Apex Legends is just hours away from launching its latest season, titled “Amped.” This season will take players back into the skies with a reworked Olympus map, alongside several tweaked mechanics and balanced Legends. Valkyrie, Rampart, and Horizon are the three characters set to receive the most significant updates, giving them a fresh lease on life for this new chapter.
Legend Designer Ian Holstead, Lead Legend Designer Casey O’Brien, Lead Battle Royale Designer Eric Canavese, and Lead Ranked Designer Clement Bachellerie recently took time to discuss some of the bigger changes coming to Apex Legends this week.
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### Big Updates for Valkyrie, Rampart, and Horizon
**Shacknews:** Can you go over some of the bigger changes to Valkyrie, Rampart, and Horizon? I know they’re getting major updates. How did you decide to approach them given the changing meta, and what can players expect?
**Ian Holstead, Legend Designer:** Valkyrie is definitely the primary focus. She received a revamped jetpack with altered cooldowns and a significantly increased speed. This changes how she’s played but should make her much more powerful. She also got quality of life improvements and buffs to her Tactical ability, along with some exciting upgrades to her Ultimate. Overall, she should feel fresh and exciting to play.
For Rampart, we focused on upgrading her walls. Her walls are now much more versatile and usable in various situations, making players feel safer. We also added a new mechanic that grants a big speed boost when dealing damage near her walls, plus some new upgrades.
Horizon received fun, movement-related upgrades to bring back some of the power she lost over the years.
We chose these Legends because they had been somewhat neglected, with low pick rates, and we felt they deserved some love. They also presented opportunities to integrate well into the new “velocity speed” playstyle this season. So, they were exciting candidates to improve.
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### The Double Tap Hop-Up: A New Twist on the Alternator
**Shacknews:** What can you tell me about the Double Tap hop-up? It sounds like you’re really excited about this.
**Casey O’Brien, Lead Legend Designer:** The Double Tap hop-up is coming to the Alternator this season. It’s a cool concept where the Alternator shoots from both barrels at once, effectively doubling the bullets fired. It significantly boosts the close-range potential of the Alternator, which is a solid middle-of-the-pack SMG.
With our push toward a more close-range meta, this hop-up fits perfectly. Currently, the game has been favoring long-range engagements, but we want to shift that momentum toward close-range fights. Double the bullets means double the damage and double the fun, letting players really shred enemies in close combat.
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### Embracing a More Close-Range Meta
**Shacknews:** You mentioned moving toward a close-range meta. Which Legends benefit most from this shift?
**Ian Holstead:** Many Legends can thrive in different scenarios. Some are naturally great in close-range situations—for example, Gibraltar loves shotgun metas. However, most Legends should benefit to some degree from this change. It’s challenging to pinpoint just one that will dominate with SMGs, but the overall meta shift should positively impact a variety of characters.
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### Introducing the Mantle Boost Movement Update
**Shacknews:** Tell us about the Mantle Boost update and how you’re improving movement and locomotion for all players.
**Clement Bachellerie, Lead Ranked Designer:** Movement is core to Apex Legends’ identity, so we always look for ways to enhance it. We’ve observed players inventing advanced techniques like supergliding and tap-strafing, which are pretty advanced and require specific hardware or keybind setups.
Mantle Boost is our attempt to formalize some of these advanced movements, making them more accessible to a broader player base. It takes techniques that many players are already using and integrates them officially into the game. This should open up more fun, advanced movement options to more players.
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### How Player Feedback Shapes Balance Changes
**Shacknews:** How has recent player feedback influenced which weapons and Legends you plan to balance?
**Clement Bachellerie:** We’ve started to share more insight into our decision-making in patch notes, explaining when changes are driven by player feedback or unusual pick rates. Moving forward, we want to dive deep into balancing rationale to keep the community informed.
We constantly monitor live data and player reactions and remain ready to deploy balance changes between patches as needed to prevent any runaway “broken” trends.
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### Anticipating Changes in the Apex Legends Global Series (ALGS)
**Shacknews:** The ALGS is a massive part of the game. How do you expect the pro scene to respond to these changes?
**Casey O’Brien:** From a weapons perspective, we’re dialing back some marksman rifles and snipers, which have dominated ALGS recently. We definitely expect a meta shift at the highest levels, moving away from long-range combat and toward close-range fights. Some players will be excited for this new dynamic, while others might be less thrilled—it always depends on the person. But overall, we anticipate a noticeable shift.
**Ian Holstead:** On the Legend side, changes should be interesting. Legend bans have already affected how characters are chosen in ALGS, and many of the Legends we’re buffing were popular at some point but have since fallen out of favor (Rampart being an exception, still seeing some play). It’ll be fascinating to see how these updates influence their comeback.
Between Legend bans and weapon changes, the pro meta remains quite diverse and dynamic, which is excellent for competitive play.
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With the Amped season set to launch soon, Apex Legends players can look forward to a refreshed experience with faster movement, revamped Legends, and a shift toward thrilling close-quarters combat. Stay tuned and get ready to take to the skies once again!
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146645/apex-legends-amped-interview