Apex Legends™: Breach Patch Notes

Legends, it’s just about time for the newest season: Breach, so grab your squadmates and get ready! As with any new season, there’s plenty of new and exciting changes to look forward to! Breach adds Hardlight Mesh to Apex Legends, encouraging new breach-and-clear gameplay. Also, Fuse is getting a Rework, Catalyst and Bloodhound are getting updates, and we’re seeing the meta continue to shift towards close quarters combat with Marksman nerfs and Shotgun buffs! Plus, we think you’re going to like the changes to Knockdown Shields and Backpacks… So get ready to kick down the door on Apex Legends: BREACH.

For an overview of some of Breach’s key updates, check out our highlights blog from last week and for details on all seasonal changes, please read on!

A NEW ENTRY INTO THE WORLD - Hardlight

The Apex Games are evolving once again, adding new ways for players to move, engage, and fight. Legends will encounter Hardlight across windows in structures scattered throughout the world. Hardlight acts as destructible and breachable Windows. While Hardlight Meshes are intact they are translucent: allowing players to see through them, but they block projectiles and player movement. When broken or damaged, Hardlight Meshes rebuild after a lengthy delay. 

Hardlight takes Damage from weapon fire, and increased Damage from specific weapon classes, Explosives, Melee, and Legends’ Abilities. Break Hardlight to breach into buildings creating new entries, and find new angles to lay down an assault on opponents.

Hardlight can be Rebuilt or Reinforced by Controller Legends. Reinforced Hardlight is much stronger than normal Hardlight meshes, taking more damage before breaking. Providing Controller Legends an opportunity to bunker down and delay enemy assaults.

Hardlight Details:

• At Match Start: Hardlight Meshes are automatically spawned into the world at preset positions on various structures.

• Hardlight Mesh defaults to 200 HP.

• Hardlight takes increased damage from Explosives (8.5x), Shotguns (2.5x), Snipers (3.5x), and Legend Abilities (10.0x).

• Hardlight takes damage from Ring.

• Hardlight cannot repair, rebuild, or be Reinforced in Ring.

• Upon Reinforce, Hardlight health total is set to 1250HP.

• Hardlight cannot be rebuilt immediately after breaking. Rebuild Delay: 4 seconds

• Controllers subject to a limit on the number of Reinforced Hardlights: Max 4 Reinforced Hardlights.

  • Reinforced Hardlight Decays when the original reinforcing player exceeds Reinforcement Limit.

  • Reinforced Hardlight Decays when there are no players nearby for an extended period of time. 

  • When Reinforced Hardlight Decays, it returns to a standard Hardlight Mesh state it decays to baseline Health 200 HP.

We will be monitoring community feedback about Hardlight as the season progresses and making adjustments as necessary.

We are implementing focused changes based on learnings from our previous matchmaking tests. Our previous end-of-season tests that restricted Masters (+Pred) players from matching below various Diamond ranks have led us to bake in these changes directly into each season. To provide the best possible matchmaking experience, we will be shifting the restrictions dynamically each season as Ranked populations naturally shift throughout the duration of the split. The timing of when these restrictions kick in, as well as exactly which Diamond ranks can match with Masters, will depend on when the population of those players is high enough to sustain good matchmaking. We will continue to provide additional updates throughout the coming season as we monitor and adjust.

In Season 28, in response to community feedback, we’re taking it a step further by adding more audio customization options and giving you control. You can look forward to more granular customization options surrounding: Legend Dialogue, Ping Dialogue, and Announcer Dialogue. In Season 27 we added the Focused Mix to provide a more robust contextual in-game soundscape - we’re excited to continue down this path, providing you with even more options to use to customize your experience. In addition to other smaller changes, we’ve also split enemy and geo bullet impact audio in order to prioritize them independently, ensuring players always know when they’ve landed a shot.

FUSE

Dev Note: This old dog needed some new tricks. In particular, Fuse’s ultimate was seen as being too difficult to use and often unimpactful. The ult’s new behavior should make it easier to find effective use cases while cementing Fuse’s identity as mobile artillery. With the ultimate focused on clearing out large spaces, we wanted to focus the tactical on being quicker and easier to tag enemies. The reduced duration on Knuckle Cluster can also help you follow up on your own damage, particularly alongside his passive change. Knuckle Jumper replaces Knuckle Hustler as a movement option that feels more Fuse-y, with plenty of nuance to master the many ways to use it.

Abilities

• Passive

  • Fuse is no longer slowed when taking explosive damage

• Tactical

  • Faster weapon stow time when switching to the tactical

  • Flattened the trajectory to make tap-firing more accurate

  • Reduced delay before explosions start up (was 1.7s, now 1.0s)

  • Increased base damage (was 10, now 15)

  • Reduced the duration by 50%

• Ultimate

  • Refreshed ultimate behavior.  Fires a mortar that explodes against the ground, then sprays out smaller bombs around its landing point.  When aiming down sights, the mortar can pierce cover up to 13m deep and deliver explosives to the other side.

Upgrades

• Level 2

  • Pyro Techniques: Your ultimate will drop behind patches of fire for 8 seconds after the bombs explode

  • Knuckle Jumper: Jumping when next to your own Knuckle Clusters will give you an explosive boost (destroys the cluster afterwards).

• Level 3

  • Reignition: Dealing explosive damage to enemies recharges your ultimate (for every 2 damage dealt, reduces cooldown by 1 second)

• Removed Ring Master, Scar Tissue, and Knuckle Hustler

CATALYST

Dev note: Catalyst has needed help for a while, especially as other controllers have gotten buffs in the past few seasons. While the ultimate is generally well liked, the tactical needed some attention to help her compete; the bigger area and extra max trap lets you block off more territory. With a reduced activation time and two new upgrade options, you should have more options on how to deploy your spikes to distract and punish your opponents. We have some bigger changes in the works for her, but we feel this is enough to give Catalyst players more opportunities to shine. We will be actively looking for community feedback for how these changes feel, so Catalyst mains, get loud!

Abilities

• Passive

  • Can now reinforce up to 4 doors (was 2)

• Tactical

  • Flattened the trajectory, slightly lowered the pitch, and increased the overall range

  • Increased size by roughly 50%

  • Reduced the delay before spikes can deal damage (was 2s, now 1s)

  • Can now have 3 traps maximum (was 2)

  • Activation radius reduced by 20%

    • This is how close you have to be before the spikes stand up and the core is vulnerable

• Ultimate

  • You can now toggle to deploy the ultimate horizontally

  • Length increased by 5m

  • The wall can now build up through standard doors, Lifeline’s D.O.C. Halo, and Gibraltar’s Dome of Protection.

  • Can now be placed on steeper angles

  • Reduced Dark Veil duration when enemies walk through (was 7s, now 5s)

Upgrades

• Level 2

  • Hidden Spikes: The spike pool is now hidden to enemies while inactive

  • Sole Piercer: Spike traps activate 50% faster and deal 5 more damage per hit

• Removed Sister Spikes and Long Veil

BLOODHOUND

Dev note: As the seasons have progressed, Bloodhound has found themselves outclassed by other Recon characters. The tactical and passive changes can help you track where enemy squads are while reducing distractions. Big quality of life changes to the ultimate, on top of the new upgrades, should make it easier to chain kills instead of getting quickly shut down as the fights get more intense. We intend to give them a bigger set of changes down the road, but we’re hoping this is enough to push the veteran Legend back towards relevance as we retool the kit.

Abilities

• Passive

  • Enemies outside of 13m no longer block white ravens from spawning (Flock upgrade brought into base kit)

  • Clues more than 13m away no longer block White ravens (was ~50m)

• Tactical

  • Total scan duration up to 4s (was 3s), full-body duration remains half the full scan duration (so now 2s, was 1.5s)

  • Reduced screen coloration during scan

  • Fewer clues will pop-up on screen when your tactical successfully scans an enemy

• Ultimate: 

  • Cooldown reduced to 2.5 minutes (was 4 minutes)

  • Activation time reduced by ~20%

  • After activation, the wider FOV gradually shifts back to your normal FOV

  • Knocks while your ultimate is active increase the duration by 5s (will always reset to 10s if below)

  • (Unchanged) Knocks while your ultimate is active resets your tactical duration

    • This has been active for a while but is now called out in the ability description

Upgrades

• Level 2

  • Taste of Blood: Regen 50 health when getting a knock while your ultimate is active

  • Raven’s Flight: When activating your white ravens, they can ping enemies twice as far as normal

• Level 3

  • Hunter’s Agility: Your tactical is faster to use and has -5s cooldown

  • Eye of the Allfather removed from level 2

• Removed Raven’s Blessing, Flock, and Sighthound

CRYPTO

Dev Note: We wanted power coupling to add value for Crypto while actively piloting the drone and scanning enemies. But with the current version, it's main impact is in refunding ult charge on EMP scan. To help refocus the upgrade, we changed the behavior so that it no longer gains ult charge on EMP scan. From data we also saw that the amount of ult charge gained from players was too generous so we're taking the opportunity to bring that in line as well.

• Prevent Power Coupling for 5s after EMP

• Reduced charge gained from scanning players from 10 to 5

PATHFINDER

Dev Note: Grapple God is the runaway upgrade choice at level 3. We wanted to offer some more benefit to Feeling Zippy without a big refresh for Pathfinder so the choices are more compelling.

• Feeling Zippy additionally increases allied movement speed on Energized Ziplines from 1000 -> 1350

• Feeling Zippy additionally increases allied acceleration on Energized Ziplines from 700 -> 800

OCTANE

Dev Note: Daredevils time extension was letting Octane chain sequential fights longer than we'd like. As such we're making an adjustment to the max time extension.

• Max Duration extension reduced from 6s to 3s

ANIMATIONS

New inspect animations

• EVA 8

• Peacekeeper

• Sentinel

MARKSMAN WEAPONS

G7 Scout \[Care Package]

• Added Hop-up: Double Tap Trigger

• Damage increased to 37 (was 36)

• Increased rate of fire

• Can be equipped with sniper optics

Bocek Compound Bow

• Max damage decreased to 60 (was 65)

• Max energized damage decreased to 50 (was 55)

• Increased draw time

30-30 Repeater

• Decreased base damage to 41 (was 43)

• Decreased charged damage multiplier

• Slightly increased charge time

Triple Take

• Reduced rate of fire

• Slightly increased choke time

PISTOL

P2020 \[Floor Loot]

• Removed Hop-Up: Kinetic Feeder

• Damage decreased to 23 (was 25)

• Reduced reload speed

• Reduced rate of fire

• Increased enhanced hipfire spread

SHOTGUNS

Dev Note: With Hardlight making its grand entrance into the Apex Games, it felt right for the Breach and Clear weapon class to make their way to the spotlight. Shotguns are getting a little love with some targeted updates and new hop-up additions.

Mastiff

• Decreased pellets per blast to 5 (was 6)

• Damage per pellet increased to 19 (was 16)

• Adjusted blast pattern

EVA-8

• Slightly increased rate of fire

• Tightened blast pattern

LOCKED HOP-UPS

Dual Shell

• 300 Locked Hop-Up Points to unlock

• Added to: Mastiff and 30-30 Repeater

Hammerpoints

• 500 Locked Hop-Up Points to unlock

• Added to: P2020

Disruptors

• 500 Locked Hop-Up Points to unlock

• Added to: Peacekeeper

Gun Shield Generator

• Removed from: Tripletake, Hemlok and R301

Graffiti Mod

• Removed from: Volt and Mastiff

• Added to: L-STAR and Longbow DMR

Double Tap Trigger

• Added to: EVA-8

Turbocharger

• Decreased points to unlock to 500 on the Devotion (was 600)

Care Package Rotation

• P2020 return to the floor (details below)

• G7 Scout enters the Care Package (details below)

Gold Weapon Rotation

• Sentinel, VK-47 Flatline, Peacekeeper, 30-30 Repeater, Akimbo P2020

Evo Changes

• Reviving Teammates only provides full Evo (100 points) for the first 2 Revives per team per game. Each subsequent Revive will reward 25 less Evo until no Evo is rewarded. 

Dev Note: At higher levels of play, we have observed players are intentionally getting knocked to set up Revives for excessive Evo gain. We’re activating a diminishing return on Revives to reduce the max Evo that can be farmed in this way. Don’t feed face for Evo, it does not pay dividends.

Dev Note: We’re doing a little loot pool clean-up with this patch. Integrated Knockdown Shields not only keep your survivability consistent with Evo progression across the game, but it also means that when you are looting, you will be finding more desirable items in the loot pool. We’re actioning on community feedback and making changes to White Backpacks, giving players an easier looting ramp up in early game, and removing an item of negligible value in late game. Now, in their place, you’ll find more of what you want and start with more inventory space.

Knockdown Shields

• Removed from loot pool.

• Knockdown shield level is now tied to legend level.

  • i.e. Legend Level 1 = White Knockdown

Backpacks

• White backpack removed from loot pool.

• White backpack added to starter kit.

Pubs & Ranked

• Broken Moon 

• E-District

• World’s Edge

Mixtape 

• 2/10/26 - 3/24/26 Map Rotation

  • TDM

    • Fragment, Skull Town, Zeus Station

  • CONTROL

    • Production Yard, Barometer, Lava Siphon

  • GUN RUN

    • Wattson Pylon, Monument, Skull Town

Drop Zones disabled in Ranked

• All Ranked matches return to the singular Dropship deploy, with Jump Masters leading your skydives into the BR, putting the game start back into your hands, Legends. 

Dev Note: Drop Zones was a big change for Ranked, a way to bring fairer and faster starts to the Ranked experience. While we saw positive reactions and outcomes for some players, it was not a universal win for everyone. Some players felt that having randomly assigned Drop Zones deterred them from the playstyle they wanted and greatly impacted their match outcome. For now, returning to the big Dropship brings us back to known ground and puts full control back in your hands. We are still working out what the future looks like for Drop Zones, as part of the overall future of Ranked and competitive play.

Ranked Ladders (coming later this split)

Wildcard

• 2/10/26 - 3/10/26

• Wildcard: Kings Canyon

Wild Cards

• Wild Card Rotation

  • Here are the Wild Cards that will be available this season:

    • Chain Reaction

      • Damage is chained to additional enemies within an affected area

    • Crackerjack

      • Instantly reload weapon on knock

    • Extra Ordnance

      • The player gains the ability to carry +1 Ordnance

    • Fast Draw

      • Reload weapons and use shield cells faster

    • Get Up and Go

      • When a player revives a teammate, both receive a burst of speed

    • Good Doctor

      • Revive teammates with additional health and shields

    • Gren-Aid

      • Mark enemies damaged by your explosives

    • Love Potion

      • When using a consumable, nearby teammates receive the same health

    • Sent Packing

      • Explosions have increased knockback.

    • Smoke Out

      • Drop smoke cover when downed, smoke regens shields for self and teammates

    • Status Report

      • Reveal enemy locations on knock

Wildcard Respawning

• When players die in quick succession, they will be more aggressively pushed further away from their previous death location and closer towards the center of the ring. 

Dev Note: After parsing the data from Wildcard matches, we are seeing an emerging pattern that the majority of fights are happening in the same POI for a large portion of a Wildcard match. We hope that this change will slow down the rate at which players continue to re-land at a hot drop POI and allow for a bit more breathing room for players to reset.

Controller Legends

• Controller Legends can now remotely pick up their deployed tacticals, just as they can in other game modes.

Dev Note: With Wildcard disabling all Class Perks, we observed this to be a massive QoL improvement for players and have now enabled this perk.

• Bot Royale has evolved, it is now a full BR experience mixing humans and Apex Bots.

• Bot Royale Evolved lobbies will consist of 1-5 full human squads and 15-19 Apex Bots squads (20 squads total).

• Bot Royale Evolved has a tighter matchmaking compared to Trios to make sure you have an opponent at your level. If we cannot find those, we backfill with bots.

• Bot Royale Evolved has the same game length and ring tuning as Unranked BR (whereas the original Bot Royale had shorter matches) for a full BR experience.

• XP gains are no longer capped, and the ability to progress your Challenges has been added! 

• Earning Badges is still restricted, and no stats will advance while playing this mode. 

Dev Note: By designing a space with less pressure than Unranked, Ranked and Wildcard, we hope to provide a game mode that can be played for different use cases: Learning the game at your own pace, practice with a friend, warm-up before jumping into a more intense game mode, wind down after some high-intensity ranked games, etc. Regardless of what drives you to play Bot Royale Evolved, your time will be well spent and you will continue to progress towards Challenge and Account rewards.

• New accuracy system

  •  that rewards players for moving and shooting. Stand still and their accuracy will increase!

• New drop logic system

  • Apex Bots will distribute evenly across POIs, allowing the decision to hotdrop on you - the player!

• Improved ring survival

  • Apex Bots have a better understanding of the ring, will rotate to safe areas and avoid fighting while in the ring.

• Improved strafing

  • When in combat range, bots will strafe to avoid incoming damage

• New Bot Loadout System

  • While Apex Bots will still loot, as they survive into further rounds their loadouts will improve with better attachments and better equipment. Making them a tougher target in further rounds.

• Improved Squad Coherence

  • Apex Bot squads will no longer roam away from their squad, they’ll stick close to their squad leader to move as a group and attack as a group.

Dev Note: Improvements to Apex Bots are key to providing a fun and challenging experience for our lower-skilled players, as well as improving the overall matchmaking quality for unranked BR modes. We hope that you enjoy the new Apex Bots as we work to monitor, tune and improve their challenge profiles and their overall behaviours.

• Bug fix for potential issues on Storm Point where the first Ring could spawn in playable space before closing for Round 1.

• Fixed issue where the Power Booster Amp UI would be present even when you did not have the Amp equipped.

• Fixed issue where Crate Weapons could lose their infinite ammo when using the Infinite Ammo Amp.

• Fixed controller Legends not being able to remotely pick up their tactical in Wildcard

• Fixed some effects not playing correctly on the reactive EVA-8 skin “Heart of Brimstone”

• Octane

  • Fixed FOV scaling issues with Stim Surge

  • Fixed Stim Surge sometimes lowering your speed

  • Fixed Stim Surge being used first if it was previously canceled with a mantle

  • Fixed a bug where Stim Surge would trigger automatically in a multitude of contexts

  • Fixed a bug where Daredevil could grant Battle Surge movement speed buff in addition to fast reloads

• Valkyrie

  • Fixed the ultimate being blocked by a Trident and leaving the scan on permanently

• Control

  • Weapons will no longer interrupt shooting, healing, or other actions when a player levels up.

    • Weapons will now seamlessly update in hand or in their inventory upon level up, matching the way it works in Wildcard.

    • The button prompt for manually upgrading a weapon has been removed, as the weapons will upgrade seamlessly.

• Ballistic

  • Ballistic's Sling will no longer interrupt shooting when the Sling weapon is being upgraded/downgraded as part of the Ultimate or when leveling up EVO.

• Settings Menu

  • Gameplay menu options have been broken up and reorganized into 5 subcategories (Combat, Movement, HUD UI, Accessibility, Privacy) so they’re easier to find.

• Added additional voicelines when pinging an Elite Weapon.

• Respawn Beacon icons on the map and mini-map will now flash after they have been used by another team.

• Improved graphics device selection when multiple are present on the system.

• Added a user facing error message if the minimum spec Shader Model 6.0 is not supported, including a reminder that this is likely due to outdated drivers.

• Certain Rare, Epic, and Legendary Apex Packs can now be upgraded to Wishlist-enabled packs.

• Once these packs are upgraded, your Active Wishlist selections will influence the guaranteed item slot for these packs. All previous rarity drop rates and Apex Pack guarantee rules apply to the upgraded Wishlist pack.

• Upgrade Apex Packs into Wishlist-enabled packs in the Pack Inventory Screen using Legend Tokens. The Upgrade button will only show for eligible packs and you can upgrade multiple at a time. If your Wishlist is Unavailable, pack upgrading is also unavailable.

• The cost to upgrade is:

  • Rare Apex Pack: 1,500 Legend Tokens

  • Epic Apex Pack: 3,000 Legend Tokens

  • Legendary Apex Pack: 5,000 Legend Tokens