Following fan feedback, Apex Legends has reverted a controversial change to tap-strafing. The original nerf to the movement technique came during the massive mid-season update for Season 23 of Apex Legends. Released on January 7 with the start of the Astral Anomaly Event, this mid-season update brought numerous balance changes for Legends and weapons.

While the patch made significant changes to Legends like Mirage and Loba in Apex Legends, one of the smaller notes in the Bug Fixes section frustrated a large portion of the community. Specifically, Respawn Entertainment added a “buffer” to tap-strafes, making the ability less effective in the game. For context, tap-strafing is an advanced movement technique in Apex Legends that players can use to quickly change directions in the air, making them more difficult to hit during fights. Despite the developer making the change to “combat automated movement tech at high frame rates,” many in the game’s community think things were taken too far.

Fortunately, this appears to be a sentiment Respawn shares. Following community backlash, the developer announced the previous change to tap-strafing had been reverted. The message noted that the mid-season update change negatively impacted the movement mechanic in Apex Legends and admitted the change had unintended consequences. According to Respawn, while it would continue to look to “combat automated workarounds and degenerate play patterns” in Apex Legends, it would look to “preserve” the skill surrounding some movement techniques, such as tap-strafing.

We just reverted the change that negatively impacted tap-strafing in @PlayApex.
For movement aficionados, feedback and feel around movement systems are critical, and there's legitimate skill expression that we intend to preserve. Our goal is to continue to combat automated…

— Respawn (@Respawn) January 8, 2025

This move by Respawn to revert the nerf to tap-strafing has been praised by the community. One of the things Apex Legends is known for is its movement. While the regular battle royale game mode does not feature wall running in the same sense as its Titanfall predecessors, players can pull off some incredible clips using various movement techniques, including tap-strafe. On Twitter, many players replied positively to the move by Respawn.

It will be interesting to see what kind of impact this reversion to tap-strafing has in Apex Legends. It is unclear how many people stopped playing the game over the last few days because of the initial nerf. In addition, it is hard to tell if reverting the change will bring some lapsed players back.

It is worth noting that a lot has happened in the battle royale recently. In addition to the sweeping changes in the mid-season update, Apex Legends began the Astral Anomaly Event, bringing new cosmetics and a new version of the Launch Royale LTM. Respawn also noted that it values player feedback on the recent changes made to the game, so more updates could happen to fix other issues in the coming weeks.

Posted: 9 hours, 23 minutes ago
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://gamerant.com/apex-legends-tap-strafe-nerf-reverted-season-23/