With Season 2 of Apex Legends now out in the wild, players are getting to grips with the new progression systems and fresh legend Wattson, who has a unique defensive style that seems to be splitting opinion as to its effectiveness.
On top of all this, we’ve already seen some cool new skins, with the promise of many more to come. But the update arrives with some more subtle but no less important alterations to how the game works. The official patch notes are full of minor tweaks to weapons and characters, but one of the most notable is how they’ve overhauled the amount of damage the Ring does.
“With Season 2, we’ll trying out new circle closing speed, size, and damage that now applies to both Ranked Leagues and the normal Apex Queue.”
So how does this shake out? Well, here’s how the Ring Damage levels now scale:
- Round 1: 2% damage taken per tick.
- Round 2: 5% damage taken per tick.
- Round 3: 10% damage taken per tick.
- Round 4: 20% damage taken per tick.
- Round 5: 20% damage taken per tick.
- Round 6 and beyond: 25% damage taken per tick.
Also, they’ve altered the timing for the Ring starting to close:
- First Circle
- Starts closing after: 3 minutes.
- Time to close: 2 minutes.
- Second Circle
- Starts closing after: 2 minutes 30 seconds.
- Time to close: 2 minutes.
- Third Circle
- Starts closing after: 2 minutes 15 seconds.
- Time to close: 2 minutes.
- Fourth Circle
- Starts closing after: 2 minutes.
- Time to close: 2 minutes.
- Fifth Circle
- Starts closing after: 1 minute 30 seconds.
- Time to close: 1 minute 40 seconds.
- Sixth Circle
- Starts closing after: 1 minute 30 seconds.
- Time to close: 1 minute 40 seconds.
- Seventh Circle
- Starts closing after: 2 minutes.
- Time to close: 1 minute 20 seconds.
- Eighth Circle
- Starts closing after: 20 seconds.
- Time to close: 1 minute 20 seconds.
Finally (and what could prove to be a very significant change), the first ring radius is about 9% smaller than before. This should noticeably (albeit not dramatically) increase the amount of confrontation in the early stages of the match.
These kinds of technical alterations aren’t as eye-catching as new characters and weapons, but any player worth their salt is going to have to grapple with them at some point, so you may as well get a head start and learn now. It remains to be seen what impact these will have on Apex Legends as a whole, so look to the usual pros for their expert opinions on whether the changes are for the better or not.
