Season 29 of Apex Legends has been out for a little over six weeks, and in that time, the newest Legend to join the game has held complete control over the pick rate. Axle, the most recent addition to the skirmisher role, has sat just below a 20% pick rate ever since her debut in early May.
Currently, she maintains the top spot with a 17.1%, far ahead of Valkyrie and Conduit in second and third place respectively. To explain her popularity, that developers have revealed that the overpowered new Legend phenomenon is entirely on purpose.
For players that don’t enjoy being chased down by this trio in every Ranked match, just know that their time in the sun is coming to an end soon.
Three Legends control the leaderboard
Right now, three Legends alone are taking up almost 40% of the pick rate across ranks, according to Apex Legends Status. Axle, Conduit, and Valkyrie are the top dogs in Apex Legends right now. For Axle, this domination makes sense. She’s a new Legend and for the past six weeks, players have enjoyed terrorizing the Outlands with her Tactical’s speed boosts and her heat seeking missile of a drone.
For Conduit and Valkyrie, this boost in popularity is far more unexpected and comes from recent tweaks to their abilities by the developers in a bid to improve previously less popular characters. For Conduit, these changes included a speed boost, an extra charge to her Tactical, and some beefy upgrade options for late game upgrades. Valkyrie received some effective changes to her kit too, like a faster Ultimate, more fuel for her jetpack, and improved missiles for her Tactical.
Only, it seems that these tweaks have led both Legends to vastly outrank their fellow Legends, especially in the Controller class (the next closest Legend to Conduit’s 9.7% is Caustic all the way down at 2.1%).
Legends are overpowered on purpose
In a recent developer blog, Respawn revealed more behind the scenes on how Legends are created. The most interesting new piece of information is that Legends are actually made too strong at their debut on purpose.
While that might sound counter intuitive at first to launch an overpowered character into the ranks of a carefully balanced game, it makes a lot of sense considering that players wouldn’t be incentivized to test out a new Legend otherwise.
The devs wrote, “We know this can be controversial, but we have found it better to tune down a spicy Legend and allow them to settle into their place in the meta, rather than try to tune up a low-impact Legend to make them a more appealing pick.”
“First impressions matter, and if the first impression is lacking, it’s difficult to change minds.”
This style of balancing the game – allowing players to get a feel for an overpowered character and then nerfing them down over time – has also come to older Legends like Conduit and Valkyrie. However, it seems that their time in the sun is coming to an end soon as Respawn confirmed that nerfs are coming for the trio.
One Legend who received new buffs in recent months, Vantage, has curiously not seen too much of a boost in the pick rate (she currently sits in the upper middle of the pack at 3.3%), which may indicate that the devs are correct that players won’t give a lackluster Legend at release a second try later on.
No matter how bad the situation is with a new Legend, perspective must come to mind in remembering that nothing will ever be quite so bad as Seer’s first few weeks at the beginning of Season 10.
