A new Apex Legends Mirage buff is arriving in the imminent Season 16, with a core focus of making one of the battle royale’s most situational legends a bit more useful and viable as part of Respawn’s big meta shakeup.
Of course, most of this shakeup will happen by way of the long-overdue Apex Legends classes rework which properly divides the roster of legends into groups which have useful shared perks. However, another aspect is that seven specific legends are getting some tweaks to their kits, and Mirage is one of them.
“He is getting some unironic buffs this season in order to give him some more team utility and overall competitive viability,” says lead legend designer Devan McGuire in a preview event for Season 16.
First, Mirage’s trademark bamboozles with his decoys will become far more useful next season. If an enemy is tricked into shooting one of his decoys, that enemy will be pinged and tracked for a “short time”. While Mirage is being placed in the Skirmisher class as part of the class rework (more on what that means for him in a moment), this also gives him some light Recon capabilities too by being able to track bamboozled enemies, so he could really become useful in team compositions that don’t have a Recon legend like Bloodhound or Seer.
The other change being made to Mirage involves his ability to become invisible when reviving. From Season 16 onwards, both Mirage and the player he is reviving will now be cloaked for three seconds, allowing you to make “cheeky revive plays and actually get away with it”, according to McGuire. The trade off is that you will be unarmed for these three seconds, and drawing your weapon will break the cloak and make you visible again, so this is purely an escape and regain mechanic.
Those are the two big changes to Mirage specifically, but of course with the class rework, he will also be gaining the class-wide Skirmisher perk alongside legends like Pathfinder or Horizon. The perk allows Skirmisher legends to see care packages at a greater distance and be able to see the highest-value item inside of them.
So, if you’re a Mirage main, or you used to enjoy the legend in the past but have stopped using him, you’re eating pretty good once the Apex Legends Season 16 release date rolls around. It’s also worth checking out some of the Seer nerf and Wraith buff that Respawn is making next season too. Expect some big shifts in our Apex Legends tier list.