Apex Legends tier list: February 2019

Apex Legends’ newborn meta is still taking shape, but with millions playing in the first few weeks, players are already making judgments about which legends are the best characters. So far Apex is defined by its speed and high time-to-kill relative to other FPSes, which means there’s a lot of time and space for character abilities to come into play in most firefights.

Here’s a first ranking of which Apex Legends are the best picks for most players. You can and should pursue your own personal preferences when it comes to these characters, as some legends lend themselves to certain weapons and playstyles.

Check out our list of the best Apex Legends guns when you’re done. 

★★★★ EXCELLENT

Lifeline

The closest thing to a no-brainer in Apex right now, Lifeline’s ability to call in a few pieces of high-tier loot (defensive items and optics, mainly) is an asset in the early and mid-game as you try to fully outfit your squad. The one downside to this ultimate is that it sends out a pillar of light (and audible thruster SFX), shining a spotlight on your whereabouts to enemies. 

Her passives (revive faster; heal 25% faster) are objectively great, allowing Lifeline to keep herself and her squadmates in the fight better than anyone in Apex. Maybe her best advantage is the directional shield she throws up when reviving, a hard counter to sniper fire. Get yourself a Lifeline.

Bangalore 

Bangalore’s fog grenades are valuable escape utility for fending off engagements that aren’t going your way. Her smoke wall dares your opponents to cross an area they can’t see through, giving you advantage on the other side of a cloudy bottleneck. The ability can be combined to great effect with any Digital Threat optics, which highlight enemies in smoke.

As long as you’re fighting outside, Bangalore’s Rolling Thunder artillery strike is a strong ult for pushing hunkered-down squads out of cover. It’s also particularly good at denying revives and heals—throw out her flare the moment someone (friend or foe) goes down in a firefight, and watch the enemy team lose their composure.

★★★ QUITE GOOD

Pathfinder

Pathfinder’s Spider-Man swing is Apex’s best mobility ability, giving the friendly robot quick access to ledges and rooftops that other characters can’t clamber up. Likewise, his ultimate drops a permanent zipline that all teammates can use—in some map regions this can be a critical tool for escape, rotation, or rescuing a downed teammate who’s stranded at the bottom of a river.

These traversal powers facilitate Pathfinder’s passive, Inside Knowledge, which gives the team a strategic upper-hand by showing the location of the next ring if Pathfinder can make it to one of the several elevated beacons scattered around the map. On the downside, Pathfinder’s large upper body makes him one of the easier targets in Apex, although his head is less easy to distinguish from his frame.

Wraith

Wraith is seeing tons of play so far, but I’m not sold on her as a top-tier pick. Sure, her tactical ability makes her invulnerable for a few seconds, but the power of this escape move is dampened by the fact that it leaves a highly visible blue trail behind it. It’s a great trick when you need to move in the open for a few seconds to, for example, escape sudden sniper fire, but at close range and when in clear view her tactical usually just grants enemies a moment to reload or reorient. 

Clever uses of Wraith’s Dimensional Rift have already produced spectacular Twitch clips, but the portals have a short lifespan and can’t be ‘fired’ any distance—the time and effort it takes to pull off a perfect portal isn’t easy to come by in a team fight. Her passive can be quite helpful, however—an alert system that literally whispers in your ear whenever Wraith is being targeted. Likewise, her slender character model can make her one of the harder legends to tap with a Peacekeeper.

★★ DECENT

Bloodhound

Bloodhound’s Q ability is handy for gaining an advantage in fights where an enemy’s circling a building or you’re fighting around something like a rock formation: highlighting enemy locations around a corner for your team is helpful. The downside is that the orange detection wave that radiates from Blood announces their presence, defeating one of its purposes as a quick building-check before breaching. 

The speed boost from Bloodhound’s ult might be his best perk. In the hands of a Titanfall or Quake veteran, this extra agility can allow Bloodhound to win otherwise evenly-matched duels or chase down wounded squads.

Gibraltar

Gib’s bubble shield is great for stabilizing against an ambush, or covering a revive in the absence of a Lifeline. But his gun shield, which activates whenever Gib aims down sights, isn’t too tough and can create a false sense of protection. It also goes against Apex’s early meta, which favors mobility and horizontal movement in firefights, rather than the slow movement that happens when you’re in ADS. Remember: Apex’s characters all have the same hit points and movement speed.

AVOID

Mirage

Apex’s comedic relief is, appropriately, built for trolling. Sending off a mirror image of yourself can catch nervous or inexperienced players off-guard, and pull eyes away from you and your pals in a team fight. But even early in Apex’s lifespan, players are already savvy enough to recognize and ignore most decoys. Unless Respawn makes his decoys a little more dynamic, players will only get better at recognizing them. 

Ditto on Mirage’s passive, which doesn’t render him fully invisible. For now, Mirage is fun to play but his kit doesn’t have the obvious, straightforward advantages that other legends do.

Caustic

Don’t get me wrong, Caustic’s ultimate is a good, throwable area-denial against enemies who are holed up indoors. But otherwise his standard gas traps are bulky, slow to deploy, and obvious. These massive barrels deal single-digit area-of-effect damage per second, and are easy to avoid in most circumstances. Hopefully Respawn will make them more subtle or unpredictable in a future rework, because unless you can lure an opponent into an indoor battle, Caustic’s gassy garbage cans feel out of place in Apex’s nimble teamfights.

source: gamezpot.com