Apex Legends season 1 patch notes detail Octane, Legend hitbox changes

Season 1 has officially arrived in Apex Legends, and alongside it is a rather hefty patch. Not only does this patch add the season 1 Battle Pass to the game, but it also adds the new Octane Legend. Though a new playable Legend is always going to be one of the biggest parts – if not the biggest part – of an Apex Legends patch, there's plenty more to dig into.

First, though, let's talk about what Octane is capable of. Respawn describes Octane as something of an adrenaline junkie, which explains his Launch Pad ultimate ability. Most Apex Legends players are familiar with Octane's Launch Pads by now, but just in case you aren't, it basically does what it says on the tin by catapulting players into the air whenever they step on it. It has a cooldown of 90 seconds, so with an Ultimate Accelerant or two, it could be a rather useful map traversal tool.

Octane's passive sounds particularly powerful. Dubbed Swift Mend, it allows Octane to regenerate one health every two seconds while he isn't taking damage. His tactical ability, Stim, plays into that, as it allows him to move 30% faster for six seconds at the cost of some health. It also gives him some resistance to attacks that slow him down, such as Arc Stars or heavy ammo shots.

Aside from Octane, Respawn has implemented a number of stability and quality of life changes in this patch. The company says that it has improved stability for various GPU configurations, so if the game was randomly crashing for you before, there's at least a decent chance that'll happen less often.

There's also a new report a player function available in-game, which will send reports directly to Easy Anti-Cheat. Respawn says that as of this morning, it's banned nearly 500,000 accounts for cheating, so here's hoping that number grows fast now there's actually a report feature available in all versions of the game.

There have also been some changes to existing Legends too. Pathfinder, Gibraltar, and Caustic now all have hitboxes that better align with their models, so while they'll still be easy to hit, this might give them a little more survivability. Caustic has actually received a number of buffs, as the cooldown on his traps has been reduced by five seconds. Those traps also have a 10% larger radius and proximity radius, and there's no longer a one second delay before his poison smoke starts dealing damage to players.

Pathfinder is another Legend that has been significantly buffed. His grapple range has been bumped up from 850 to 900, and a new icon will now pop up on his crosshair when an enemy is within grapple range. Pathfinder can now also grapple to ziplines, so expect to see a lot of robots darting all over the place in your matches.

Finally, Respawn says that Bangalore's bonus movement speed from Double Time – which activates any time she comes under fire – has been reduced from 40% to 30%, which is a slight nerf that's meant to bring her power level more in line with other characters. To read all of the miscellaneous changes coming along with this patch (and there are a lot of them), you can check out Respawn's full patch notes over on Reddit. Otherwise, head down to the comments section to tell us what you think about the season 1 patch for Apex Legends!