Buffs galore in latest Quake Champions patch (plus a double XP weekend)

This week's Quake Champions patch was a biggie, with seven characters receiving a buff and one—acid-spitting alien Sorlag—getting a nerf.

B.J. Blazkowicz's dual-wielding ability now fires faster and cools down quicker, while mining robot Clutch receives an extra 25 health points and loses its movement penalty during the Mining Drill ability (which basically turns the drill into a lightning gun). Ice-skating Slash's damaging plasma trail can now be laid down in any direction, as opposed to just behind her.

Those are probably the three most notable buffs, but you can also read about the more minor tweaks to Anarki, DOOM Slayer, Scalebearer and Visor in the patch notes.

Not such good news for Sorlag players: her powerful acid split ability now deals less damage and the time until she can fire her weapon after spitting has been bumped up to a second, from 0.6s.

Elsewhere, three weapons have been improved. The Nailgun fires faster, the Super Shotgun has a lower spread and bolts from the Tri-bolt now explode on impact.

There's a tonne of bug fixes too, which add missing animations, solve hit detection for the rocket launcher and tweak the UI. Again, read about all the changes in the full patch notes.

This weekend should be a good time to try out the changes because you'll earn double XP until Monday.

What do you make of the patch?

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.