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Apex Legends nerfed the all-powerful Seer last night and I didn't even notice

It seems cooldown changes aren't quite enough to suppress him

Last night, Respawn updated Apex Legends to apply some much-needed nerfs to Seer. He's the most recent Legend to arrive in the battle royale, introduced at the start of the current season, and honestly he's been a bit of a pain. Seer's abilities revolve around tracking other players in incredibly disruptive ways, and now the devs have made a few changes to make him a little less annoying. Unfortunately, the changes don't seem that noticeable - I played Apex for three hours last night and didn't actually realise there'd been a patch.

For context, Seer's passive ability gives him a small heartbeat sensor when he aims down sights, allowing him to figure out rough enemy locations. His ultimate throws out a big orb of microdrones, tracking the footsteps of any players running around inside. Then the most controversial of the lot, his tactical skill, launches a cylinder of drones that reveal the heath bar and location of an enemy for a short time - like a legal wallhack. This ability also damages and stuns players briefly, so if you're trying to heal or revive, it stops you. It sucks.

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Last night's patch makes things a bit kinder to those on the receiving end of an attacking Seer. His passive has a reduced range, and takes longer to give you info about enemies. His ultimate's cooldowns have been increased so you can't use it as often. And importantly, his tactical now gives players a couple of extra milliseconds to get out of the way when they see the drones incoming. When you get hit by it, you'll no longer receive damage, and the screen won't flash and shake as much, making it a little less disorienting.

I appreciate these tweaks, but from what I've experienced myself post patch, they don't actually make that much difference. I was alright with the tiny bit of damage, and the screen flash wasn't a huge issue. What is a huge issue, however, is when multiple enemy Seers all take it in turns to use their tacticals on you so you can never heal up, and are constantly revealed. Even fighting against one Seer who's good at managing his abilities can be a pain. It's just so easy to become trapped or chased.

Playing on a team with a Seer, it's clear he's still super strong. My squadmate only played as Seer in the three hours we Apexed, and neither of us could tell anything had changed. His passive still allowed us to navigate potentially dangerous areas and find unsuspecting enemies to pounce on, while his tactical is still such a useful tool for keeping enemies suppressed during teamfights it almost feels like bullying.

I feel like Respawn have put themselves in a weird position with Seer, because he's so strong compared to the rest of the Legends. Finding enemies and stunning players out of healing are core parts of his kit, so I wouldn't necessarily want either of these to go away or be massively nerfed. But at the same time, I think he needs more changes than minor timing tweaks.

Perhaps they could make it so players aren't able to have their actions cancelled more than once in the space of a few seconds? That might at least make it less frustrating to fight against more than one Seer. For now, we'll just have to see how these new nerfs settle, and hopefully the devs will adjust the powerful lad more in Apex's next big update.

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