Bangalore and Caustic secretly nerfed in Apex Legends Chaos Theory update

Some quiet changes have been introduced in the Chaos Theory event update in Apex Legends that weren’t revealed in the patch notes, significantly affecting both Caustic and Bangalore’s abilities.

Although very different Legends, both in terms of character and abilities, Bangalore and Caustic have one thing in common: their smoke.

Technically, Caustic’s is actually toxic gas, but the impact of effectively blinding opponents is the same. Or, at least, it was the same – before the latest update on March 9.

It wasn’t mentioned in the patch notes anywhere, but the developers have confirmed that a big change was made to the smoke effect caused by these Legend’s abilities.

Smoke/Gas nerfs in Apex Legends

As players jumped in to try out the new patch, it didn’t take long for some to notice that the smoke effects were much easier to see through. Essentially, the gas and smoke looked a lot ‘thinner’ than previously.

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A good example of this is shown in the clip below from @psyycheout – not only is the gas now dealing less damage, it’s also much easier to see through.

https://twitter.com/psyycheout/status/1369356933153648642

At first, players thought this might be an unintended bug, but Respawn dev Eric Hewitt has confirmed they intentionally reduced particle FX count for Caustic, Bangalore, and Gibraltar abilities.

This reduced particle density leads to increased visibility through the smoke caused by these abilities, making them much less effective.

No reasoning has been given for the change, which is particularly surprising for Bangalore – generally considered one of the lesser-powered Legends, relatively.

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Caustic meanwhile has been hit with lots of successive nerfs. This might be good news for players who found him frustrating to play against, but for Caustic mains, will be bitterly disappointing.

So far, this change still hasn’t been added to the latest patch notes.