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All Apex Legends characters - ranked and tiered
Every single character in Respawn's Apex Legends, ranked
Now we've spent some quality time with Apex Legends' season 5; it's time to sit back and assess the winners and losers of the free-to-play battle royale's recent tweaks and improvements.
Here's Red Bull's definitive list of Apex Legends' full character roster, ranked and tiered from worst to greatest. Your mileage may vary – some players don't get on with Wraith at all, while others find Crypto a fantastic ally – but after intense debate, fighting, and even a tantrum or two, this is it. Buckle up, Legend.
S: Gibraltar, Pathfinder, Wattson, Wraith
These Legends are the best of the best
© EA
Gibraltar
Tactical Ability: Dome of Protection
Passive Ability: Gun Shield
Ultimate Ability: Defensive Bombardment
Of all the Legends, Gibraltar's the one you'd most want to go out for a drink with. A cheerful soul who loves his home-cookin', Gibraltar's imposing form means he's Fortified and can withstand more damage than most, and his passive – a gun shield which gives him an additional 75HP – makes him a formidable foe in a firefight. Not dissimilar to Bangalore's ultimate he can call in a mortar strike when things get tough, as well as throw up a protective dome around his squaddies – a godsend if you're frantically trying to revive someone. Go, Gibby!
Pathfinder
Tactical Ability: Grappling Hook
Passive Ability: Insider Knowledge
Ultimate Ability: Zipline Gun
Okay, so Pathfinder isn't quite the badass he used to be, but despite his season 5 nerf – his grapple hook's cooldown was boosted from 15 seconds to 35 seconds – there's still a lot of love for the adorable robot. His passive, Insider Knowledge, enables you to hack beacons across the map for an early hint on where the circle is headed, and his ultimate – a zipline gun – helps Pathfinder and his team to traverse the map speedily, or reach a previously inaccessible point up high. Even his tactical can be a game-changer, allowing him to move freely around and reposition quickly, especially in combat. Small, sweet and perfectly formed, he's agile and supportive and remains an S tier Legend.
Wattson
Tactical Ability: Perimeter Security
Passive Ability: Spark of Genius
Ultimate Ability: Interception Pylon
Wattson is one of those Legends that's lethal in the right hands… but few players know how to utilise her properly. While, admittedly, she's less impressive on the bigger World's Edge map – it's much more common for the circle to end outside here – the tools at her disposal are really quite extraordinary. Though often compared to Caustic's nox canisters, her tactical electric fence is a little better, because they will still damage other Wattson characters while Caustic's gas is ineffective against other Caustics. Her passive means she will see her ultimate fully charged from a single accelerate – quite a feat – and her ultimate not only protects nearby allies from projectiles like grenades but it also gradually repairs shield damage, too. Find a good place to hide with limited entry points, and the combination of Wattson's skills make her almost unbeatable. Oh, and she's adorable, too.
Wraith
Tactical Ability: Into the Void
Passive Ability: Voices from the Void
Ultimate Ability: Dimensional Rift
There's a reason Wraith boasts the highest pick-rate of the entire roster. A must-have in ranked matches, Wraith's unique abilities give her an astonishing upper hand in tight situations, even when the circle's closing in, while her passive alerts her if she's in the sights of any enemy players. Fast and fluid with a small hitbox, she's the complete all-rounder, offering supportive, defensive and offensive tactics to every match. To be honest, we don't see her dropping from S tier any time soon.
A: Loba, Lifeline, Mirage
the A-tier guys are still worth your time
© EA
Loba
Tactical Ability: Burglar’s Best Friend
Passive Ability: Eye for Quality
Ultimate Ability: Black Market Boutique
Loba might be the newest kid on the block, but she's already making herself pretty indispensable. Though her tactical only benefits her – like Revenant she can get out of a tight spot speedily with her jump-drive bangle, but not bring her pals with her – her passive enables her to see high-tier loot at great distances, ensuring most Loba-loaded teams are well-equipped early on. Her ultimate is where she really shines, though, enabling her to open a portal that brings all the loot in the immediate vicinity to a central point. Not only does this mean you can load up with the best loot quickly and safely, but it also means she can help bring ammo and healing directly to you if you're hunkered down in the middle of a firefight. Loba can even dissolve the shop as soon as you're done, preventing enemy players from getting their grubby mitts on stuff, too.
Lifeline
Tactical Ability: D.O.C. Heal Drone
Passive Ability: Combat Medic
Ultimate Ability: Care Package
It's hard not to love Lifeline. A key support Legend on any team, Lifeline's healing drone helps teammates conserve their well-earned healing items, and her ability to shield herself and her fallen comrade – if now not quite as effective as Mirage's stealthy cloaking – makes her an important ally. Admittedly, her care package doesn't do much towards the end of the game, especially if the team's already kitted out with Legendary armour, but the blue supply crates carry an extra couple of items exclusively for Lifeline. She's consistently been one of Apex Legends' most popular, well-balanced characters, and even though some of the newer characters have more extravagant, sexier abilities, you can rarely go wrong with a Lifeline on the team.
Mirage
Tactical Ability: Psyche Out
Passive Ability: Encore!
Ultimate Ability: Vanishing Act
Mirage hasn't always been A-tier, let's face it, but his most recent buff is season 5 has bumped him from a zero to a hero. Now able to fully control his decoys, Mirage no longer deploys duplicates that run face-first into a wall, and his ultimate similarly makes it that much more difficult to discern which Mirage is the real one, especially in the scrum of battle. That said, it's his passive that players really love. Not only can Mirage turn invisible when he's reviving a fallen teammate, but the player he's reviving will temporarily disappear, too. Couple that with a similar trick when activating a respawn beacon and Mirage is sincerely now one of the most valuable Legends on the entire roster.
B: Bangalore, Bloodhound, Caustic, Revenant
Prefer a B tier Legend? Maybe try someone else
© EA
Bangalore
Tactical Ability: Smoke Launcher
Passive Ability: Double Time
Ultimate Ability: Rolling Thunder
A professional soldier, Bangalore is all gun and no fun and takes her time in combat super seriously. Her tactical ability – a smoke grenade – enables her to stealthily dodge tricky situations under the cover of smoke, and her passive ability, Double Time, allows you to weave through enemy fire with a burst of speed. Rolling Thunder, Bangalore's alt, calls in an artillery strike, but it takes a little while to deploy and can, of course, be thwarted with Gibraltar's dome shield. That said, she's a pretty solid, all-round Legend, and a good choice for someone new to the game. She just isn't special enough to reach the upper tiers, though.
Bloodhound
Tactical Ability: Eye of the Allfather
Passive Ability: Tracker
Ultimate Ability: Beast of the Hunt
For a little while Bloodhound – though great on paper – was a bit ineffectual in reality. Not too long ago, however, Bloodhound has received a significant buff to the range of their tactical ability, Eye of the Allfather, which means it's much easier to track and locate enemies hiding nearby. Their passive also enables you to see the footsteps of nearby competitors for 90 seconds after they've retreated, which means not only do you have a head's up that you're on the heels of an enemy team, it also means you can track which direction they went in – a huge advantage if there's only a handful of opponents left. Their ultimate, Beast of the Hunt, lasts 15 seconds longer than it used to and focuses Bloodhound's vision, enabling them to see competitors across great distances. It is, however, incredibly noisy, so any nearby players that didn't know you were close by sure do now...
Caustic
Tactical Ability: Nox Gas Trap
Passive Ability: Nox Vision
Ultimate Ability: Nox Gas Grenade
Caustic doesn't care about you. Caustic doesn't care about anything. With a noxious gas obsession, he's a bit, er, eccentric, but on the battlefield, his abilities aren't quite far-reaching enough to make much of an impact. Any team with a Wraith (which is all of them, let's face it) will get a head's up when his canisters are nearby, plus a well-placed bullet easily removes them. And while his passive is sometimes useful, it's just not powerful enough. Finally, given that his ultimate, a noxious gas cloud, is confined to quite a small area, big boy Caustic just seems to be all cons with minimal pros.
Revenant
Tactical Ability: Silence
Passive Ability: Stalker
Ultimate Ability: Death Totem
Though Respawn has tweaked his abilities to make them a little more robust, Revenant's another Legend that looks great on paper but doesn't quite stack up on the battlefield. His tactical, Silence, prevents competing Legends from using their own abilities, sure. Still, it's a surprisingly small AOE, and though there have been buffs to increase the amount of life downed comrades spawn with if they make use of the Death Totem, savvy players have learned to camp the totems. His Stalker passive, while not without merit, doesn't help your teammates though, so whilst Pathfinder and Wraith can bug out quickly, leaving a means for their squaddies to follow, Revenant's a lone wolf who can't help anyone but himself.
C: Crypto, Octane
You should probably avoid these two - unless you like running fast
© EA
Crypto
Tactical Ability: Surveillance Drone
Passive Ability: Neurolink
Ultimate Ability: Drone EMP
The ability to grab a fallen comrade's banner remotely alone should have been a game-changer, but Crypto's drone is so fragile – and so noisy – they usually don't stay in the air long. With a colossal cooldown time to boot, this means you'll rarely get to use it more than a couple of times a match. He's also entirely vulnerable when you're using the drone, which means if you're playing with randoms who aren't big team players, you're very likely to get wiped out before you've got the thing in the air. Finally, his EMP Ultimate certainly sounds impressive, but it doesn't do anywhere near enough damage. Consequently, new boy Crypto's not got much to offer right now. Here's hoping a buff comes soon, eh?
Octane
Tactical Ability: Stim
Passive Ability: Swift Mend
Ultimate Ability: Launch Pad
Look, people like Octane. He's funny. He's nice enough. But what does his speedy sprinting do for anyone other than him? At best, he's a convenient point man to gets the first shot; at worst – particularly if you're playing with strangers – Octane is usually the grabby get who sprints ahead and steals all the best loot for himself before the rest of the team arrives. Yes, his jump pad can be shared with his teammates, but it can also be shared with enemies too, and unlike Loba's shop, it can't be dismantled or removed after use, either. With very little else to offer the team, Octane's abilities are disappointingly self-serving.
