Uh oh, Respawn Entertainment has started making noises about tweaking Apex Legends’ popular interdimensional skirmisher Wraith next season. Developer Daniel Klein appeared on the Third Party podcast and spoke about the studio’s desire to bring her “under control” in Season 8. Nothing is set in stone yet, but he says that the team is looking to “fix” her hitboxes in a way that’s similar to what they did with Pathfinder at the start of Season 7.
“I don’t want to hit her kit any more,” he explains (thanks, Dexerto). “We’ve pushed that to the breaking point where it’s barely still fun, but the extreme wind-up on her tactical — as much as it was necessary — it puts the ability more into the camp of cerebral power rather than satisfying in-the-moment power.
“With Wraith, our approach is going to be very similar to Pathfinder. We’re going to take a look at her hitboxes and see how much wiggle room we have there. With Pathfinder, it turned out that we had so much – that was a 20% increase in hitbox size.”
It’s not all bad news for Wraith mains, though. Klein says that if the team can bring her under control with hitbox changes, then it can focus on making her “more in-the-moment fun again”.
I checked the battle royale game’s subreddit to see how fans were taking the comments, and also discovered that there’s a subreddit just for Wraith mains! I joined right away. Anyway, it’s safe to say that they have thoughts. Wraith has had her kit swapped up a few times and more recently had her famous Naruto run removed to make her easier to hit.
One particular post prompted Respawn live balance designer John Larson to weigh in, explaining that the team doesn’t want to “nerf Legends to the point where they lose their identity”. For Larson, tweaking a Legend’s hitbox offers the best of both worlds as in the case of Pathfinder he remained fun while his pick rate and win rate shrank. It seems that’s the hope for Wraith.
As an impassioned Wraith main myself, I’ll wait to see what Respawn comes up with before I draw any conclusions. In the meantime, though, you can comb through our Apex Legends characters guide for backup options. The, er, Scottish lady Horizon is looking mighty tempting right now.