Oh boy, here we go again – it seems that at least once per season in Apex Legends, another spark appears that reignites debates around PC versus console, controller versus mouse and keyboard, and high-skill players versus casuals. This time, it involves the art of the tap strafe – a movement technique used by some of the battle royale’s top mouse and keyboard players to be as agile and slippery as possible. In the most recent update to Apex Legends, a change was made to how frequently you can ‘lurch’ while tap strafing, rendering it far weaker than it once was. While the majority of Apex players won’t be affected by the tap strafe changes, it has angered some of the game’s most dedicated and skilled PC players.
It’s been a tough old time for Apex Legends recently. Despite shaking up its content and balancing strategies a fair bit in recent seasons, the multiplayer game has seen a leakage in players. It’s by no means dead – on Steam alone, daily concurrent peaks are still reaching over 100,000 players. But compare that to the peaks of over 300,000 that it was achieving during the first half of 2024, and you can see that things have slid. It’s a shame, too, because in my view it remains one of the most enjoyable FPS games around, but even I’m guilty of having strayed from it a bit in recent months.
In Apex’s mid-season update that rolled out this week, it made plenty of positive changes, but buried within the bug fixes section, you’ll find this: “Added a buffer to tap strafes to combat automated movement tech at high frame rates.” Essentially, Respawn is trying to clamp down on people using macros, which help lesser-skilled players achieve this advanced movement. However, for those that have spent years mastering manual tap strafing, this buffer impacts them too. There is now a slight but very noticeable delay between lurches and changes in direction, breaking up the fluidity of your movement while tap strafing. While still a viable option that’s going to help you dodge enemy fire, it is not as strong as it was before the update.
For top PC players and some content creators that have become renowned for their wild movement in Apex Legends, this change has been met with frustration.
“Honestly, I was pretty happy with the direction of where Apex was going with making characters stronger but nerfing an enjoyable character like [Pathfinder] AND nerfing the enjoyment of tap strafing is beyond frustrating,” says pro Apex Legends player Alan ‘Vaxlon’ Gonzalez. “It feels like 1 step forward and 2 steps back. Keep the fun, don’t nerf it.”
Meanwhile, one of the most popular figures in the Apex community and ALGS Championship winner Phillip ‘ImperialHal’ Dosen described the change as “game breaking” in his analysis of the update as a whole.
Even though this is an issue that won’t directly affect the vast majority of Apex Legends players, making a change that will irk key influencers and top professional players at a time when the game really needs some positivity from such people is a peculiar one, to say the least. Of course, tackling macros is a valid concern for Respawn to have, but those affected are of course unhappy with how it’s gone about it. I don’t expect to see this reversed, and it’ll just have to become the new normal for those high-skilled mouse and keyboard players.
For more on Respawn’s battle royale game, check out our updated Apex Legends characters tier list to see how the legend meta is looking after this week’s update.
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