Respawn hope to bring Wraith “under control” in Apex Legends Season 8
RespawnThe debate around Wraith is still raging on in Apex Legends. Despite change after change, she’s still a power pick in a lot of situations. However, in Season 8, Respawn are pulling out the final straw to try and bring Wraith “under control” once and for all.
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Wraith has been slowly tuned down over the 20-month history of Apex Legends from outrageously broken, to somewhat manageable. Despite being hit with a big set of nerfs in June’s Lost Treasures update though, she still reigns supreme in the Outlands.
However, Respawn aren’t giving up hope on finally bringing the voidwalker “under control.” In an interview on the Third Party podcast, developer Daniel Klein said that more changes are on the way in Season 8.
Respawn EntertainmentWhile he joked about just straight up removing Wraith from the game, Respawn actually have a direction they want to take. They don’t want to hit Wraith’s kit any harder. They want to see if they can “fix” her hitboxes.
“I don’t want to hit her kit any more. We’ve pushed that to the breaking point where it’s barely still fun, but the extremely wind-up on her tactical — as much as it was necessary — it puts the ability more into the camp of cerebral power rather than satisfying in the moment power,” he said.
“With Wraith, our approach is going to be very similar to Pathfinder. We’re going to take a look at her hitboxes and see how much wiggle room we have there. With Pathfinder, it turned out that we had so much… that was a 20% increase in hitbox size.”
The Pathfinder changes were shipped in the Season 7 update earlier in November, and have made the grappling robot a bit easier to hit while dashing across Olympus and the other maps.
Despite Respawn’s hopes though, nothing is locked in. They’ve only just started scouting out the work to change Wraith’s hitboxes. Klein stated he hopes the changes will be enough that Respawn could even look at buffing Wraith down the line, but the solution could be a dead end.
Respawn Entertainment“Nothing is guaranteed yet, we haven’t started work yet. I’ve asked one of our technical artists to take a look at it. Whenever he gets around to it, we will know more.
“My earnest hope is that we can bring her under control with just hitbox changes, and then maybe even look at ways at making her more in-the-moment fun again, and find a balance point between her tactical now and what it used to be.”
They’re not willing to risk “giving Wraith more power” by shipping some changes early before they tackle her hitboxes, so don’t expect ability buffs soon. However, in Apex Legends Season 8, expect Wraith to feel a little bit different.