Apex Legends' big Charge Rifle nerf is now live

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More damage fall-off and reduced fire rate.

(Image credit: Respawn)

The nerf Respawn promised for Apex Legends' powerful Charge Rifle is now live, slowing the weapon's fire rate and dampening its long-distance firepower. It follows a smaller tweak last week, which reduced its magazine capacity by one shot.

The fire rate has dropped from 1.1 shots/sec to 0.95 shots/sec, while the dev team has tweaked damage fall-off at distance: at 150m, it will still deal 90 damage for a charged shot, but that falls to 30 damage at 400m out. 

The Charge Rifle also no longer takes extended energy magazines: instead, its base magazine capacity has been increased to four shots from three, in a reversal of last week's patch. 

It's still a powerful weapon at mid-range, but the damage drop-off will make it much harder to kill far-off enemies. 

The rifle was added as part of the Apex Legends Season 3: Meltdown update earlier this month.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

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.