Apex Legends May 27 update nerfs Mastiff – patch notes

Respawn Entertainment has pushed out a new patch for Apex Legends that nerfs the availability of the infamous Mastiff shotgun while adding a much-needed quality-of-life improvement for Gibraltar.

Upon getting added to Apex Legends’ base floor loot, the Mastiff has felt omnipresent and inescapable in most matches. To save their community from the mental anguish of the shotgun’s fat damage, developers have now decreased spawn rates of the gun.

Conversely, the popular battle royale has also made a quick QoL fix for Gibraltar, whose ability text had continued to share the wrong information but will now describe the accurate duration of his shield, which lasts 12 seconds.

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The Mastiff patch is a welcome one, as players complained of finding themselves too frequently abused by the strong gun and the QoL fix is much-needed as players may have been confused into believing their dome shield still lasted the full 18 seconds.

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In the game’s Season 5 update, the Mastiff shotgun’s power was nerfed and the gun was added to base loot, instead of being one of the rare weapons only found in Care Packages. The developers may have been overeager though, as the reductions to damage per pellet (18 to 13), headshot multiplier (2.0 to 1.25), and fire rare (1.3 to 1.0) were not enough to excuse the gun’s frequency throughout the map.

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While Respawn Entertainment doesn’t typically give exact numbers explaining loot frequency, fans were quick to complain that, while they enjoyed the Mastiff, it was far too common—a sentiment emphasized by the unideal moments when someone is unshielded and quickly killed with one in the early game.

This change is an interesting adjustment and caused professional player NiceWigg to wonder if the same spawn-rate nerf could have solved issues with the Peacekeeper. Unlike its counterpart, the Mastiff doesn’t need attachments to reach peak power and is, therefore, more problematic as such an easily-found weapon.

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The Peacekeeper, meanwhile, needed a Precision Choke to reach the full extents of its devastation—adding to the amount of looting needed to get to that overpowered state.

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Generally, the Apex Legends community has been too preoccupied with Pathfinder’s state to really focus on the Mastiff. 

But this change should at least be for the better while providing more experience with an intriguing blueprint toward nerfing gun’s spawn rates instead of their base stats in the future.