EVA-8 Weapon Nerf is Being Discussed for Apex Legends
By Jack O'Dwyer
A potential nerf for the EVA-8 pump-action shotgun came to light recently during the fifth episode of the Apex Uncut podcast earlier this week.
The episode originally aired on Sunday, July 11, and featured Cloud9's Zach Mazer and The_FortniteGuy, owner of Team Kungarna and Box Fight Championships, as its hosts. Their special guest was Apex Legends' John "JayBiebs" Larson, Associate Live Balance Designer, who answered a host of questions on potential changes to Ranked mode, which legends top the charts, and where the development team is looking to make adjustments.
Apex Legends EVA-8 Shotgun is Getting Nerfed?
One of the hottest topics of the podcast was the circumstances around the recent EVA-8 buff and corresponding attempt to dethrone the Mastiff in close-combat encounters. According to Larson, the EVA-8 ended up on the receiving end of the shift due to developer's intention to shake-up the meta.
"That one was something where we definitely made a conscious decision of 'let's shift the meta a bit. Let's see if people actually pick up this frickin' gun and try to use it'," he said.
Mazer jokingly replied "mission achieved," to which Larson responded by affectionately calling the result of the team's decision "EVA-8 Legends"—with good reason. The shotgun has become wildly popular since its buff. It makes sense that players would be interested to see if anything else was in the cards given its saturation in the field.
To that end, Larson noted that he "wouldn't be surprised" to see the gun brought down a peg in the future. Although, if nerfed, it likely wouldn't be much of a disappointment to him. Larson is of the mindset that, even without the buff, the shotgun was severely underrated.
"You put a purple bolt and this thing goes hard," he said, "And then we buffed it, so we're saying, 'hey, use the frickin' EVA-8, guys. Try something other than a Mastiff'."
The balance designer didn't confirm whether or not the nerf was truly inbound or when players could expect it to hit the live game. Those looking for a reprieve from the EVA-8 may just have to wait out the storm.