After popularizing self-revive in battle royale, Apex Legends is getting rid of it

Bloodhound holds a sniper rifle
(Image credit: EA)

When Apex Legends launched in 2019, it came with a bunch of cool quality-of-life features that every battle royale under the sun started borrowing. You'd be hard pressed to find a battle royale in 2022 without a respawn system or contextual pinging, but Apex will soon drop one influential piece of kit from its loot pool: self-revive.

Self-revive is a self-explanatory ability that is only possible in Apex after picking up a Gold Knockdown Shield. The ability has been around since Apex's start, but only recently has community sentiment trended toward it being overpowered. This is due in part to the launch of Apex's overhauled Ranked mode in Season 13, which rejiggered the mode's scoring metrics and made its highest ranks harder to achieve. Now that all ranking tiers have to ante up ranked points that can only be regained by getting kills or staying alive longer than the majority of the server, self-revive is worth its weight in gold.

The pushback on self-revive has been loud enough for Respawn designers to take notice. "Self-rez feedback heard loud and clear," tweeted Apex game designer John Larson in June. Some players anticipated a nerf to the ability in Season 14, but Respawn will take it a step further by completely removing self-revive and replacing it with something else.

In its place, Gold Knockdown Shields will inherit the Guardian Angel perk previously held by the Gold Backpack item. That means teammates revived with a Gold Knockdown Shield will now come back with more health and armor. Meanwhile, Gold Backpack gets a new perk: Deep Pockets, which lets players stack more large healing items in their backpacks (even two Phoenix Kits in one slot!).

As a once-casual Apex player, I'm of two minds about the change. Self-revive is a pretty clutch perk, but it also takes a long time to pull off with zero means to defend yourself, so I'm surprised to hear its power has gone rampant. By comparison, Call of Duty: Warzone's version of self-revive is quick and way more annoying. But I can also appreciate how self-revive cheapens Apex's combat. It can be disheartening to land an unlikely sniper shot just to watch the downed enemy block your followup bullets with a golden shield, crawl behind a rock, and pick themselves back up. No self-revive will definitely make teamplay more important in solo queue matches. I do wonder if games that followed Apex's lead, such as PUBG and Warzone, will also reevaluate the need for self-revive in the future.

In other Apex balancing moves, one of the best guns just got nerfed. The Wingman, a high-skill revolver that hits as hard as a rifle, will now use Sniper ammo instead of Heavy ammo, meaning ammo is rarer and you can't carry as much of it. I've seen particularly skilled players tear apart entire squads with this thing by landing consistent headshots, so graduating it to honorary sniper rifle makes sense to me.

Apex Legends Season 14 arrives on August 9 alongside a new hero, Vantage, and new Kings Canyon map changes.

Morgan Park
Staff Writer

Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn't pay him. He's very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he'll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don't, though.

Read more
Horizon and Crypto, mean and ready for action
EA CEO says the magic words 'Apex 2.0': It won't happen until after the next Battlefield, but 'this will not be the final incarnation of Apex'
Overwatch 2's Sombra looks toward camera with arms crossed
'We should be a little scared of what we're putting out there': Overwatch 2 lead designer says hero perks are about 'letting go' of perfect balance
overwatch 2 season 15 cosmetics
Overwatch 2 is getting radical changes that might finally help that '2' make sense, starting with a third-person mode and over 160 hero perks
Overwatch 2 screenshot of Mercy holding gun
Overwatch Classic is bringing back the worst period in the game's history: The dreaded Mercy Moth Meta
marvel rivals
Competitive shooters are at a crucial crossroads in 2025: 'sweaty' teamplay vs. casual fun
Marvel Rivals tier list - Wolverine
Marvel Rivals players use the power of overwhelming negativity to encourage the devs to abandon plans for a mid-season rank reset
Latest in Battle Royale
Shohei Ohtani wearing Samurai Shohei outfit in Fortnite
The best baseball player alive is coming to Fortnite, and so is his dog
Fortnite jacked Peter Griffin
Parents are suing Epic over Fortnite item shop 'FOMO' timers they say are inaccurate and manipulative
talk to the joneses fortnite
Epic's war against the Fortnite fraudsters sees it simultaneously name and shame alleged ne'er-do-wells as its high-powered lawyers sue them
Twisted Metal - Sweet Tooth
Apparently the canceled Twisted Metal game would have been a battle royale where you could get out of your car for some reason
talk to the joneses fortnite
Epic will give Fortnite cheaters 'a second chance' with a new, more forgiving ban policy, as long as they didn't do anything too awful or illegal
Fortnite skin for Master Chief from Halo
Don't stress, Epic Games says you can still unlock Fortnite's Xbox-exclusive Master Chief skin
Latest in News
A woman with an arcane slingshot uses it to light a distant fire
Deconstructeam's next game is about training to shoot a single fireball at an impossible target
assassin's creed shadow naoe
We asked two parkour athletes to rate the realism of Assassin's Creed's acrobatics, and a surprising 'crime against parkour' might actually be one of the most realistic things they saw
Mechs fight on the outside of a spaceship
MechWarrior 5: Clans is getting DLC with playable Elementals and a fight on the outside of a spaceship
Aloy - Horizon
'I feel worried about this art form:' Unsurprisingly, the real Aloy from Horizon isn't a fan of AI Aloy
Crying laughing emoji with disturbing realistic elements for REPO
REPO's first update will add a new map and a 'duck bucket' so we can finally give that pesky quacker a time out
Man facing camera
The Day Before studio reportedly sues Russian website for calling infamous disaster-game a 'scam'