Apex Legends Revenant Reborn: New Abilities for Season 18
Apex Legends Season 18: Resurrection, brings Revenant Reborn with All New Abilities
- Revenant is getting all new abilities in Season 18 of Apex Legends, Resurrection.
- His passive ability will remain the same, but also highlight enemies who he damages to low health.
- His tactical ability is becoming a movement ability and his ultimate will give him a better shield buff.
For Season 18: Resurrection of Apex Legends, the new Legend release is going to be a little different than players are used to. Instead of a brand new Legend, Apex Legends developers have reworked Revenant into something new. At the end of Season 17 a story started with Loba, Lifeline and Maggie looking into something nefarious that began the story of Revenant Reborn.
Who or What is Revenant Reborn?
It hasn’t become entirely clear just yet, but the Kill Code cinematics and the in-game narrative rewards for the Neon Network Collection event are following the story of Revenant. It was originally thought that Octane’s father was trying to do something with Revenant, but recent Kill Code evidence says it could also have something to do with Hammond Labs.
Someone found the original head of Caleb Cross, Revenant’s old identity and is trying to find a way to control Revenant again. In the second episode of Kill Code, we see Revenant trying to use his death totem ability, but for some reason it won’t work.
As the Kill Code storyline continues to unfold, we’ll learn more and more about what is happening to Revenant in-game. But out of game this is all just a way to help explain why his kit is suddenly changing.
While other Legends such as Mirage and Crypto have had major changes to the way they work, none of them have been re-works to the point that they have completely new and different abilities.
What are Revenant Reborns Abilities?
Revenant's new abilities drastically change the way he is played and he may well become a mainstay for aggressive players. He has movement abilities and great survivability with his ultimate, it’s very possible you see him enter the top picked Legends alongside Pathfinder, Octane and Wraith.
Revenant Passive Ability: Assassin’s Instinct
The passive ability of Revenant isn’t changing so much as it’s being majorly buffed. He will still move at increased speeds while crouched compared to other Legends and he can still wall climb. He's even been given more vertical movement and control on his wall climb
The big change to his passive is that when he damages an enemy to low health, it will mark them for other teammates to see as well. This is going to help with coordination and teams being able to quickly collapse on and overwhelm a weakened enemy.
Revenant Tactical Ability: Shadow Pounce
His tactical ability was formerly a silence grenade that did a little bit of damage and kept Legends from using their abilities for a set duration. Now, his tactical ability is a great movement ability called Shadow Pounce.
Developers have said that the distance you can cover is comparable to using an Octane jump pad. When you press the ability it will launch you forward and if you hold it and charge it up it can send you even further.
Revenant Ultimate Ability: Forged Shadows
The iconic death totem ability is forever gone and is now replaced by Forged Shadows. This ultimate ability creates a shroud of shadows around Revenant that will absorb incoming damage.
It essentially gives you a second shield that enemies will have to chew through before they can actually hit his shields or down him. It recharges over time and will also recharge if Revenant knocks an enemy. Furthermore, upon knocking an enemy his tactical ability Shadow Pounce will also instantly recharge.
Forged Shadows and Shadow Pounce will end up making for a very serious Revenant who is capable of racking up kills and keeping the pressure on the enemy squads.
Why Change Revenant?
When speaking about the upcoming changes to Revenant, the developers did have a bit to share on why he needed to change so much. They said that his play style was starting to become problematic and they wanted to update him in order to keep up with other modern Legends.
They also said that more re-works for other characters could be in the future, but at the moment, they had no concrete plans to share.
Re-working characters to fit in better with the meta of the game isn’t anything new to competitive online games. But, how exactly do you determine when a Legend needs an update? Before the launch of Season 18, Apex Legends Status had Revenant at a 2.4% pick rate, the same as Mad Maggie.
Meanwhile, seven other Legends have a worse pick rate and Newcastle, a more modern-day Legend has a pick rate of only 1.1%.
Finally, Revenant will be free-to-play throughout Season 18: Resurrection for all players and if players complete a set of challenges associated with him, they’ll unlock him permanently for no charge.
