Apex Legends update nerfs Axle hard and tunes Apex KO fighters

Respawn dropped a mid-season update for Apex Legends on January 10, 2026, targeting two areas: the new legend Axle gets hit with a wave of nerfs across all three abilities, and the Apex KO limited mode receives further balance tuning after ongoing community feedback.

Axle's passive takes the biggest hit — sliding lateral control is nerfed by 50%, making tight cornering while maintaining slide momentum noticeably harder. The tactical Nitro Gate also loses 25% lateral control for users passing through it, aim assist is fully disabled while under its effect, and the initial push speed drops from 700 to 650. The ultimate Kickstart drone gets three separate nerfs: immediate lock-on knock-up is significantly reduced, max knock-up magnitude drops from 700 to 650, and the drone's max chase time is cut from 10 seconds to 8 seconds, meaning it abandons pursuit two seconds sooner. Separately, a bug causing Alter's tactical and ultimate to behave unreliably near large moving structures has been fixed.

On the Apex KO side, Respawn is still chasing balance on the Street Fighter crossover mode. Fighter's Defense drops from 55% to 50% damage reduction — the dev note explicitly calls out that fighters are still too hard to kill in straight gun-versus-fighter 1v1s, and this change gives gun users a bit more bite. Ryu, Chun-Li, and Dhalsim each lose one stored ultimate charge, going from a maximum of three down to two; Respawn says fighters were chaining multiple ults back-to-back and wiping teams before they had any real chance to respond. On the quality-of-life side, passive Fight Gauge regeneration is now enabled when a player is out of Fighter Form and sitting below one pip — a direct response to mid-match token droughts caused by K.O. Trucks being destroyed.

Axle has been a dominant presence since launch, and the scale of these nerfs suggests Respawn's data backed up what the community was already saying. The Apex KO changes are framed as ongoing tuning rather than a final pass, so further adjustments are likely before the mode wraps up.