Rampart continues to be one of Apex Legends’ least popular characters despite plenty of buffs. The community has called on Respawn to boost the power of her passive to increase her play rate, but developers say those changes won’t fix her issues.
Rampart’s static identity in Apex Legends saw the Base of Fire quickly fade into the background after her release in Season 6. Because the battle royale is so dynamic, you can’t just sit in one place and hope for the best.
However, Rampart has been getting some help from Respawn as of late. Her minigun, affectionately named Sheila, is now mobile, which has done wonders for her play rate. She also has a bit of extra power with her Amped Cover too.
The one part of her kit Respawn hasn’t really looked at is her passive, Modded Loader. It does increase her reload speed and magazine size with LMGs, but players have called for it to be extended to more guns to make her even more viable.
According to developers, that’s not where extra power for Rampart can be found: “Rampart’s identity is built around LMGs, and her passive was meant to reflect that synergy and provide incentive when opting into that style,” developer Devan McGuire told players.
“This topic has been discussed before, especially back when we were looking at ways to empower Rampart. But the passive was never the aspect holding her back so we opted to invest more in the core parts of her kit to bring meaningful change.”
While the buffs ended up putting Rampart in a playable niche — not meta, but at least not terrible — there has still been calls for more changes, especially to her passive.
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Those won’t be coming any time soon though as Respawn wants to keep some sort of “meaningful choice” to her weapon loadouts. You can choose between a shotgun or another LMG as a secondary, but the trade-off is losing out on her passive somewhat.
“If you just get it on all the good weapons, it doesn’t carry the same meaning — you’re just always better, and you still always pick up your favorite R-301 like you do with other Legends,” McGuire continued. “If it’s tied to LMGs, they are special, and you make an active decision to wield a Rampart special. We felt that choice was important to maintain.
“Could this passive be extended in other ways in the future to provide more value? Perhaps. But at the moment, we’re satisfied with how Rampart is playing and are not looking to expand the power of the passive.”
It’s the same for Mad Maggie with shotguns and Vantage with sniper rifles; “they’re meant to be a boon for players who like that playstyle,” McGuire expanded, but they shouldn’t be used as a balancing lever.
If Rampart was to fall far below expectations from here on out in Apex Legends, the developers will still look at new ways to buff her, but that won’t be by adding more weapons to her special arsenal.
