Respawn confirm accidental Wattson nerfs 'will be fixed' in next Apex Legends update

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Apex Legends devs Respawn have confirmed the major Wattson nerfs that accidentally shipped in Season 9: Legacy should be solved by the time the battle royale’s next update rolls around.

Season 9: Legacy dropped in Apex Legends on May 4, making a number of significant changes to the battle royale’s established meta. Players now spawn in with basic equipment, called a Starter Kit. Valkyrie, too, has dropped in-game, bringing with her a plethora of utility, mobility, and fire-power.

Despite the exciting new additions, Legacy has found itself frustratingly plagued with server and connection issues, as well as some issues with loot not dropping as it is supposed to.

There also appear to be some pretty big issues with Apex’s Static Defender Wattson, in the form of a major – and totally unintentional – nerf.

Valk is the undisputed star of Season 9: Legacy, bringing a variety of abilities to Apex Legends.

The issues were highlighted on Twitter by @lilakeyLK, who said: “[Wattson’s] fences no longer stun or slow enemies… I’d imagine this is because the Arc Star stun/slow has been removed, and they probably had some shared code (…I’m an expert, totally)… it’s a massive nerf to her kit in the meantime.”

Attached to the tweet was a clip showing Bangalore moving seamlessly through a Wattson fence, without incurring any movement penalties. A first-person POV of passing through a fence shows some visual distortion but no penalties other than that. 

The tweet garnered a lot of attention, including from Respawn developer ‘pav’, who responded: “Sending this off to the team. Thanks!”

Sending this off to the team. Thanks!

— rspn_pav (@rspn_pav) May 7, 2021

Since that original tweet, the Apex Legends devs seem to have been hard at work on solving the unintended Wattson nerfs.

In fact, they appear to have solved the problem entirely; Respawn comms director Ryan K. Rigney confirmed on Twitter on May 11 that they were “aiming to get Wattson fence fixes out in a patch next week,” before adding “that one sucks.”

The unintentional Wattson nerfs being fixed took the back seat this week, however, in favour of the over-powered Bocek Bow. The new compound weapon was nerfed in patch 1.67 alongside several Spitfire changes.

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