What is wrong with Wattson in Apex Legends Season 9: Legacy?
Respawn Entertainment’s latest season for Apex Legends has been a great success, bring loads of new content and players to the game. However, it seems one of the changes made for the new season has nerfed one of Apex Legends’ most niche characters, Wattson.
Apex Legends Season 9 update brought a bunch of new content for players to enjoy, including Arenas, Valkyrie, Infested Olympus, and the Bocek Bow.
As well as content, Season 9 also brought an abundance of patch notes, with various buffs and nerfs to weapons and Legends. It seems one change inadvertently affected Wattson’s kit, currently leaving her in an awful state.
The Season 9: Legacy patch notes brought some interesting changes and updates to shift the meta from Season 8. The only Legend who actually received a buff in this season’s patch was Fuse, receiving an extra Knuckle Cluster.
Apart from Fuse, most other Legends either received nerfs or indirect buffs like the removal of Low Profile for Wraith, Lifeline, and Wattson.
Although Wattson received this slight buff, it seems Respawn has accidentally nerfed her electric fences immensely, as players noticed something different about their effectiveness.
Apex Legends Wattson nerf
In the patch notes, the developers decided to nerf the popular Arc Stars, removing their ability to slow aim and movement on a stick:
“Sticking someone should feel rewarding, considering it’s a rare occurrence that’s difficult to pull off. While an argument can be made that getting stuck should be a personal death sentence, the inability to at least relocate and spare teammates from the follow-up explosion makes it hard to counter against a coordinated team. This change should help mitigate that without stripping away the satisfaction of hitting a nice stick.“
This change was widely accepted by the community, most likely due to how much damage they do regardless of the movement penalty. In the hands of an experienced player, Arc Stars can feel very overpowered, as sticking someone essentially takes them out of the game.
Arc Stars’ slowness originally caused similarities to that of Wattson’s fences, as when a player walks through an electric fence, the same animation and movement penalty is inflicted. However, this change to the Arc Stars has inadvertently affected Wattson’s kit, causing the Legend’s electric fences to no longer inflict the stun/movement penalty they used to.
This is clearly a mistake by the devs, and perhaps the Arc Star’s electric stun has the same or similar code to the one players are supposed to get when walking through Wattson’s electric fences.
The Apex Legends devs then investigated the issue, and have a solution planned for it. Respawn comms director Ryan K. Rigney stated that they’d fix Wattson’s fence in a brand-new patch soon.
For more on Apex Legends, stay tuned on Charlie INTEL and check our recent article on unreleased Valkyrie skins.
Image Credits: Respawn Entertainment