Apex Legends Cipher adds Legend bans in Diamond+ ranked, Akimbo Wingman and Strongholds

Apex Legends Season 31, Cipher, began on 3 Nov, and Respawn's patch notes on EA's site list the changes. The biggest is Legend banning in Diamond and higher ranked matches: players vote at the start of each match for Legends to be banned from selection, to break up the dominant meta.

The Wingman now uses heavy ammo and heavy magazines, with base damage cut from 50 to 45. Loot a second one and you go Akimbo, with a doubled magazine, a slightly faster rate of fire, more recoil, a slower reload and a lower 1.25x headshot multiplier. New Strongholds are structures your squad captures by holding the zone around them, and they deploy barriers and Hardlight frames once taken.

Crypto's drone now runs on a 25-second battery instead of lasting indefinitely, but can be redeployed without a cooldown after a 6-second recall. Lifeline and Revenant get new upgrades, and Loba's uptime is trimmed. Respawn says recompressed textures cut disk use by about 30GB on most platforms and about 17GB on Switch 2 compared with Season 29.

Over in Call of Duty, Photite covered Warzone Season 1's Hajin map and Switch 2 launch on 3 Nov.