Next week is a big one for Apex Legends as a lot of new content makes its way to the game such as new skins and Heirlooms but that’s not all as custom reticles and changes to the Arc Stars join the game as well. According to popular player demand, the developers took note of the Arc Stars being overpowered and have decided to bring changes to them making the game more balanced.
Players have been on the fence regarding how Arc Stars used to work, so in the upcoming Raiders collection event, the developers have finally decided to put the concerns of players to rest by introducing changes to that game mechanic. This post talks about all the new changes that have been made to the Arc Stars and new custom Reticles being introduced to the game.
Changes To Arc Stars In Apex Legends
In the new update we see the slow debuff making a return to the Arc Star, however, the devs have tried to balance out the item by lowering down the total damage of the weapon on shielded enemies. According to the patch notes:
Arc Star
Sticks
- Base stick damage lowered from 30 -> 10
- Shield Damage Multiplier increased from x3 -> x4 (stick on shielded enemy will now max out at 40 instead of 90)
- Sticking an enemy now applies a slow debuff (reverting Legacy update change)
Non-Sticks
- Slow duration is now driven by distance to the center of Arc Star detonation
Dev Note
Arc stars excel in a lot of areas. They have high damage potential coupled with a punishing slow and can be thrown more accurately than other ordnance types. Removing the stick slow created some degenerate play patterns and often made it hard to tell when you got stuck in the heat of battle. We’re bringing that back with a tradeoff of lower damage potential and a proximity-based slow falloff in non-stick cases. These changes make stick scenarios more consistent across shield types and make arc stars less effective at area denial.
Source: EA
Custom Reticles Make Their Way To Apex
The update doesn’t only have bad news for your favorite weapon. There’s a lot of good things as well, such as the newly added Custom Reticle system that allows you to change the colors of your reticles and preview them over the different environment to test out the visibility. The reticle system was first teased on Twitter.
And was later confirmed through the official patch notes:
New Custom Reticle Color System
Custom Reticles are here! The new UI can be opened under Gameplay Settings by selecting the Customize option under Reticle.
Once in the new Custom Reticle UI you’ll be able to:
- Select a color from some of our recommended favorites
- Use the color and brightness sliders to find that perfect color
- Manually enter an RGB color
- Toggle between 4 different hand picked environments to preview your reticle
Dev Note
You’ll be able to pick from a lot of colors in the new system, but darker colors won’t be selectable because of how some of our reticles react to the world (additive effect) which would make them invisible. If a manually entered RGB value is in that range, we will do our best to keep that hue but will bring that value closer to a safe color.
From all of us on the Apex Legends team, we wish you all a safe and wonderful Holiday! Thank you for the support this year.
It’s been a good year for Apex Legends, and it seems like it’ll only keep on getting better as time progresses. What do you think of this update? Let us know in the comment section below.
