Breach Midseason Designer’s Notes
Summary
Midseason Breach notes outline balance goals and transparency, focusing on diversifying Legend picks and refining breach gameplay. It highlights changes to Gibraltar, Wraith, Wattson, Hemlok Breach AR, RE-45 Burst, Marksman weapons, and utility upgrades, aiming to punch up underrepresented legends and adjust the meta. The post also explains metrics on team compositions, new upgrades, and directs players to Patch Notes for the full changes.
TLDR;
Below, we will share insights into our goals for each Legend or Weapon, challenges we’ve identified, and what changes we are making in pursuit of those goals.
Crushing the Peak of Dominant Team Comps
Gibraltar’s Speed Boost and Electrified Dome
Wraith’s Lowered Cooldowns and Enhanced Ult
Watson’s Hardlight Auto-Reinforce
Say Hello to a Brand NEW Hemlok Breach AR
The Future of the RE-45 Burst
State of the 30-30 Repeater, P2020 and Prowler
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Designer’s Notes for the mid-season split for Breach! We appreciate all the time you’ve put into the season so far, and we’re grateful for all the feedback. With your feedback and our internal match data, we have been tuning and adjusting to find the balance sweet spot. Your feedback helped inform changes to Octane and the Ranked Drop Zones system, and we will continue to monitor these elements. We also tuned up Fuse a bit and are continuing to aim for him to deliver that offensive breacher experience. For this next split we are focused on our looking to punch up some Legends, lean into the breach gameplay, and bring a unique twist to the Hemlok.
Our aim with this blog is to provide ongoing transparency and reasoning for why we are making the balancing decisions with each update. We want you to head into your matches with this knowledge, discuss how the changes are landing, and let us know what is working and what is not. Your continued feedback is important in helping us tune Apex and make the best competitive Battle Royale it can be!
CRUSHING THE PEAK OF DOMINANT TEAM COMPS
As we reach the midway point of the first season of 2026, we want to take a moment to introduce you to a specific indicator of game health: Legend squad composition. A healthy state for Legends is one where people feel many different team compositions are viable. Over the last year we have made a deliberate effort to squash the dominance of top-picked squad combinations to encourage creative player expression, or to allow you to play the way you are most comfortable and not feel like there’s one specific trio of characters that is ‘must-pick’.
We measure this by looking at the 10 most popular team compositions and evaluating how much market share they occupy; we pursue a lower percentage/concentration from the most popular compositions, as it indicates greater legend diversity. When we see a rising percentage occupied by a handful of team compositions it indicates to us that the Legend meta has tilted towards a ‘must pick’ squad or Legend combo.
We had a moment late last year where Sparrow and Ash were ripping up the Ranked charts. Anchored by that specific pair of Legends, our top 10 most popular squad compositions represented 25% of all squads in Ranked Apex. If you look at the period just before and after, there was a similar concentration of the top 10 squad compositions representing around 20% of all teams, which was still higher than we deemed healthy.
As you can see in the chart above, over the last 12 months, through a series of impactful reworks, buffs and nerfs, we have seen the concentration of the top 10, 5 and 1 squad compositions drop dramatically. Reworked characters like Ash, Valkyrie and Octane have each had their ‘moment’ of being high pick rate, but we are happy to see the presence of a ‘must pick’ duo or trio in Apex has all but disappeared over the last 12 months.
LEGENDS
2026-02-24 through 2026-03-02
GIBRALTAR
Gibraltar has been sitting close to the bottom of the Legend pick rates across all ranks and skill levels for quite a while. We still feel like he has a strong kit but it’s been difficult for Gibraltar to find success, as newer Legends or recent buffs have made it easier to push into his Dome of Protection.
Some of the biggest pain points we are seeing about Gibraltar are that he's big and slow and the dome is too easy to push into, especially with higher mobility Legends.
Gibraltar’s size isn’t something we can change but we did want to tackle the feeling of him being slow. For this we’re adding a momentum passive to help him get around faster while out of combat. It requires him to build up to max unarmed sprint speed and then maintain it for a couple seconds to gain a speed boost. It also gives him some nice synergies with his Fast Shotties upgrade allowing him to activate that speed boost while he has a shotgun out.
One thing that has been frustrating with Gibraltar was that his ultimate had a delay before you could throw it - it could make it feel unresponsive and it functions differently from other Legends. We are improving that execution time and so players won’t feel stuck when throwing his ultimate.
We wanted to take Gibraltar’s upgrades beyond simple stat increases. To achieve this we’ve added three new upgrades and integrated the larger radius ultimate and faster cooldowns into the base kit.
New Upgrades
Thunder Dome will electrify the dome of protection. This will make it so the first enemy to enter the dome will take damage and be slowed for a short time. This should give the players in the dome some added protection and will make enemies think twice before pushing in.
Healing Dome will allow players to get double healing for small meds while in the healing dome. This will also increase the duration of the dome allowing for more healing. This is a great reset tool, giving Gibraltar and his teammates time to quickly recover.
Triple Bombardment will split Defensive bombardment into three charges but with a smaller radius and fewer missiles. This will give players a bit more flexibility on placement and cover different angles versus the single charge version.
We think these new upgrades are going to give some extra defense or reset potential depending on your preferred playstyle.
WRAITH
Wraith has been on a slow decline in pick rate over the years. While she’s always been a popular legend she’s starting to get overshadowed by other Skirmishers. We wanted to find ways to give Wraith some more team utility while also adding some quality of life updates to her base kit.
The feedback we’re hearing about Wraith is mainly that she’s feeling outdated and isn’t offering enough with her ultimate. Also that the ultimate cast time is too slow.
To address these concerns, we’ll be integrating the two cooldown upgrades into her base kit and replacing them with two new upgrades; she’ll now have access to her abilities more often. We’re also speeding up the cast time for her ultimate, making her less vulnerable during that initial wind up.
New Upgrades
Phase Dome upgrade will create a dome when Wraith starts channeling her ultimate. Anyone who enters the dome will go into the void, making them invulnerable just like when Wraith uses her tactical. The goal with this is to offer Wraith's teammates a safe place to wait while she’s getting ready to place her portal. Once the portal is placed the dome will end, players will leave the void and be able to enter into Wraith's ultimate portal. The phase dome does have a timeout since Wraith’s channel time is based on distance. We didn’t want to encourage Wraith hiding in a corner while their team got to stay safe in the void.
Phase Jumper will extend the duration of Wraith’s tactical ability. She will stay in the void for a longer time. She will also gain the ability to double jump while in the void. This upgrade should give Wraith some extra options for escape and traversal.
WATTSON
Wattson has had a pretty flat pick rate despite a bit of an uptick during her last set off buffs. While she is still a strong Controller and offers great area management, we wanted to give her some small buffs and add synergies with Hardlight Meshes.
Some of the pain points we are looking to address are the speed of deployment of her tactical and of its effectiveness. For this we’ve sped up the deployment to be much faster and we’ve increased the damage when getting hit by her fences.
With the new Hardlight Meshes this season we want our Controllers to have some advantages when fighting around them. Wattson already wants to take control of a room so we’ve given her tools to quickly reinforce Hardlight.
By placing her tactical in front of a Hardlight Mesh it will be instantly reinforced. This will rebuild and reinforce broken Hardlight also. If an already reinforced mesh breaks while a fence is in front of it, the mesh will rebuild and reinforce after a short cooldown.
When placing her ultimate a pulse will be released that will reinforce all Hardlight meshes and rebuild broken Hardlight within the radius of the Interception Pylon. Similar to the tactical, if a mesh breaks that was reinforced by the Pylon it will rebuild and reinforce after a short cooldown.
With these new reinforcing capabilities Wattson is going to be able to really lockdown a room with Hardlight.
WEAPONS
HEMLOK BREACH AR - NEWEST ELITE WEAPON
The Hemlok Breach AR is the first ever fully automatic silenced weapon in Apex Legends. It also comes with a secondary fire mode that launches an explosive Breach Charge, dealing extra damage to Hardlight and placeable Legend abilities.
We’ve always wanted to add a silencer in Apex Legends as it's an exciting weapon mechanic that we haven't truly explored and adds tactical depth. However, adding one to existing weapons has proved to be a challenge, as doing so could change their core feel. Recently, the Elite Weapon design space, has provided a unique opportunity to experiment and we feel it’s the right spot to introduce the Hemlok Breach AR.
With Hardlight allowing controllers to lock down areas we wanted to provide players with exciting new tools to break into those bunkers. Building an elite weapon to fulfill this fantasy was an exciting opportunity because we could be a little more explosive with our ideas.
RE-45 BURST
The RE-45 Burst will be permanently replacing the RE-45 Auto in loot pools!
We had long discussions and evaluated match data trying to decide if we can reasonably replace the RE-45 Auto, but ultimately we feel the RE-45 Burst is a much more exciting version of the weapon with a more defined identity. In its energy form, it no longer competes in a saturated design space with other high fire rate, automatic, light ammo weapons and helps create more diversity in the weapon roster.
MARSKMAN WEAPONS
If you’ve been following along for any length of time, you know that we’ve been working to shift away from a long-range, Marksman-dominated meta to more close quarters combat. We’re happy to report that we’re seeing Marksman weapon dominance finally coming down and the viability of other weapon types rebounding as a result.
2026-02-24 through 2026-03-02
That said, we have noticed the 30-30 Repeater lagging behind other weapons in its class so we are reverting a previous nerf to base damage.
30-30 Repeater base damage: 41 → 43
SHOTGUNS
After our recent round of buffs to shotguns, we have seen some encouraging upward progress to their encounter win rate.
2026-02-24 through 2026-03-02
While we’re happy with this progress, they still remain relatively low on the graph compared to the rest of the weapons. Because we know that a meta dominated by shotgun strength and popularity can lead to a lot of player frustration, we are going to proceed cautiously and continue to monitor the situation.
That being said, the EVA-8 is receiving a small buff to increase its reload speed.
P2020 AND PROWLER
2026-02-24 through 2026-03-02
Compared to their respective weapon classes, the P2020 and Prowler are lagging behind slightly, so we’re giving them both a bit of a tune up!
P2020 magazine: \[8 → 9]
P2020 points to unlock Hammerpoint Rounds: \[500 → 425]
Prowler burst fire delay reduced
Prowler’s recoil reduced
CONCLUSION
We hope these Designer’s Notes have helped provide meaningful insight into the dev team’s decision making processes for the balance changes in the second half of Breach. For a full change log of everything happening in Apex Legends, be sure to check out the Patch Notes, available now!
