Apex Legends Developers Exploring a Potential Wattson Buff

A potential buff for Wattson in Apex Legends is in the works, Respawn Entertainment Lead Game Designer Daniel Klein confirmed Thursday.

Along with the launch of the Genesis Collection Event on June 29, Apex Legends will be receiving a hefty amount of quality of life updates—including one that left players in the community concerned about the dev team's plans regarding Wattson.

Among the notes of the upcoming patch included a legend balance section, and while the likes of Octane, Revenant, Lifeline, and Bloodhound each saw substantial competitive changes ranging from increased ability cooldown timers to adjusted hit boxes, Respawn Entertainment concluded the rundown with a "Major Buff" for the community's beloved Static Defender:

"Wattson can now place more than one Nessie on the map at a time with her Epic emote," the patch note read. "Dev Note: There can now be up to 20 Nessies active at once on any given map. Until that cap is reached, any Wattson can place as many as she likes. When the cap is hit, the oldest Nessie belonging to the Wattson who currently owns the most Nessies is removed."

Within a couple of hours from the announcement of the new update, Wattson mains voiced their opinions about Respawn's decision to buff the amount of Nessie plushies the Apex Legend can place in a match.

Coupled with the nerf that Wattson’s Interception Pylon round cooldown will be increased from every round to every other round in Arenas as well, reactions to the Nessie buff on the Apex Legends subreddit ranged from it being an "insult," or simply "troll" job from the devs.

Klein soon took to the thread to give fans reasoning for the lack of Wattson buffs in Season 9 thus far, as well as a glimpse of what's in store for the Apex Legend down the line.

Yeah, we're working on stuff. No ETA because it's still very exploratory, but goals would be to make it more in the moment fun and powerful to play Wattson while removing some of the invisible power (because as I keep saying, Wattson does sport VERY high win rates).

- Daniel Klein, Respawn Entertainment

As Respawn has alluded to before, the "invisible power that Wattson has is that her abilities can force players to adjust their strategies without even dealing damage.

For more on Apex Legends, feel free to check out our coverage of a fan-made Wattson heirloom concept.