RESPEC ORDER 3.0

Patchnotes
Written By Dusty Gustafsson
 

2026.09.16

Hey folks,

During updates 10.3 and 10.12 we ran two different versions of the event ‘Respec Order’, a test where we adjust the movement and health values for both Light and Heavy, with the aim of addressing issues we see in the game related to team cohesion and balancing of certain weapons.

In a blog post on June 17th, we updated you on how the first test had gone, what we learned and where we were taking Respec Order in 10.12. In this blog post, I’m going to give you a brief update on what we’ve learned from that second test, ahead of another Respec Order test in update 11.10 that goes live this week, so let’s get to it!

THE GOALS

It’s worth reiterating what our two main goals for Respec Order are, so you’re aware of what we’re testing for:

  • Movement Speed: We often see that the very wide range of Body Type movement speeds in the game can cause teams to drift apart, making teamplay harder, especially for solo or more casual players. We want to test if bringing the movement speeds closer together could improve team cohesion by reducing this drift

  • Health Scale: We know that extreme differences in health values in FPS games can make certain weapon types very hard to balance to feel good at both ends of the health scale (i.e. the gun feels good versus Heavy and Light equally). We want to test if compressing that scale can help make weapon balancing easier to do and if it can lead to better feeling combat

So how did the test go in update 10.12?

PLAYER FEEDBACK

As per the 10.3 Respec Order test, in the 10.12 test we asked players for their feedback via a survey. This time around, we received approximately 70,000 survey responses, at a roughly 47% response rate, a slight increase in the number of responses over the last test.

We asked players to score Respec Order out of 5, with 5 being the most positive response. Here's what we found:

  • The average survey score was 3.01, so fairly neutral, but an increase from the 10.3 test’s score of 2.96

  • Players who mostly played Medium averaged a score of 3.10, Heavy players 3.04 and Light players 2.96. This was somewhat a reverse of the 10.3 test where Light players were the most positive about the changes

  • The 3.01 average score hides a somewhat polarized audience, rather than an indifferent one. Those with a ‘Strong Dislike’ to the changes made up 25.72% of respondents, while those who ‘Dislike’ it made up just 10.56%. At the other end of the spectrum, the ‘Strongly Like’ part of the vote made up 21.96% while the ‘Like’ group made up 17.73%. Neutral respondents made up the remaining 24.48%   

So overall, the feedback to the test was fairly neutral, with a slightly larger part of the audience falling on the ‘like’ side of neutral, rather than the ‘dislike’ side. 

With the feedback discussed, let's now take a very quick look at what we learned from some of the data.

GAMEPLAY DATA

As a reminder, we have two main places we’re hoping to see improvements from Respec Order: team cohesion and ease of balancing weapons. 

From the 10.12 test, we found the average separation distance of teammates at key match intervals dropped slightly, between 1.7% to 2.9% depending on composition. Generally, teams with one or more Light players stayed closer together as a team than previously, although we believe this was predominantly down to changes made to Evasive Dash. At the other end of the spectrum, teams with multiple Heavies tended to drift apart slightly more than normal, which is likely related to the slight increase in Heavy’s movement speed in Respec Order.  
   

Overall, we see these changes as a small step in the right direction, although we do now feel that any more significant of a change would unlikely come from movement speed changes alone, but would likely require adjustments to Specializations and other locomotion items. That’s something we don’t really want to adjust. 

When it comes to the balancing of archetypes, we saw very similar patterns of change to those we saw in the earlier Respec Order test. The spread in win rates we saw between the best and worst squad compositions dropped from 14.7% to 12%, which is positive, but slightly less than we saw in the past iteration. Light-based compositions gained the most win rate, while Heavy-based compositions lost the most, thus bringing our two outlier archetypes closer together in terms of performance.

When it comes to individual archetypes rather than team compositions, these moved only slightly compared to the last test, with Heavy having a marginal loss in win rate and Light a marginal gain.

While these changes don’t differ much from the last test, they still reflect a positive change of trying to bring the viability of the different archetypes much closer together while making weapons slightly easier to balance for.

SO WHAT’S NEXT

To continue validating if Respec Order is a positive addition to the game and one worth eventually folding into the core experience, we’re running another Respec Order test this week with the 11.10 update. The test will again be live for two weeks in Cashout mode, with an additional round of balance changes.

We will once again be surveying players for their feedback, but this time changing the question to:
Should the health and movement changes of Respec Order be permanent?

Respec Order, if it is to become a part of the core game, is a significant shift in some fairly core elements of the balance of the game. If we do go ahead and make such a change, we want to know that the majority of the community is in favor of it, so this time we’re adding a more specific and concrete question to the survey, asking players to be really honest with us about what they would prefer.

Depending on how those results go, we’ll discuss next steps for Respec Order and the game’s core balance, and we hope to make a decision one way or another by the launch of Season 12.

Once again, thank you to all our players who have taken part in these tests and provided their thoughts and their feedback. We hope you enjoy playing Respec Order 3.0, and with that, I’ll leave you with the list of balance changes we’re making for that test.

RESPEC ORDER 3.0 | PATCH NOTES

These balance changes will be live in Cashout mode only, from 11.12 through to the launch of 11.14. They aim to adjust the various archetypes and their items in light of the core tweaks made to the Light and Heavy archetypes.

All comparisons here are to values in the main game, not the last Respec Order changes.

General

Frag Grenade

  • Increased damage from 140 to 150

Light Archetype

Attributes

  • Increased health from 150 to 175

  • Increased health regen delays from 7s to 8s

  • Decreased sprint forwards from 7m/s to 6.6m/s

  • Decreased sprint strafe from 4.6m/s to 4.4m/s

  • Decreased run forwards from 5.5m/s to 5.1m/s

  • Decreased run strafe from 4.4m/s to 4.2m/s

  • Decreased run backpedal from 3.8m/s to 3.7m/s

Dagger

  • Secondary Attack - Backstab

    • Increased secondary base damage from 85 to 90

    • Decreased backstab damage from 340 to 315

LH1

  • Decreased the damage fall-off start range from 50m to 35m

  • Decreased the damage fall-off end range from 55m to 45m

Sword

  • Primary Attack

    • Decreased base damage from 71 to 65

    • Decreased damage for precise hits from 110 to 100

Vanish Bomb

  • Increased cooldown from 25s to 30s

Medium Archetype

CB-01 Repeater

  • Increased damage from 84 to 88

  • Increased damage falloff multiplier from 0.64 to 0.66, increasing the weapon’s damage at range

Chimera-XB

  • Increased damage from 45 to 47

Dual Blades

  • Primary Attack

    • Increased base damage from 37 to 40

    • Increased damage for precise hits from 57 to 60

  • Secondary Attack - Cross Slash

    • Increased base damage from 91 to 100

    • Increased damage for precise hits from 140 to 150

Explosive Mine

  • Increased damage from 120 to 140

P90

  • Increased damage from 14 to 15

Pike-556

  • Increased damage from 49 to 56

Riot Shield

  • Primary Attack

    • Increased base damage from 60 to 63

    • Increased damage for precise hits from 86 to 90

Heavy Archetype

Attributes

  • Decreased health from 350 to 325

  • Increased sprint forwards from 5.8m/s to 6m/s

  • Increased sprint strafe from 3.65m/s to 3.8m/s

  • Increased run forwards from 3.8m/s to 4.25m/s

  • Increased run strafe from 3.2m/s to 3.6m/s

  • Increased run backpedal from 3m/s to 3.2m/s

BFR Titan

  • Increased damage from 90 to 95

  • Decreased reload duration

Explosive Mine

  • Increased damage from 120 to 140

Lewis Gun

  • Increased RPM from 500 to 520 

M60

  • Increased RPM from 580 to 590

MGL-32

  • Increased damage from 83 to 97

 
Dusty Gustafsson
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Update 11.9.0