Apex Legends new free to play battle royale game from Respawn

So there we were....Me (Valk) and Gator (Octane) launching off into Caustic's fun palace in King's Canyon in Duo's.

Oh hey look, only another squad with us. Now these two idiots run in, we went and looted some shit and as they were running around trying to figure out what to do in there, Gator cracked and almost smoked a guy who went behind a closed door to pop a shield cell and guess who was there on the other side of that door....

"Valkyrie's got you in the pipe.... 5 by 5"

His buddy, Bangalore, thought it would be a good idea to get out of there and leave him, decided to come back and play with an R-301. That didn't work so well when the Valk/Octane 16" Sandwich closed on the little biatch.

"They say death catches up to everyone..."

So off we go to deplete the gas and reap the rewards. I snagged a gold Flatline and gold helmet - Speedy Delivery boy came out with a gold backpack and something else. And away we went about our marry way. All was quiet on the eastern front. Very.... very... quiet.

Too quiet.

"Alert 5 - Ready to scorch for burn"

Splashed down in Repulsor. I took the roof on the edge Southeast corner, Crack head Speedy McGee started noticing someone barely looted it. So, off we went pillaging. I had a fully locked and loaded Longbow with a 3 Cog, and my trusty gold flatline. Here is where things get interesting. As there are about 10 squads left. Circle is closing in over Swamp.

"Say the word, and we'll be in the clouds"

We fly over to Swamp and notice.... Where the fuck is everyone? So we duck and cover on the edge of the map behind some cover and wait - for 3 minutes.

"I do this for the rush. The fans are just a bonus."

"I like my women like I like my Sake - Cool, unfiltered, and on someone else's tab."

So we hear some shots over across north of wetlands, circle will close in north of us - 6 squads left.

"Alert 5 Valkyrie actual - ready for burn - how copy?"

"Haven't we landed yet? What's the hold up!?"

We pipe off into a small corner ready to bounce whoever comes in from 3 sides.... Until.... I see a life line on a roof close to where we landed on the wedge of wetlands. Like a kid on Christmas I just CANNOT contain myself.

Longbow up, headshot, cracked, she ducks down in the house - Fuse out of nowhere snipes me in the face, snags me for one more, and I am crawling on the ground over to the corner behind some rocks.

I was sure I evaded that rock and roll hero, but I heard him coming - and... What happened next was hilarious.

Fuse starts ducking up and down and dancing around me obviously not knowing that if I am still on the ground there is a Teammate somewhere. While he was busy dancing and blasting at my shields and thinking he was being cute, he corpses me just as by little buddy Octane shows up. I am wondering what was going through his head when he heard...

"That sucks for you compadre, but at least it wasn't boring"

Now, somehow, after getting circle fucked all night - by the grace of Apex, there is a respawn beacon 3 feet from where I died.

"Not done yet, dad - Miss me Squad?"

I go back to my corpse loot up everything and head over to nab a shield and some accessories from Millie Vanilli in the corner. 2 squads remaining.

I am crouched, ready to rock, not even paying attention to where my drug induced Mario Andretti went. And I hear water - someone is crouching in the water, not taking the high ground....

I flank over, and just run and gun it. It was the same lifeline as before, cracked her and brought her down a bit, I get knocked - but she is low.

"Mayday Mayday! I'm grounded!"

Whooosh.

Octane comes in to save the day.

"You are the Apex Champions"

And at the same time...

"Oh come on - dead or not even you have to admit that was awesome"

This message is sponsored by the "TripleTakeOver" - AKA: Lush Squad.

Xevy said:

Right now approximately 80% of teams I run into (unranked) have Octanes. He's the Wraith of 2021. You need him because he can A: passively heal which means more room for ammo/grenades/cells/whatever. A feature only really Watson and to a degree Lifeline can also enjoy. He's also THE guy to 3rd party with. Jump pad is broken, again, and you have a 50% chance of not getting a sound on the jump or the float so it's literally silent death from above.

And the biggest reason (maybe tied with 3rd party jump-padding) is because he's got a movement boost. This + desync + tap strafing makes him nearly impossible to hit while he just hip fires his double SMGs. Wraith benefitted from this for the previous 3 years with a literally broken hit box where if you stepped back one step, then tapped left/right strafe her hit box shrunk by 45%. ACTUALLY 45%. They didn't fix it so they made her take 10% more damage (lol) for a few months then "fixed" it. They didn't. She still can tap strafe and lose 25-30% of her hitbox making he nearly impossible to hit and combine that with head-ducking spam (because this is one of the few games where headshots are critically important with things like the Wingman) and you have a jittery, hard to hit, and speedy-than-thou opponent. If you're not Octane/Bangalore/Bloodhound(during Ult) your chance at winning a close range 1v1 goes down dramatically against those characters. Tracking is nearly impossible combined with desync that builds up over the week after a server restart.

This has led to the current meta: RUSH RUSH RUSH.

Currently the team comp is something like Octane>>>>>>>>Bloodhound>Seer>Wraith>>>whoever else. Octane is used to get on or away from enemies during 3rd parties near instantly with very low cooldown. Octanes can now get in, poke and prod, TRY to get a pick, then their team can join via pad if he's successful. If he's not and losing? Np. Just pad out or run at hyperspeed while sucking a shield battery down. An Octane with gold armor is one of the worst experiences in this game to fight outside of the double R99 Wraiths of old.

There's a lot they could do to change him and hopefully they mention his pick rate, but I'm assuming he's well over the 60% mark. In duos nearly EVERY team has an octane and a lot of the most aggressive are Octane/Pathfinders. Honestly they just need to make it so he can't use items while sprinting and/or you can't use items after using a jump pad while in the air.

The best part about this is the counter-meta. Caustic. Big ol' farty-boi is now one of the BEST heroes to take because of this. Kill a squad? Throw down traps all around you. Octanes will come in and they won't get out. They'll fucking die. Getting rushed because you fired at some team at the distance and the vultures are circling? No problem! Get in a building, put down three traps, watch them run off into the sunset. It's an interesting counter and if you watch the pros they HATE HATE HATE Caustic. And it's great. He's found a great niche for countering third party which is most of what Apex has devolved into.

TL;DR people with high movement speed (Octane/Bangalore/Bloodhound) can somewhat break the game close quarters due to shitty game mechanics and desync. Octane has this power at-will so he's a top pick for nearly every team. Until they either reign this tap-strafing shit in (they won't) they need to seriously nerf other aspects of Octane that make him just one of the stupidest characters since primtime-Wraith.

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I have NEVER had a problem killing octane. Learn to play.