The Final Circle, Issue 1: Meta madness

This is The Final Circle, a newsletter for competitive Apex

Meta madness

A new patch has dropped, and the game is seeing its biggest meta shake-up in a long time, possibly since the introduction of Wattson, which led to the end of the grenade spam meta. The big winners of the Lost Treasures patch seem to be Revenant, whose ult, Death Totem, now has unlimited distance, and Crypto, whose ult, Hack, now destroys Wattson’s pylon ult.

As redditor OrionPrimeX mentioned in a lengthy post detailing the new power of a Crypto-Revenant squad, TSM has already tried out the combo, winning an EU tourney with them. Expect to see a lot less camping and a lot more ‘griefing’ ‘full sending’ or ‘yeeting’ (depending on your perspective) in scrims and tourneys from here on out. Wraith’s utility has definitely been reduced, since Revenant has become an excellent scouting character, and with nerfs to her Pylon ult, Wattson will arguably lose her place as a 100% pick rate must-have. In any case, these are exciting days for the state of the game.

Good riddance to the gold Knockdown Shield

The gold Knockdown Shield should have been taken out of the competitive scene a long time ago. While some fans loved it, it led to perverse situations where teams that put in the work were denied both kill points and placement because of it. Watching someone sneak in a self-revive was exciting, but ultimately made little sense from a competitive point of view.

Controller players on top

With Rogue’s Snip3down and CLG’s NiceWigg taking 2nd and 1st place in the last Summer Circuit tournament respectively, squads with controller players on them have solidified their place in the Apex competitive scene. While Snip3down has been a deadly presence on controller since he began competing, NiceWigg, a popular streamer, had struggled to break into the top echelons of tournaments until now. Coming up huge on kill points as well, his team’s victory is a big vindication for the minority of pro players who use controllers.

Unfortunately, as with every online tourney in the Apex scene, there were substantial connection issues. The reconnect feature, much lauded when it was released, is still not reliable, and matches are played regardless of the technical issues faced by teams during the match. We’ve seen it again and again, but teams that are doing well might suddenly have a disconnect, or a moment of lag that gets them killed—but there is neither the will nor the technical capacity to maintain competitive integrity in these events.

Pros as low-paid content miners

Snip3down, one of the players who has spoken out consistently about issues in the game, also brought attention to the labor conditions of the GLL’s Masters Summer, linking it to the exploitation of professional talent with some nice back-of-the-napkin math. With 60 games played, a first-place finish works out to $83 a game: not exactly an enticing offer for a pro.

Sexual misconduct around the Apex scene

Finally, as the gaming industry reckons with a flood of sexual misconduct allegations, Bil ‘Jump’ Carter, a popular Apex caster who you might remember as the MC from the $500,000 Preseason Invitational in Poland, has been accused on Twitter of rape and sexual assault by at least three different women working in the games industry. It may be tempting to dismiss Carter as a peripheral figure, but the Apex community isn’t immune to these systemic issues.