Apex Legends Dev Talks Designing Conduit's Kit, Her Role in a Team Comp

Apex Legends' forthcoming season update will bring map tweaks, new challenges, and an all-new Legend to the roster. Season 19, dubbed "Ignite," is set to launch on Halloween, and the new Legend, Conduit, is a support class hero with a tactical ability allowing her to temporarily heal allies' depleted shields. Apex Legends fans have been speculating about the new hero since her Stories from the Outlands Trailer dropped, and soon it will be time to step into her boots.

Game Rant recently spoke with Respawn about all things Season 19, and chatted with Chris Winder, Conduit's Lead Gameplay Engineer, about developing her kit. Like any hero-based multiplayer game, adding a new character is no simple feat, requiring multiple iterations and careful testing to ensure balance in the ensemble shooter.

An Evolving Kit

Winder's early concept for Conduit's kit revolved around a different tactical skill:

“Originally, Conduit's kit played with healing a teammate's shields for real (not temporary) at the expense of some of her own. She also had shield regeneration as a passive similar to Wattson but a little faster."

While this move was on-brand for Conduit's self-sacrificing personality, it introduced some stumbling blocks to gameplay. When the ability was too powerful, it made firefights against Conduit squads feel interminable and unfair. On the flip side, Conduit would have long stretches of gameplay where she was not incentivized to use her ability, as self-sacrificing a shield to heal another injured player is a strictly reactive play and a big ask. And finally, Conduit had trouble keeping pace with faster Legends like Octane, minimizing her healing capabilities.

Making the shield boost from Conduit's tactical both temporary and non-sacrificial solved two out of the character's three stumbling blocks. Players are free to use the new ability for offensive and defensive purposes as a bulwark against attrition, without giving squad mates a free pass to unlimited shield strength. Winder and Respawn solved the third problem by making tweaks to Conduit's passive, giving her the speed necessary for a solid support Legend.

Best Apex Legends Team Comps with Conduit

In many hero shooters, having too many support units unbalances team comp, either being unviable from a DPS standpoint or overwhelming in terms of survivability. But Winder is eager to see the different ways players come to incorporate Conduit into their squad—even with other support Legends.

“Conduit and Lifeline do work well together as Conduit focuses on shields and active in-combat support while Lifeline focuses on revives and post-combat health recovery. Add a Newcastle in there, and you've got the ultimate support squad!”

Due to the nature of their role, Support Legends like Lifeline and Conduit have to be some of the most universally applicable and carefully balanced characters in the game, as demonstrated by the need for Conduit to be able to keep up with heroes of varying speed levels. To that point, Conduit's new passive makes her well-suited for teaming up with speed demons like Pathfinder and Octane, as both characters will benefit from that speed.

That said, teaming with a fast hero or a pair of hard-to-kill Legends will not pave a guaranteed path to victory. Conduit's kit has less offensive, control, and traversal potential than many other Legends. To overcome this, Conduit teams will need to play aggressively to stay competitive against DPS death squads.

Conduit's Support Sweet Spot

Winder acknowledged that balancing Conduit's tactical skill was the hardest part of the design process. Too much healing could easily make her an oppressive presence on the battlefield, even when she is playing conservatively, but too little healing made the ability feel unsatisfying and hard for Conduit players to feel like they contributed to their squad. Winder remarked that balancing the shield recharge rate, skill cooldown, and shield boost potency were all crucial aspects of making the ability feel fair and meaningful.

Time will tell if Respawn managed to strike the right balance with Conduit, but some degree of character buffing and nerfing is inevitable in hero shooters. The most important design challenges—like conceptual cohesion and role synergy—are already solved, which means that any necessary adjustments will be simple and iterative as opposed to drastic reworks.

Apex Legends is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.