A new suggestion is making the rounds in the competitive Apex Legends community: several pros are calling for the removal of supply drop weapons — namely the infamous Kraber sniper rifle — from official tournaments.
Competitive tournaments are the backbone of professional play in any game, and Apex Legends is no different. Tournaments like the ALGS are the bread and butter of the pro Apex scene, and they see the best players from across the world come out to compete.
A huge part of the pro scene in Apex revolves around the balancing of the game’s many guns. Finding and using meta weapons is essential to securing victory, and even small tweaks to how weapons function can have a huge impact on professional play.
Weapon balance is a topic of constant discussion, and well-known pros Bowen ‘Monsoon’ Fuller and Mac ‘Albralelie’ Beckwith have sparked a new debate about weapon balance: should the game’s powerful supply drop guns be removed from competitive play entirely?
Apex pros want supply drop weapons removed
On March 20, Complexity’s Monsoon tweeted out “Removing Kraber from comp Apex might be a good idea!” Many fans were quick to push back on the suggestion, but Fuller did not back down and tried explaining his thoughts in more detail.
“I’m talking about pro tournament play, not Ranked, not pubs,” he clarified. Other Apex pros also chimed in with support for Monsoon’s idea, including TSM’s Albralelie, who provided further evidence that this change would improve the state of the BR’s pro scene.
Competitive Apex, ALGS, other tournaments etc. NOT RANKED. For those of you that dont understand what monsoon and other pro's are asking for. In case people aren't aware, care packages were disabled during the pre season invitational and it was the best competitive experience. https://t.co/AL9o5uR8hU
— Albralelie (@TSM_Albralelie) March 21, 2021
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“Care packages were disabled during the pre-season invitational and it was the best competitive experience [ever],” he shared. Beckwith also explained how competing without supply drops reduces the impact of RNG on the tournaments, something many pros are in favor of as well.
Still, others continued to push back on the idea of removing supply drop weapons like the Kraber. When another player suggested Respawn change the effectiveness of the guns themselves, Albralelie pointed out that would simply make their place in the packages irrelevant.
You have no idea when one is on the field, where it is, or who has it until it's already been used.
— Albralelie (@TSM_Albralelie) March 21, 2021
Beckwith also compared the supply drop guns to power weapons from Halo, and pointed out that “[they] exist for the same purpose, to give your team control over the game. The difference between Halo and Apex is that power weapons are RNG in Apex.”
Other supporters of the idea pointed to Call of Duty’s GA (Gentleman’s Agreement) system, where pro players identify certain weapons, attachments, and equipment that they think are too powerful, and collectively agree to avoid using them because of the advantages they provide.
Regardless of the pushback from some players, the majority of Apex pros are clearly in favor of removing the Kraber and other supply drop weapons from professional play, so it’s quite possible EA and other third-party organizers could implement that change at some point in the future.