Apex Legends is an ever-evolving battle royale. Respawn Entertainment, the game's developer, focuses on making sure the Apex Legends community has tons of fresh things to play with, whether that be new Legends, new maps, new modes, or new guns.
Respawn changes the meta of Apex Legends with each season, which is something that the team communicated to the fans early on. Guns will be buffed and nerfed at different periods, as will Legends themselves. This strategy allows Apex Legends to feel consistent during each season, but fresh at the start of every new one.
With Season 6 of Apex Legends right around the corner, fans can anticipate some big changes. While a new Legend is to be expected, and teases have pointed to even bigger additions, one beloved and hated item should return to the Apex games.
The Hop-Up that Should Return to Apex Legends
With all of the nerfs and buffs throughout the year and a half since the launch of Apex Legends, one item, in particular, dominated the meta, Disruptor Rounds. The perhaps overpowered hop-up was a must-have item in Season 2, and the love-hate relationship with Disruptor Rounds is one that fans remember. Disruptor Rounds were able to be placed on the RE-45 automatic pistol and the Alternator SMG.
The best part about Disruptor Rounds was that it gave players more options in terms of viable weapons. In Season 1, the only guns that made sense to use as a primary were the R-301 assault rifle, the R-99 SMG, Flatline assault rifle, Spitfire LMG, and Wingman revolver. The rest of the guns were either complementary secondaries or simply inefficient.
However, with the addition of Disruptor Rounds and Hammerpoint Rounds in Season 2, a few low-level guns became great choices in battle. The RE-45 pistol became an legitimate sidepiece and the Alternator SMG became perhaps the best gun in the game thanks to the Hop-Up. Even the Mozambique, the often memed weapon, had a decent upgrade with Hammerpoint Rounds. While a few weapons had a faster time to kill, the ammo count, the accuracy, and the deadly damage of the little and once worthless SMG became one everyone used.
Many fans of Apex Legends were happy to see Disruptor Rounds go with the start of Season 3, as memes of the sound of Disrupter Rounds filled the internet. Fans rejoiced that the overpowered Hop-Up was no more, but perhaps now is the perfect time to bring it back.
How to Bring Back and Balance Disruptor Rounds
Season 5 was the first to not bring in a brand new weapon, which disappointed many. It is likely that Season 6 will finally bring a new gun into the mix, but bringing back Disruptor Rounds would also be a great way to shift the meta.
What Disruptor Rounds did back in Season 2 was that it made is so that bullets would do more damage against the shield. The Alternator had a multiplier of 1.55x against shields and the RE-45 Auto had a multiplier of 1.7x against shields. This meant that the weapons did great damage against shields, but weren't overly effective against regular health. Now that Disruptor Rounds are no more, those same guns are back to being generally inefficient. But that doesn't have to be the case.
The way to bring back the Disruptor Round Hop-Up would be to simply fine-tune how powerful it is. Instead of a 1.55x for the Alternator and 1.7x for the RE-45 against shields, Respawn could drop that down to something like 1.30x for the Alternator and 1.45x for the RE-45. This would make sure that the weapons still effectively take down shields but not overpowered guns that are better than anything else. Respawn recently opened a Vancouver studio that will focus solely on Apex Legends, which means that balancing weapons and the meta may be easier than ever. If any lack of balance was an issue in the past, the new team that works only on the battle royale will be able to balance the Hop-Up this time around.
Respawn has brought back Hop-Ups to make weapons more powerful in the past, as last season the Skullpiercer returned. Disruptor Rounds also brought about a certain level of strategy to gunplay. Because the Hop-Up was only effective against shields, players got smart by breaking shields with an Alternators or RE-45 and switching to a more effective gun against standard health. While Disruptor Rounds were effective overall, it was better to switch weapons mid-fight than spray and pray. So if the Hop-Up could return in a more balanced way, it would make lesser weapons viable again and high-end strategic gunplay effective.
Apex Legends is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.