Apex Legends developer explains why ‘useless’ Wattson won’t be receiving any buffs in Season 7 in a Reddit thread simply titled “Buff Wattson please”.
Wattson is a part of Apex Legends since the mid of 2019 and ever since then players have been constantly
asking for new buffs for the legend, the latest buff was for her signature ability, “Perimeter Security,” its damage was topped up slightly.
The Apex Legends community seems to not like the legend at all they have dubbed it as the ‘useless’ legend
in the community, and the topic is so hot that a Reddit thread simply titled “Buff Wattson please” racked up 15.1k upvotes, and more than 125 awards.
In the thread, ‘BaguettePaquette’ declared: “It’s time to radically remake Wattson. Not just +5 to fences, but
the whole concept of a ‘defending legend’.”
This got enough attention that a dev from the team comes to clear everything and unfortunately it is a bad
news for any Wattson fan he says: there are no plans to give Apex Legends Wattson more buff in Season 7, despite the defender’s low pick rate in public playlists and ranked lobbies.
Dev says Wattson isn’t “useless”
The game designer Daniel Z. Klein explains his statement with two supporting reasons, The first is that
Wattson is “all over the place” in pro play. According to the dev, who “rewound the final game,” four of the
final six squads in ALGS finals included a Wattson.
In the second reason he clearly denies that Wattson is unplayable on the new Olympus map.
“I’m going to respectfully disagree… on Olympus, or elsewhere. You’re confusing two things; pick rate and
effectiveness,” Klein said. “Yes, she’s lowest pick rate, but her win rate is very good. She’s is top 4 across most
power metrics.”
Dev explains why no one likes to play Wattson
The problem, he continued, is that Wattson “isn’t super fun for most people.” Her abilities are based around holding choke points, which Apex Legends players often shy away from.
“[That] means we can’t just put power into her until she’s more widely played, because she’s already very near the top of our power charts; on the other hand, it means that putting power into her won’t address the problem either,” he said.
“It’s not that people pick her and fail to be effective. Clearly the people who do run her have more success than on most other characters. There’s something about the FEELING of playing her that isn’t attractive, and power doesn’t fix that.”
Can rework be the possible solution for this?
So, it is confirmed that no more buff is coming for her in the season but can it be replaced with a rework?
“Your suggestion for a rework is most promising,” Klein admitted, but said there are two issues there; the
cost — “reworks are incredibly expensive” — and two, she already fills an area “very needed” in competitive
play: defensive strengths.
“I don’t think she should be 100% or near 100% pick rate in competitive… ideally we find a rework that
makes at least part of her kit exciting in the moment, while not losing her identity as a structure giver,” the
Apex developer concluded.
Well as of now Klein admitted he “could be convinced to buff her” in an effort to “throw a bone to Wattson mains,” but promised that “wouldn’t change the problems.”
It means there can be a rework in the pipe line and Wattson mains should hold a little bit longer because
something might come up sooner or later.
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