Apex Legends all hero detailed abilities, tips and guide
All 16 of the Apex Legends characters are surprisingly well-balanced, but there's always a meta that emerges over time after every patch or Season. Below are my rankings for the best characters in Apex Legends for Season 8:
- S-Tier: Bloodhound, Horizon, Wraith
- A-Tier: Bangalore, Gibraltar, Lifeline, Octane, Pathfinder
- B-Tier: Caustic, Loba, Rampart, Wattson
- C-Tier: Crypto, Fuse, Mirage, Revenant
Below we'll walk you through each of the 16 characters in Apex Legends, and the abilities at their disposal.
Fuse (Apex Legends new character)
Fuse is Season 8's addition to the Apex Legends characters roster, and the playerbase is still getting to grips with the possibilities of his explosive toolkit. In my opinion his greatest strength is his Passive, which gives him the ability to hold more grenades and fire them further and more accurately.
His Tactical and Ultimate abilities are both damage-dealers meant for harrassing the enemy and blocking good positions, but they're a little undertuned at the moment, and I find it's often best to just kill your enemies the old fashioned way. A sub-par Legend for the time being, but still well worth learning and understanding his abilities.
Fuse abilities:
- Passive: Grenadier - Stack an extra grenade per inventory slot. Fire grenades farther, faster, and more accurately.
- Tactical: Knuckle Cluster - Launch a cluster bomb that continuously expels airburst explosives on impact.
- Ultimate: The Motherlode - Launch a bombardment that encircles a traget area in a wall of flame.
Bangalore
Bangalore is and always will be a very well-rounded Legend. Her Passive gives her a boost of speed when she's under fire, which can help you avoid significant damage and find cover if you're out in the open.
Meanwhile, her Smoke Canisters have a very high skill ceiling and can save your life - as long as your enemy doesn't have a Digital Threat optic on their weapon, or a Bloodhound to scan through the smoke - and her Ultimate is great for zoning large areas around you and delivering punishing damage to enemy teams that don't react quickly.
Bangalore abilities:
- Passive: Double Time - Taking fire while sprinting makes you move faster for a brief time.
- Tactical: Smoke Launcher - Fire a high velocity smoke canister that explodes into a smoke wall on impact.
- Ultimate: Rolling Thunder - Call in an artillery strike that slowly creeps across the landscape.
Bloodhound
Bloodhound is the very best scout in Apex Legends in my opinion. Their Tactical ability is a long-range conical scan which highlights enemies through walls and tracks them for a short while, lending your team tremendous knowledge which can let you make the best possible decisions.
Bloodhound also has a great mobility option in their Ultimate, which gives them increased speed for a while, and turns the world greyscale and enemies red, making it easier to see threats. Overall, a fantastically powerful and very popular Legend with unparalleled enemy positional awareness when it counts.
Bloodhound abilities:
- Passive: Tracker - Foes leave behind clues for you to find.
- Tactical: Eye of the Allfather - Briefly reveal enemies, traps, and clues through all structures in front of you.
- Ultimate: Beast of the Hunt - Transform into the ultimate hunter. Enhances your senses, allowing you to see cold tracks and move faster. Knockdowns extend duration.
- Additional traits: Recon - Scanning Survey Beacons reveals the next circle's location.
Caustic
Caustic is one of the most unpleasant Legends to go up against in a confined area (anywhere indoors, basically). His abilities all revolve around the use of Nox Gas, a powerful poison which delivers high damage over time to enemies within the area of effect.
His toolkit is built around fortifying positions, much like Wattson. But unlike Wattson, Caustic is also Fortified himself, giving him increased tankiness which offsets the disadvantage of his large hitbox.
Caustic abilities:
- Passive: Nox Vision - you gain threat vision on enemies moving through your gas.
- Tactical: Nox Gas Trap - Place up to 6 canisters that release deadly Nox gas when shot or triggered by enemies.
- Ultimate: Nox Gas Grenade - Blanket a large area in Nox gas.
- Additional traits: Fortified - Incoming damage reduced by 15%. Not slowed by bullets.
Crypto
Crypto is a wonderfully unique take on the recon/scout Legend skillset. His abilities revolve around his Tactical, which allows him to send out and directly pilot a drone that highlights enemies for the entire team. From this drone he can also initiate with his Ultimate, which detonates a shield-destroying EMP in a large area around the drone's location.
The major downside to Crypto (and the reason I favour Bloodhound, particularly for smaller teams) is that while piloting the drone, Crypto himself is out of action and unable to help in a firefight. But if you can juggle the responsibilities of Crypto and his drone correctly, he can become a powerful force on the battlefield.
Crypto abilities:
- Passive: Neurolink - Crypto and his teammates see what his Surveillance Drone detects up to a 30m distance.
- Tactical: Surveillance Drone - Deploy an aerial camera drone. 40 second cooldown if destroyed.
- Ultimate: Drone EMP - Charge up an EMP from your drone. The blast deals 50 shield damage, slows players, and destroys traps.
- Additional traits: Recon - Scanning Survey Beacons reveals the next circle's location.
Gibraltar
Gibraltar has one of the highest win rates in Apex Legends, and it's not difficult to see why. He is, after all, the tankiest Legend in the game thanks to his Fortified trait and Gun Shield Passive ability.
His Tactical and Ultimate may look like opposites (defensive vs offensive), but they're actually both extremely powerful tools for controlling the battleground and saving yourself from third parties and flank attacks.
Gibraltar abilities:
- Passive: Gun Shield - Aiming down sights deploys a gun shield that blocks incoming fire.
- Tactical: Dome of Protection - Blocks incoming and outgoing attacks.
- Ultimate: Call in a concentrated mortar strike on a position you mark with smoke.
- Additional traits: Fortified - Incoming damage reduced by 15%. Not slowed by bullets.
Horizon
Horizon is the best Legend in the game as of Season 8. Her Passive feels nice to use, and her Black Hole can be situationally excellent for disrupting the enemy team's plans - but the real reason for her dominance is her Gravity Lift.
Horizon's Tactical ability is on a very short cooldown, and can be used to dramatically reposition the entire team at a moment's notice. Horizon or her teammates can also just rise to the top of the lift and corkscrew around while shooting or healing, and it's almost impossible to shoot them while they do so. For more tips and tricks with this extremely potent Legend,
Horizon abilities:
- Passive: Spacewalk - Increase air control and reduce fall impacts with Horizon's custom spacesuit.
- Tactical: Gravity Lift - Reverses the flow of gravity, lifting players upwards and boosting them outwards when they exit.
- Ultimate: Black Hole - deploy NEWT to create a micro black hole that pulls players in towards it.
Lifeline
Lifeline has always been a powerful Legend. While she lacks any kind of mobility (and therefore should be paired with someone like Wraith, Octane, Pathfinder, or Horizon), each of her abilities can completely change the outcome of a fight or a match.
The single best thing about Lifeline is that her drone can revive teammates, leaving Lifeline free to defend. While reviving, the drone also projects an invulnerable forcefield in front of itself, which Lifeline herself can hide behind while she fights to keep her team alive.
Lifeline abilities:
- Passive: Combat Revive - Deploy D.O.C. to revive teammates. D.O.C. will deploy a shield and revive Lifeline's teammate, leaving Lifeline free to defend.
- Tactical: D.O.C. Heal Drone - the Drone Of Compassion (DOC) automatically heals those near it over time.
- Ultimate: Care Package - Call in a droppod full of high quality defensive gear.
- Additional traits: Low Profile - More difficult to hit, incoming damage increased by 5%.
Loba
Loba may not have the greatest pick or win rate overall, but she's become my favourite character in Apex Legends. Her Passive allows her to see loot through walls in a large area around her, which makes for very efficient early-game looting, and her Ultimate is an absolute game-changer, providing practically unlimited supplies of ammo for the entire team, as well as a safe space from which to pick up all the best loot nearby.
Loba's Tactical is hard to use effectively because it's slow and overt, but it is still a very powerful distancing or distance-closing tool in many situations.
Loba abilities:
- Passive: Eye for Quality - Nearby epic and legendary loot can be seen through walls. The range is the same as Black Market Boutique.
- Tactical: Burglar's Best Friend - Teleport to hard-to-reach places or escape trouble quickly by throwing your jump drive bracelet.
- Ultimate: Black Market Boutique - Place a portable device that allows you to teleport nearby loot to your inventory. Each friendly or enemy Legend can take up to two items.
Mirage
Mirage is the trickiest Apex Legends character by far, and with Season 7 his decoys have never been more convincing. With his Tactical he has a short-cooldown decoy which copies his moves exactly, and if an enemy shoots the decoy instead of the real Mirage, then that enemy's location is revealed to Mirage's entire team.
His Ultimate is even stronger, sending decoys out in all directions which again mirror his movements, disorienting a team in close quarters and cloaking Mirage, giving him time to escape a near inescapable situation. Overall, far from the strongest Legend but one of the most frustrating to try to finish off.
Mirage abilities:
- Passive: Now You See Me... - Automatically cloak when using Respawn Beacons and reviving teammates.
- Tactical: Psyche Out - Send out a holographic decoy to confuse the enemy. You can control the decoy.
- Ultimate: Life of the Party - Mirage deploys a team of controllable decoys to distract enemies.
Octane
Octane has near-unrivalled mobility. His Stim Tactical is an endlessly spammable speed boost at the cost of some health, which is quickly regenerated thanks to Octane's Passive health regeneration effect. His Ultimate, Launch Pad, is one of the shortest-cooldown team repositioning tools available, and offers everyone who bounces on it a double-jump to gain some serious distance.
Octane is a great Legend for all those who like to constantly appear in a different place every time they show their face to an enemy team.
Octane abilities:
- Passive: Swift Mend - While not taking damage, Octane restores health over time.
- Tactical: Stim - Increase walk speed by 30% and sprint speed by 40% for 6 seconds. Costs Health to use. Reduction to slows while active.
- Ultimate: Launch Pad - Deployable jump pad that catapults users through the air. Users can press jump in midair to double jump.
Pathfinder
Pathfinder is my least favourite Legend to play against, because his hitbox makes him so damn difficult to land shots on - even after the hitbox size was increased for Season 7. Add to this Pathfinder's Grappling Hook Tactical, which skilled players can use to launch themselves at high speeds, and it can be extremely difficult to pin down a Pathfinder long enough to finish them.
Add to this a powerful team repositioning tool in Pathfinder's Ultimate, and you've got a strong Legend, no question.
Pathfinder abilities:
- Passive: Insider Knowledge - Scan a survey beacon to reduce the cooldown of Zipline Gun.
- Tactical: Grappling Hook - Grapple to get to out-of-reach places quickly.
- Ultimate: Zipline Gun - Creates a zipline for everyone to use.
- Additional traits: Recon - Scanning Survey Beacons reveals the next circle's location.
Rampart
I've done a 180 on Rampart since I last updated this guide. I can't say she's the most popular or successful Legend, but I do now think that might just be because so few people know how to truly use her abilities.
Rampart's Amped Cover can be used to fortify any position in a matter of seconds, lending a defensive and offensive advantage to the entire team. And her Ultimate has never been stronger - a minigun that melts enemies if they're caught in the wrong position, and can be used from the safety of her Amped Cover.
Rampart abilities:
- Passive: Modded Loader - Increased magazine capacity and faster reloads when using LMGs and the Minigun.
- Tactical: Amped Cover - Build a crouch-cover wall, which deploys a full-cover amped wall that blocks incoming shots and amps outgoing shots (Max: 5).
- Ultimate: Emplaced Minigun "Sheila" - Place a mounted machine gun that anyone can use. High ammo capacity, long reload time (Max: 3).
Revenant
Revenant is a pretty terrifying Legend on paper, and he can still be used to great effect thanks mainly to his Tactical ability, which silences the abilities of all enemy Legends in its area of effect. Not only this, but the Tactical also affects the screen and vision of those affected, in a similar way to how Caustic's Nox Gas once blurred player vision before Season 7.
Revenant's slender frame also leads to some difficulty landing shots, much like Pathfinder (though not nearly as bad). But his Ultimate has one or two too many caveats to be considered game-changing in most cases, leaving his skillset lacking the potential it needs to be a top-tier character in Apex Legends.
Revenant abilities:
- Passive: Stalker - You crouch walk faster and can climb walls higher.
- Tactical: Silence - Throw a device that deals damage and disables enemy abilities for 20 seconds.
- Ultimate: Death Totem - Drop a totem that protects users from death. Instead of getting killed or downed, you will return to the totem. Armor is deactivated during Death Protection.
Wattson
Wattson is the ultimate turtler. She excels at fortifying a location, particularly an indoor location, thanks to her flexible and highly dangerous electrical fences which damage and slow enemies that pass through them. Her Interception Pylon also provides protection against incoming thrown projectiles, and is by far the strongest counter to Apex Legends's grenade spam meta.
Wattson offers no tool for taking out teams quickly, nor does she have any mobility. But for those who want to focus on defence, there's no one better for the role - particularly when combined with Caustic's Nox Gas Traps.
Wattson abilities:
- Passive: Spark of Genius - Ultimate Accelerants fully charge Wattson's ultimate. Wattson can carry more Ultimate Accelerants. Wattson also regenerates 1 Shield HP per second outside of combat.
- Tactical: Perimeter Security - Create electrified fences by connecting nodes. Fences damage and slow enemies.
- Ultimate: Interception Pylon - Place an electrified pylon that destroys incoming ordnance and repairs damaged shields. Standing near Pylons boosts Wattson's tactical recharge rate (Max: 3).
- Additional traits: Low Profile - More difficult to hit, incoming damage increased by 5%.
Wraith
Even after Wraith's recent nerf to her hitbox, she's one of the strongest Legends in the game, as she always has been. Her Tactical is great for repositioning and avoiding damage for herself, and her Ultimate is a potential game-saving mobility tool that can be used by the whole team.
Despite her Low Profile perk and increased hitbox size, she's a terror to try and pin down on the battlefield.
Wraith abilities:
- Passive: Voices from the Void - You hear a voice when danger approaches. As far as you can tell, it's on your side.
- Tactical: Into the Void - Reposition quickly through the safety of the 'void' space, avoiding all damage.
- Ultimate: Dimensional Rift - Link 2 locations with portals for 60 seconds.
- Additional traits: Low Profile - More difficult to hit, incoming damage increased by 5%.
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