If leaks are to be believed, Apex Legends may soon be getting a big overhaul to its roster of legends. Don’t panic, none of them are getting binned off. What’s allegedly going down at Respawn is an Apex Legends class rework, and I haven’t been this interested in a change to the battle royale for quite a long time.
Potentially arriving on the Apex Legends Season 16 release date, this rework – if the leaks are to be believed – will finally sort out Apex’s wonky and unaligned class system. Right now in the game, there are four classes of legends: Recon, Support, Defensive, and Offensive (the latter is essentially a big catch-all term for any legend that doesn’t fit in the other three).
Some of these classes contain several legends, while others only house a couple. Support is the most obvious case of this, as only Loba and Lifeline currently live in this category.
Some classes also have intrinsic perks shared by some legends, but other classes don’t. Plus, there are some extra perks awarded a bit randomly to certain legends, such as Fortified, which only Gibraltar and Caustic possess.
So, as you can see, it’s a bit all over the place. The inconsistencies with perks are a result of 15 seasons of kit reworks, balance changes, and meta shifts, while the lopsided sizes of each class are a product of Apex’s rapidly growing roster.
A class rework was something I didn’t really know Apex needed until I saw it in these recent leaks – mainly because it provoked me to go and look at the current state of things. But now I’ve seen the whole picture, it’s clear that a rework is necessary.
The leaked details also sound very promising. They are discussed best by YouTuber ‘Thordan Smash’ in the video below, but in a nutshell, the entire roster is being re-categorised into five new classes: Assault, Control, Recon, Skirmisher, and Support. If the leak is accurate, each class will contain between four and six legends, so already there’s a better balance there between classes.
Now Respawn wouldn’t be doing this without good reason, which makes me think that every class will get its own actual intrinsic perk that applies to all the legends within it, rather than the pick-and-choose system we have now. The same leak, which also claims a new legend called Ballistic is arriving in the game within the next few seasons, reveals what one of these class perks could be.
Similar to the blue supply bins that are more lucrative to Lifeline, the leak suggests that Assault legends will be able to open special red supply bins which contain more combat-focused loot – like attachments and throwables. Assault legends will apparently also get extra inventory space for ammo.
This sounds like just the right kind of underlying perk that could be applied to all legends in the class, while not massively impacting their own unique kits. If similarly useful intrinsic perks can be applied to all of these new legend classes, I think this is something that will really benefit the meta and the overall experience of Apex by adding another little strategic layer to the game.
Now this is just a theory on my part at this stage, but with balanced and evenly-weighted classes, I think it’d be super interesting to see teams restricted to having no more than one legend from each class (e.g. you couldn’t use both Valkyrie and Horizon as they’re both Skirmishers, according to the leak). I’m not sure how it’d go down with pro players or highly-skilled ranked grinders, but imagine this rule being implemented into the ALGS or ranked matches, or at the very least into a spicy limited-time mode. I might be alone here in thinking that sounds great, but it’s something to consider at least.
Of course, all of this is yet to be confirmed right now. But with a lot of leaks all lining up and the current class system becoming increasingly strained as more and more legends get added, it seems like a no-brainer.
So, while many will focus on the glitzier leaks for future Apex seasons involving stuff like LTMs and new legends, this is the one I’m most interested in. While simply having some meaningful and relatively equal classes would be a great improvement, let’s hope that Respawn really gives this some serious attention if it does transpire. Who knows, we might have a whole new meta for Apex Legends ranked come the start of Season 16 if it does.