Even the most die-hard Wraith main will admit the Apex Legends character is, as the kids say, a bit of an edge lord – but that’s part of her appeal. One of her most iconic features has been her “Naruto run” sprint animation, a running style named after the Naruto anime in which the character leans forwards with their arms outstretched behind them. In real life, it’s completely impractical and will likely result in you falling on your face, but it seems to have given Wraith an advantage in Apex Legends – and as a result, it’s now been removed.
The patch notes for Aftermarket, the latest Apex Legends update that rolled out yesterday, explained that the dev team had been struggling to nerf Wraith for some time, and previous changes to her abilities had not been enough to balance the character. “Each time we hit her abilities (which we’ve done a lot) she bounces back within a few weeks without bleeding a lot of pick rate,” the notes said. “We think both she and Pathfinder have been pushed to the edge in terms of cooldown and utility nerfs where pushing them any further would make them a lot less fun to play. We don’t want that!
“So we started looking at other Legend specific things that could give her this power- and discovered that her sprinting animations are unique in how much they artificially shorten her (by hunching over), thus shrinking her shootable area from the perspective of the enemy. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but taken together with her already small hitbox, it’s a lot of power.”
