Respawn has just nerfed Octane again, as the developer looks to rein in his power in Season 28 of Apex Legends. While the latest season was only released on February 10, Respawn has already launched multiple patches to improve the character meta in Apex Legends.
Season 28, known as Breach, brought some shake-ups to the characters and weapons in the battle royale. Specifically, the seasonal update reworked Fuse and made improvements to the kits of Catalyst and Bloodhound. Despite these changes, Octane has remained the game’s most picked character at 17.4%, according to the Apex Legends Status database. While the High-Speed Daredevil has always been a fan-favorite, his popularity soared following a rework of his abilities in a major Season 27 update for Apex Legends. Not only did Respawn improve Octane’s JumpPad by incorporating upgrades into the base ability, but it also added a new Tactical in Stim Surge, which gave the character Fortified to take less damage in a fight.
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Apex Legends Nerfs Octane’s Stim Surge
Unfortunately, this rework for Octane proved too powerful according to many players, leading to a nerf to Swift Mend on January 23. While this looked to curb the Legend’s effectiveness, Respawn was not done, as a new update on February 23 included more nerfs to his abilities. Notably, Fortified has been removed from Stim Surge, making the character less tanky. In addition, the speed boost Octane receives from using Stim has been reduced. However, the ability still lets the character move faster than before his rework in Season 27.
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When announcing the update on social media, Respawn provided some context behind the decision to nerf Octane in Apex Legends. According to the developer, the character’s pick rate and win percentage in fights were still “unhealthy.” Interestingly, Respawn had waited to make this nerf because it wanted to see how the Fuse rework would impact the meta. However, this did not create a substantial change to Octane’s pick rate as had been hoped. As a result, the development team has addressed the “spikiest” parts of the Legend’s kit. While the goal is to “preserve” the utility of the Season 27 rework, it remains to be seen how much more will have to be done to bring the pick rate back down to an acceptable level.
This February 23 update has been met with mostly positive opinions from the Apex Legends community. Despite Stim Surge being less effective following this update, players pointed out that it still has utility. Specifically, the Tactical lets players continue to regenerate health when taking damage. In theory, Octane should still have increased survivability when repositioning, but the removal of Fortified should make him less overpowered in 1v1s.
Ultimately, players will have to wait and see how this latest nerf impacts the pick rates in Apex Legends. With 27 Legends in the battle royale, some will inevitably rise to the top. However, the developer has had issues trying to balance the meta in Apex Legends in the past, with a notable example being Ash.
It will be interesting to see what additional changes are made to the Legend pool in the weeks ahead. It is worth mentioning that Respawn has another character planned for release in Season 29 of the game. This news was revealed as part of a roadmap for Apex Legends, which gave a look at the development team’s plans for the rest of 2026 into the start of 2027. Time will tell if this upcoming Legend will be able to fit well into the meta or if Respawn will have to release patches to tweak their power, as it has done for Octane.
Apex Legends February 23 Update – Patch Notes
We just pushed a patch that includes the following Octane changes:
ADJUSTED
- Removed ‘Fortified’ from Stim Surge
- Reduced the speed boost given by Stim (still an increase from pre-27.0)
Dev note: We held back an Octane nerf from 28.0 because wanted to ‘wait and see’ how Fuse’s rework launch would impact Octane’s recent spike. Recently, looking at Valkyrie, we saw that Octane’s rework naturally brought her back down to earth, with little nerfing of Valkyrie required.
Over the first week of the season, Octane is still being picked and winning fights at a rate we consider unhealthy. That is the data we needed to action on nerfing what we consider the ‘spikiest’ elements of Octane’s recent update, while preserving most of the new utility his rework brings.
- Released
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February 4, 2019
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood, Violence
- Publisher(s)
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Electronic Arts
