Apex Legends Update Has Huge Revenant Buffs

The Old Ways limited-time event is currently running in Apex Legends, adding a Bloodhound-themed town takeover and new epic and legendary cosmetics to the battle royale game. The patch notes for the update reveal that's not all, though--along with improvements to Lifeline, Season 4: Assimilation's new character, Revenant, received several massive buffs.

Since his release, Revenant's offensive-focused abilities have marketed the legend as an aggressive attacker, but the less-than-stellar utility of those skills have limited his usefulness. "Player feedback that Revenant wasn't feeling viable enough has been loud and clear and game data showed the same," Respawn wrote in The Old Ways update patch notes. "Our goal is to bring his effectiveness up to parity with other legends."

To that end, Revenant has been improved in practically every way. His ability-canceling tactical, Silence, now has two charges instead of just one. The orb it fires also lasts twice as long (a whole 10 seconds) and its ability-canceling effect has also been doubled (now going on for 20 seconds). Together, this now allows Revenant to more easily silence multiple opponents at once or lock down narrow hallways by throwing out Silence as a longer-lasting deterrent. It also ups the chances that movement-focused characters like Wraith and Pathfinder will have a significantly harder time escaping a Revenant, given that their abilities will now be canceled for a fairly long time.

Though Revenant's Silence still won't affect most passive abilities, it will now disable Gibraltar's Gun Shield--making the death-obsessed simulacrum into a powerful counter for the gentle giant.

Revenant's Ultimate, Death Totem, has been buffed too. Now, when he or his allies are killed and respawn at the totem, they'll come back with 50 health instead of one. You and your teammates won't have to worry about healing for as long when returning from the totem--in fact, if you know you weakened the opposing squad enough, you should have enough health to charge them again without needing to heal at all. Respawn does note, however, that if your health is lower than 50 when you touch the Death Totem, you'll return to it at whatever health you had when you interacted with it. For example, if you have 25 health when you touch the totem, you'll return with 25 health when killed, not 50.

Even Revenant's passive has been buffed. Though Stalker, which allows him to climb higher and crouch walk faster than the other legends, remains unchanged, Revenant no longer has the Low Profile passive. This passive is given to legends with smaller hitboxes, causing them to take more damage to balance them out in the in-game meta. Though Revenant's hitbox will still remain on the smaller size, he will no longer take additional damage--which should encourage players to aggressively charge with him a lot more.

All in all, Revenant's a significantly more terrifying threat than he was before. It remains to be seen whether Respawn has made him too powerful, though it's obvious that this update will be felt in the in-game meta. These changes are too big to ignore.