Apex Legends: Overclocked Patch Notes — New Legend Axle, Deathbox Respawns, and Major Balance Changes

Apex Legends Season 29, Overclocked, is now live, bringing a new Legend, significant gameplay mechanics, and extensive balance adjustments. The update focuses on enhancing player experience through improved matchmaking, audio clarity, and dynamic combat options.

New Legend: Axle

Axle, a Skirmisher, joins the Apex Games, designed to redefine movement and engagement. Her kit emphasizes speed and disruption:

• Passive: DRIFT - Increased control and speed while sliding, allowing for faster lateral movement.
• Tactical: NITRO GATE - Deploys a gate that forces users into a boosted slide with increased velocity and lateral control. This effect lasts up to five seconds and is team-agnostic.
• Ultimate: KICKSTART - Launches an enemy-seeking drone that displaces targets on impact, knocking them into the air, revealing them, dealing explosive damage, and briefly stunning them.

Her upgrades include Super Slider (second Tactical charge), Automata (second Ultimate charge), Jump Gate (Nitro Gate grants a double-jump), and Sliding Shooter (bullets shot while sliding come from inventory, capped at half magazine size).

Core Gameplay Updates

Deathbox Respawns

A new high-risk, high-reward mechanic allows players to respawn dead teammates directly from their Deathbox. This process is loud, visible, and takes 7 seconds. Resurrected players automatically receive any unlooted gear from their Deathbox. A lockout timer increases with each subsequent death.

Respawn Beacon Dropship Adjustments

The Respawn Dropship animation timing has been shortened for faster player re-entry, while the hover time after respawn is increased to ensure enemies are aware of returning players.

Chain Healing

Players can now queue healing items to automatically begin once the current healing action finishes. This quality-of-life change offers three settings: Off, Single (manual queue), and Auto (continuously queues the same item).

Health Bar Updates

The health bar system has been overhauled for increased reliability, particularly in Line of Sight checks. Obscuring effects like smoke and foliage will now more consistently block health bar visibility, reducing instances where enemy health bars appear despite visual obstruction.

Matchmaking & Audio Improvements

• Solo-Queueing Adjustments: Solo players will now matchmake against slightly lower-skill opponents in Ranked and Unranked to reduce the disadvantage against full premade squads.
• High-Skill Lobbies: Longer max queue times remain in place for higher-skill players to create tighter skill bands and more competitive matches.
• Bots in Unranked Modes: Limited testing of bots continues in select regions and skill ranges to fill gaps, improve match quality, and reduce long queue times without replacing full matches or joining player teams.
• In-Game Audio: Voice chat clarity has been improved, and individual squad member voice chat volumes can now be adjusted. Ongoing work addresses existing audio issues and aims for consistent in-match audio quality.

Legend Balance Changes

Several Legends have received significant buffs and nerfs:

• Vantage (Buff): Increased ultimate bullet generation from passive, improved Tactical velocity and double jump range, reduced Tactical cooldown, and a new Canted Sight mode for her Ultimate with faster rechamber/ADS times. Her Level 3 upgrade 'Tactical Cooldown' is replaced with 'Herd Tracker'.
• Conduit (Buff/Rework): Her Tactical now has two charges by default, with decreased regen duration and rate, but a removed cooldown start delay. Level 3 upgrades 'Radiant Transfer' and 'Split Charge' are removed, replaced by 'Instant Barrier' (instant temp shields) and 'Enduring Barrier' (regen persists through damage). Her passive now grants an additional 5% movement speed when sprinting towards a Skirmisher.
• Alter (Nerf): Tactical cooldown increased from 20s to 25s. Ultimate range decreased from 300m to 250m, recall times increased, and Chase Portal Open Time decreased. Her Level 3 upgrade 'Void Breacher' movement speed is reduced from 30% to 15%.
• Ash (Buff): Passive cooldown reduced from 12s to 10s, and velocity increased from 425 to 450.

Weapons and Loot

Care Package & Gold Weapon Rotation

• C.A.R. returns to floor loot.
• LSTAR enters the Care Package with increased damage and a new Redline Hop-Up (increased damage and projectile size when close to overheating).
• Gold Weapons: Devotion LMG, Hemlok Breach AR, Alternator SMG, Charge Rifle, Wingman.

Light Ammo Adjustment

Light ammo stack size decreased from 72 to 60 to reduce overall reliability and sustain of light ammo weapons.

Weapon Specific Changes

• Hemlok Breach AR: Increased Breach Charge cooldown, Breach Charge now disperses gas and smoke. Damage, magazine size, recoil, and hipfire spread were previously hotfixed.
• P2020: Base damage increased from 23 to 24 (previous hotfix).
• C.A.R. (Floor Loot): Removed Galvanic Gavel Hop-Up. Magazine sizes adjusted: Blue increased to 26, Purple/Gold increased to 30.

Locked Hop-Ups

• Double Tap Trigger: Unlock points increased from 375 to 500 on the Alternator.
• Turbocharger: Unlock points decreased from 500 to 425 on the Devotion.

Map Updates

Vehicle and Movement Tool Changes

Tridents have been removed from Storm Point and Olympus to emphasize Legend movement abilities for rotations. On Broken Moon, most rotational POI-to-POI Ziprails have been removed, though Ziprails within POIs remain. Two Redeploy Balloons and two new rotation options have been added to Broken Moon.

Map Rotations

• Pubs & Ranked: Broken Moon, King's Canyon, Olympus.
• Mixtape (5/5/26 - 6/23/26): TDM (Fragment East, Skull Town, Zeus Station, Estates), Control (Labs, Barometer, Lava Siphon, Caustic), Gun Run (Wattson Pylon, Estates, Monument, Skull Town).
• Wildcard: Olympus Wildcard (5/5/26 - 5/19/26), Kings Canyon Wildcard (5/19/26 - 6/2/26).

Ranked Ladders & Season Reset

Six Ranked Ladders will run throughout the split, starting May 14, 2026. An issue with season reset seeding has been fixed, ensuring more consistent placement aligned with previous season performance.

New Mythic Universal Melee: Twin Razors

Introducing the Twin Razors Mythic Universal Melee cosmetic, featuring dual melee weapons with rotating laser blades. These are available as a possible drop in Overclocked Seasonal Packs.

Bug Fixes & Quality of Life

Numerous bug fixes address client errors, Hardlight interactions, audio issues, and Legend-specific abilities. Quality of life improvements include new Firing Range settings (Infinite Healing, Self-Revive, Rebuild Hardlight), improved CPU performance, and new Legend voice lines for Hardlight and shield cracks.

Engine improvements include enhanced occlusion data structures for all maps, reduced framerate dips at high FPS, cleaner Ambient Occlusion, and improved accuracy for cubemap reflection intensity and sky ambient lighting.