Apex Legends October 1 patch: Axle nerfs, Apex KO tuning and what it means for your PC

The Apex Legends update dated October 1, 2026 is live on Steam, and it is a short balance patch. It fixes an Alter bug, nerfs all three of Axle’s abilities and retunes the Apex KO fighters in Wildcard. If you main Axle, you will feel it right away: holding slide momentum through tight corners is now much harder.

What the patch brings

Alter: fixed unreliable tactical and ultimate usage near large moving structures.
Axle, passive: sliding lateral control nerfed by 50%.
Axle, tactical (Nitro Gate): sliding lateral control nerfed by 25% for Nitro Gate users. Aim assist is disabled for players under the effect of the Nitro Gate, and the initial push speed drops to 650 from 700.
Axle, ultimate (Kickstart drone): if the drone locks on immediately after being deployed, the resulting knock-up is significantly decreased. Max knock-up magnitude drops to 650 from 700, and max chase time drops to 8s from 10s, so the drone gives up on a chase 2s sooner.

In Wildcard, Respawn says it is still tracking community feedback on Apex KO and makes three tuning changes. Fighter’s Defense drops from 55% damage reduction to 50%, because fighters are still hard to take down in a 1v1 gun-versus-fighter fight. Ryu, Chun-Li and Dhalsim can now store a max of 2 Ult charges instead of 3. Their Ultimate meter gain and damage output stay the same. The Fight Gauge also gets passive regen when you are not in Fighter Form and are below 1 pip, so you do not run dry mid-match as K.O. Trucks get destroyed.

Does it change anything for your PC?

No. The notes say nothing about performance, system requirements, download size, anticheat or hardware support. This patch does not change anything for your PC, and the requirements stay the same:

	Minimum	Recommended
GPU	Radeon HD 7790 (2 GB) or GeForce GTX 950	Radeon R9 290 or GeForce GTX 970
CPU	AMD FX 4350 or Intel Core i3 6300	Ryzen 5 or equivalent
RAM	6 GB	8 GB
Storage	75 GB	75 GB
OS	64-bit Windows 10	64-bit Windows 10

Every GPU we checked clears both the minimum and the recommended. Measured against the recommended, the GTX 1650 and RX 580 grade B (Solid). The RTX 3050 and Arc B580 grade A (Smooth), and from the RTX 3060 up it is S (Overkill).