Bleeding Edge update brings new fighter Azrael, new map Facility 665, leaderboards and more

The latest Bleeding Edge update went live today, July 30, 2020, bringing with it a new fighter, map, leaderboards and more.

Despite being a little feature lean at launch, Bleeding Edge has been adding more and more of what the community has been asking for in its patches. Today’s update brought a lot of changes to the game, and while there’s still no ranked play, there is an addition that might make competitive players very happy.

New fighter Azrael

To start off, the biggest addition is that of a new fighter, Azrael. A melee support fighter, the shirtless Azrael is shirtless with suspenders, has a line shaved out in his eyebrow, has metal arm pieces and metal wings. He joins Bleeding Edge with 9 skins available, some of them being recolors, but others being truly unique.

His passive has his attacks apply stacks (up to 5 stacks on a single enemy) of Soul Eater to the target, which deals damage over time and heals Azrael. Soul Eater is the only way that he provides healing, so with Azrael you need to get in the thick of it and deal damage to get those stacks up.

His specials are:

• Portal – create a pair of portals that Azrael and his team members can travel through (the enemy cannot). This is good for either escaping or getting ahead of a fleeing enemy to cut him off and get the kill.
• Guardian Angel – You choose a teammate and continuously heal them as long as they are in range. For each stack of Soul Eater, healing is improved by 2.5%.
• Void Wave – A shockwave of energy that penetrates walls and returns back to Azrael. It damages and slows enemies and applies Soul Eater. This will be good to get those stacks up in a team fight and get your passive healing going.

For the Super, Azrael can either have Wing Blast, where he shoots out a gust of wind, pushing back enemies and slowing them; or Chrysalis, where Azreal enters a protective crystal and heals over time. If Chrysalis is not destroyed after 4 seconds, it explodes. You can also apply this to protect an ally. Oh, and did I mention the wings are useful? Azrael can glide across the map with them.

New Map Facility 665, Map Mods, and New Lighting

The new map is an abandoned, sabotaged research facility that looks to have giant lasers that damage players near some of the capture points.

Maps have a change of starting with a Map Modifier at the beginning of every match. Some examples of the types of mods that can be applied are fighters dropping a bomb when they die, supers charging twice as fast, and all objective always being active. There are 12 map mods in total, and you can read about them all (as well as the full patch notes on the Bleeding Edge website).

In addition to a new map and map mods, Ninja Theory has added different times of day to most of the maps. So now you have a chance to play during the day, at sunset and at night.

Leaderboards

So, it isn’t ranked matches, but competitive players can see how they stack up against other players in worldwide rank. There are three types of leaderboards:

• Overall worldwide rank
• Weekly top leaderboards showing the best players in win rate, top damage, and top performance for each fighter, to name a few
• Weekly totals leaderboards for total wins, killing blows, damage, healing and class score

Other Notable Changes

• Tank fighter Makutu has been reworked, removing his Pepeke stance and adding the new Huaki stance. Huaki is an offensive stance that increases his damage by 20% and increases his movement speed by 10%.
• New boards, 10 new emotes, and a new skin for every fighter has been added.
• Custom Queues were added. These are private matches that require passwords, which are great for a group of friends that all want to play against each other, or tournaments.

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This is a meaty patch. My main critique of Bleeding Edge is that there’s not enough there to keep players invested. But with all the new skins and customizables, that has been changing. Bleeding Edge has now received two new fighters since launch. And I can tell you that the streamer and community I play Bleeding Edge with has been asking for two things — ranked play and custom matches.

While leaderboards aren’t a replacement for ranked play, at least the most competitive aspect of the community can have some bragging rights now. Meanwhile, the custom/private matches will be great. I know the streamer I play with will be using it to play with his subscribers and followers.

Let us know what you think of the changes in the latest Bleeding Edge update in the comments below.