Here are Apex Legends Season 5’s battle pass, biggest changes

Today marks the official start of Season 5 of Apex Legends, so let’s check out what’s coming in the way of new items and gameplay-affecting changes.

First up is the Season 5 battle pass, which, I’m going to be honest here—I’ll probably be skipping this one. I actually think the overall theme of “fortune” Respawn has centered the items around is a good one, and I do genuinely like the design of both the character and weapon skins. It’s just, none of the characters I main are included, and I’ve never been big on heavy ammo weaponry. If your favorites are included here, however, it seems like a decent selection of loot to earn.

Now, let’s move on to the patch notes, and see what changes players will be in for when they make their first drops into Season 5.

Easily the biggest update that’ll affect all players no matter their Legend of choice is that Gold armor will now no longer boost the speed at which you can heal. Instead, shield cells and syringes will now give you double the amount of refill that they would before. So, we trade quickness for quantity, which definitely feels like a step down, but not a crushing one.

A number of Legends have undergone adjustments, but none on the level of Mirage. Season 5 brings a pretty big reworking to a character that most would agree has needed one for a while. Now, when sending out a decoy, players will actually be able to better control them, “making them mimic Mirage’s every move,” as Respawn writes. Decoys will now last for a longer amount of time—60 seconds—and sending out a new decoy will make the previous one disappear.

Mirage’s ultimate has been completely replaced, and it’s a change that many of us saw coming. Remember that “Emergency Dance Party” ability that we got to try out during the “DUMMIEs Big Day” event? Well, as I and many others assumed, that has now become Mirage’s new ult. For those who didn’t get to try it, Life of the Party (as it has been renamed) sees Mirage create a team of decoys that mimic his every move. It’s definitely a far more useful ability than Vanishing Act was (outside of very specific situations), so it’ll hopefully help give Mr. Witt more viability.

Finally, Mirage comes with one final—but potentially big—change. His passive now also cloaks Mirage when using respawn becons, and when his teammate comes back and departs the drop ship, they’ll be cloaked too. To me, that definitely seems like it could be a serious advantage during all parts of the game.

From there, we see more Legend changes like Bloodhound’s sonar detection lasting for 1 second longer, more Lifeline containers being added to the game, Caustic’s gas—thank the lord—no longer slowing down his teammates, Gibraltar’s Dome Shield lasting for less time, and Pathfinder’s Grappling Hook getting a noticeable nerf, as its recharge time goes from 15 seconds to 35.

There’s a whole lot of other changes coming to Apex Legends in Season 5, so for the full breakdown, check out the patch notes here.