Apex Legends' Charge Rifle will be nerfed soon

Apex Legends map — (Image credit: Respawn)

If you've dropped into Apex Legends since the start of Season 3 then you'll know the new Charge Rifle energy sniper is pretty damned good. When you squeeze the trigger it fires a hitscan laser, and a second or so later it fires a single powerful shot: you can deal up to 90 damage in total. Many players have complained that it's OP, and Respawn appears to agree: the game's future update Trello board shows that a "Charge Rifle weapon balance" is in the works.

"Current Charge Rifle balance is not where it should be. Changes incoming," says the note on the board. That doesn't give much away, and you could read it to say the weapon's actually going to get more powerful. But given the feedback from fans, I seriously doubt it.

It won't please everybody, mind: some players are happy with the rifle's current power, and it's certainly fun to use. As Shroud pointed out in a stream last week, it "feels broken" when you're out in the open and getting traced by a skilled sniper, but any amount of cover will counter it.

Respawn hasn't given a timescale for when it will balance the weapon—which is based on an anti-Titan weapon from Titanfall of the same name—but keep your eyes peeled in upcoming patches.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.