Apex Legends developers confirm upcoming buff for Caustic
The villainous Legend Caustic hasn’t been nearly as frightful to come up against since his nerf in the split of Season 8, but it seems the developers have plans to make his gas strong once again with an upcoming Apex Legends Caustic buff.
In Apex Legends Season 9: Legacy, many changes were brought in through the patch notes, with a variety of weapon buffs and nerfs, as well as Legend changes which ultimately effects the seasonal tier list/meta.
Apex Legends character Caustic is the game’s gas trapping scientist. However, his traps haven’t been as strong as they have in the past, reducing his effectiveness and ultimately causing Respawn to work on an upcoming buff.
In Season 8, the Chaos Theory update saw Caustic’s gas traps take some pretty big nerfs to counteract his popularity and overall devastating close range strength.
Caustic’s gas traps before this nerf were powerful and popular, having one of the highest pick and win rates during the start of Season 8.
Caustic’s gas trap tick damage was devastating, scaring those from pushing a team with a Caustic, as once you were in his gas, it was pretty hard to get out.
Further, the only real counter to Caustic was Caustic himself, as he is resistant to the damage and slow of enemy gas. This meant Caustic was extremely popular and powerful, so the developers decided to nerf his gas damage.
The gas damage was nerfed in the hopes of reducing the offensive nature of the gas while retaining his defensive presence of slowing fights and preventing pushes.
Apex Legends Caustic buff in Season 9: Legacy
This nerf ultimately didn’t succeed, as players began to notice the difference and were no longer scared of pushing through Caustic’s gas, causing his pick rate to drop as low as 2.6%.
It seems Respawn Entertainment has acknowledged this, and during a recent Reddit AMA, developer Daniel Klein confirmed that caustic would indeed be receiving some buffs once again in the next Season 9 update.
Although Daniel didn’t go into the specifics of what a Caustic buff will look like in Season 9, he mentioned they would rather buff some of his “non-damage outputs” rather than gas damage to get players motivated to pick him once again.
“The goal is that people should be terrified of your gas and try to leave ASAP. That’s currently not the case, and we will fix it.”
That’s all on Caustic’s upcoming buff. For more on Apex Legends, check out our article on Revenant’s upcoming buffs in Season 9: Legacy.
Image Credits: Respawn Entertainment