it’s about 9% smaller than it was before].

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Pings
  • When pinging a closed door, the player will now say “closed door here”.
  • When pinging an open door, the player will now say “someone’s been here”.
  • When a player requests a hop up, if the gun only accepts one kind of hop up, the player will callout that specific hop up they are looking for. If the gun accepts multiple hop ups, the player won’t vocalize it but all possible hop ups requested will show up in the obit feed.
• Arc stars that are stuck to players should no longer fail to do damage when the part of the player it is stuck to is intersecting another object.
• Made visual improvements to the Legends while in the Lobby and character select.
• Added improvements and polish to the Legend’s animations while skydiving.
• Improved melee hit detection on the hover tank while it’s moving.
• Server optimizations.
• Improved server and client performance when firing weapons, especially for multi-projectile weapons like shotguns and TripleTake.
• Large doors and Supply Bins can now be used while viewing them from more extreme angles.
• Slow Effects will now slow players equally regardless of their controller settings.
• Wraith’s Heirloom will now more reliably show its lightning visualFX.
• Heal items will now more reliably show the correct model when switching between different types.
• General optimizations to improve framerate.
• Fixed issue with geometry sometimes flickering when viewed from a long distance.
• Death Box rarity colors are now more visible from a distance.
• “Send Friend Request” tool-tip now shows up when hovering over teammates Banners while viewing the “Squad Eliminated” screen and “Squads” tab during a match.
• Made it so that your weapon won’t play its priming animation when you pull it out after skydiving.
• Fixed issue with skydive continuing to loop falling soundFX after landing.
• Apex will no longer swap from full screen to windowed mode automatically if you shift to focus on other applications while Apex is booting up.
• Fixed issue with players seeing their Origin friends listed as offline when they aren’t.
• Made improvements to voice chat for PC.
• Fixed issue where you could lose your Steam friends list after restarting Apex on PC.
• Fixed issue where sometimes players would get a black screen during character select.
• Added “Flash Hider” description to the Gold Barrel Stabilizer attachment. It always did this but the information wasn’t provided well so we added it to the description when inspecting the attachment.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed a hit registration bug that could occur if you fired your weapon while being damaged by an enemy shotgun.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes load screens would not appear properly and players would temporarily see the training map before loading into a match.
• Fixed issue with players not always hearing selected quip dialogue when performing a finisher or being executed.
• Fixed issue with Apex not working correctly when SLI or Crossfire is enabled.
• Fixed bug with the consumables wheel sometimes appearing blank.
• Fixed bug where players would sometimes get stuck on the Battle Pass Level screen.
• Fixed bug where The Unlock button would be greyed out when it shouldn’t be when trying to view rewards.
• Fixed bug where players would sometimes be unable to exit the Battle Pass tab after selecting it from the Lobby.
• Fixed an exploit where players could jump while downed.
• Fixed issue where sometimes the client would crash to the Dashboard when entering character select on Xbox One.
• Fixed a bug where pinging a sniper stock in your inventory would show up as “looking for Grip”
• Fixed a bug that caused players and loot to begin sliding permanently or launching inconsistently onto Supply Ship surfaces after doing melee attacks against the Supply Ship walls.
• Fixed bug that could cause players to shift to a location under the map when switching between players while spectating.
• Fixed bug for cases where performing a melee attack while inspecting an item would cause the attack to slow down and not deal damage.
• [X1 only] Fixed bug where players were not being rewarded “The Player” achievement after hitting level 50. If you have reached level 50 and not received it in the past it should now be awarded retroactively.
• Fixed the bug that sometimes caused Apex to crash when plugging a PS4 controller into your PC while the game is active.
• Fixed bug that caused an “Out of Bounds” warning and timer while riding the Supply Ship over certain areas of Kings Canyon.
• General improvements to game stability related to various script errors.
• LEGENDS
  • Bloodhound
    • Fixed bug where players wouldn’t create movement evidence markers unless they were sprinting.
    • Fixed bug where sometimes energy weapons wouldn’t create ‘weapon fired’ evidence markers.
  • Wraith
    • Fixed bug where Wraith’s jetpack boosters could still be seen while phasing.
    • Fixed issue where in some rare cases, performing a Finisher while down player is entering a Wraith Portal.
    • Fixed an exploit that allowed players to place extra Dimensional Portals.
  • Octane
    • Fixed a bug that caused throwable items to bounce off a jump pad without actually touching it.