While reception to these changes will ultimately remain to be seen, one reveal already has Apex Legends fans in an uproar—not necessarily good or bad yet, but an uproar nonetheless. Respawn Entertainment confirmed the return of the Hammerpoint Rounds Hop-Up, which fans have seen periodically before and gives a big boost to the viability of the Mozambique and P2020. But, Respawn also revealed that the RE-45 can equip Hammerpoint Rounds in season 12 too.
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RE-45 + Hammerpoint Rounds
For context, the Hammerpoint Rounds greatly boost the flesh damage of these weapons. This, in a firefight, usually translates to breaking an opponent’s shields with their primary, and swapping to either of these for a strong, quick finish. The thing is, neither the Mozambique nor the P2020 are the fastest-shooting guns in the game, but this tactic works beautifully when considering the Hammerpoint Rounds buff their flesh damage by x2.35 and x2.26 respectively.
It’s unclear how much the Hammerpoints Rounds Hop-up multiplier boosts the RE-45 by yet, but even at something like a x2 multiplier, that sounds incredibly broken. The RE-45, depending on attachments, has a magazine size of 16-25. It can deal 11-18 damage depending on where the shot counts, so considering an average damage of 14 and a clip of 25 bullets, that’s a total of crudely 300 damage already possible. Now, not every shot is going to hit and the speed can be something to contend with, but the RE-45 is capable of killing someone with 21 shots to the leg with red armor and 15 headshots to someone with level 4 helmets.
All of this is to say that adding a multiplier to flesh damage to a weapon that can be reasonably controlled, fires fast, and already has a solid potential to kill is insane. Indeed, whereas the tactic for a good Hammerpoints Mozambique may be to break shields with a primary and finish the enemy off with the Hammerpoints, the obvious tactic with the RE-45 is to spray and pray because the damage is already solid, this keeps up the pressure, and it’s likely to deal double damage once players start healing flesh. Now, the multiplier could prove to be less, but no matter what, this strategy seems viable with RE-45 and Hammerpoints.
In Arenas, in the upcoming new Control LTM, and even in a basic game of Apex Legends, this sounds incredibly broken.
Apex Legends is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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