Respawn have confirmed that a major nerf for Gravitational Manipulator Horizon will be coming to Apex Legends, likely when Season 9 drops at the start of May.
The Apex Legends Chaos Theory update, which drops on March 9, will shake up Season 8’s meta and make a number of significant changes to some legends.
Pathfinder, for example, had Low Profile removed in a surprising buff, while Caustic was given a significant nerf in just about every department, leading to some players criticizing Respawn for being too harsh on the Toxic Trapper.
There was also some more treatment of Horizon, with the Season 7 legend quickly establishing herself as one of the game’s strongest offensive characters. Many expected a fairly substantial nerf, but were met with just a change that increased her Ultimate cooldown from 2 minutes to 3 minutes.
However, Respawn have now confirmed that a stronger nerf for Horizon is in the works, but it wasn’t quite ready to make the Chaos Theory update.
Speaking on Reddit, lead game designer Daniel Klein responded to a user asking why Horizon received such a small nerf given her relative strength in Season 8.
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“If Horizon has the best win rate why did she only get a small Nerf to her Ult then?” the player enquired. “Why doesn’t she have Low Profile over the likes of Lifeline/Wattson?”
“We weren’t ready with the big nerf for Horizon, so we shipped what he had first,” the dev replied. “Bigger nerf coming soon, hopefully S9, but no guarantees.”
As Klein’s comment states, fans can be quietly hopeful for the changes to come with Season 9. As of right now, that looks like being at the start of May, specifically around May 4, when the Season 8 battle pass is set to expire.
What’s also interesting is that Klein did not get into details of exactly what form the nerf will take, meaning we don’t quite know how Horizon will be weakened. As soon as we know, you’ll know.
