Apex Legends: How to REALLY pick your main – Stryda (2024)

Picking your main in Apex Legends is essential. Of course, being good at multiple Legends is always good, especially when matching with random squadmates. They might just pick your favorite and leave you scrambling to decide what to pick in a matter of seconds. In any case, there’s always that one Legend you feel most at ease with. Let’s find out who that is.

Greetings, Legends!

Apparently, my previous Apex Legends Main Picking Guide, was too straightforward. So let’s do an actual, comprehensive one. One guide to rule them all.

Before we dive right in, don't forget to check out how G-Loot can track your Apex Legends stats, and make your game more exciting with our Daily Missions and Weekly Brawls.

Figuring out your playstyle

Apex Legends is a fast-paced, squad-focused game. So deciding what role you’re going to play in your squad is a safe point to begin the process. Having a group of friends or solo Q’ing your way through random squads will both help you figure out your own pace and depending on that pace, you can decide on how to proceed. And don’t worry, I’ll explain each pick separately.

Aggressive Playstyle

If you have a fast-paced, offensive playstyle, you should consider Legends such as Octane, Bloodhound, Fuse, Bangalore, Mad Maggie, Ash, and Wraith.

Octane can utilize his Stim and Jump Pad to quickly rush opponents or move himself and his squad out of danger when needed. But beware, using Stim takes away a considerable amount of HP, and the sound effect of using the Jump Pad will definitely warn everyone around about your shenanigans. So make sure subtlety is not a part of the equation when rushing in.

Bloodhound can scan the opponents, as all scanner Legends do, but can go all berserk mode after locating their prey. Bloodhound’s ultimate ability, Beast of the Hunt, will allow you to make quick work of your opponents. Like Octane, both of Bloodhound’s abilities notify the people around to your presence, so their guard will be up. Not that there’s anything they can do against the Beast of the Hunt, but be careful anyway.

We’ve come so far since Season 8, but even back then, we had so many choices to pick as a main. (Image: Respawn Entertainment)

Fuse could be considered the opposite of Octane in terms of throwing yourself in danger. Instead, you throw the danger at your opponents from afar. Fuse is very effective at mid to long-range with his passive, tactical, and ultimate abilities, allowing him to basically rain explosives on the people unlucky enough to be seen by his good eye. Fuse’s weak point is also his own abilities. Since he rains down mayhem indiscriminately, he can also damage himself terribly if he gets too close. This will give time to your opponents to heal/shield up, but if our squadmates share your enthusiasm for bonking heads, they will surely rush in to finish what you started.

Bangalore runs faster when shot at, which you can use to your advantage if you want to rush opponents. This will require some Matrix-level bullet-dodging if you want to rush all the way in, though. Remember that. Bangalore can also use her tactical ability, Smoke Launcher, to create blind spots on the battlefield to cover distances quickly without being seen. After you get comfortable navigating the smokescreen, it will become another tool for you to rush down opponents. I’m not even going to mention Bangalore’s Rolling Thunder in detail here. It’s the stuff of nightmares. It will make your opponents run, so make sure to have a follow-up plan after using it. If you want details anyway, make sure to check the Bangalore guide on G-Loot’s Blog.

Mad Maggie brings up the question: “is she out of her damn mind?” and the answer is yes. She comes with a whole different level of movement, not being slowed down while using shotguns and throwing her Wrecking Ball that leaves speed-boosting nodes on the ground. Mad Maggie is also a bunker-buster with her tactical ability, Riot Drill. She will force Gibraltar squads out of their bubble and anyone who tries to hide behind anything while fighting. Forcing your opponent to move towards where you want them is crucial in aggressive play, and Mad Maggie does it like nobody else. Also, don’t forget to throw some shade at Fuse while doing it.

Ash is the ultimate “get in, loser, we’re going on a murder spree” Legend. She will snare opponents to allow herself and her squadmates to use explosives effectively and move her squad with her ultimate in an unprecedented way. Ash’s ultimate ability, Phase Breach, is a one-way ticket to your opponents’ elimination. While Phase Breach does make a lot of noise, it’s definitely subtler than, say, Octane’s Jump Pad or Bangalore’s Rolling Thunder. So you can still be relatively subtle while moving your entire squad towards your target instantly.

Wraith can also be included in other playstyles, but I’ll put her mainly in the offensive playstyle category. While her passive ability quickly became a meme among the Apex Legends community, her overall kit is quite self-dependent, which makes her great for solo Q’ing. However, if you’re a team player (please be a team player), Wraith is also great at moving her squadmates around and setting up traps.

What makes Wraith an aggressive Legend is that her model is small enough for you to dodge shots while rapidly rushing opponents down and her ability to take herself out of danger rather quickly. She can phase out, move to safety, heal/shield up and try again in case the initial charge fails. There’s also an urban legend about her being more accurate than other Legends with the Wingman. Practice, though I have, I’m yet to confirm this one. Might be a lie.

Plotting, scheming, conniving & bamboozling playstyle

This style of play mostly includes thorough preparation, area-specific defensive plays, and luring opponents towards your traps. The Legends you should consider maining if your playstyle is plotting, scheming, conniving and/or bamboozling are Caustic, Crypto, Loba, Mirage, Rampart, Revenant, Seer, and Wattson. Let’s dive right in.

Caustic is your go-to pick if you like setting up traps and watching people scramble around after walking into them. Despite being nerfed dramatically in Season 12, Caustic’s Nox Gas Traps are still a deadly force to mess with. As Caustic, you should find chokepoints (pun intended) to trap your opponents before your entire squad cracks down on them. Caustic is not great at creating solutions on the go, so keep in mind that your Nox Gas also makes it very hard for your squadmates to fight, although not damaging them. Caustic shines in the later Ring closings since the more cramped the playground gets, the more he gets a chance to cover an area with his Nox Gas.

Crypto recently moved up from the “plan everything ahead” tier to “plan ahead, but now you can also figure things out on the go” tier. Being able to throw his drone, Hack, without switching to drone-view helped Crypto achieve higher mobility and the ability to keep up with everyone else. Crypto is best utilized as an initiator: locating the opponents, traps, and contraptions, stunning and/or disabling them before your squad moves in. His EMP also scrambles the maps of the opponents caught in it for a short while, giving you a small window of opportunity to take away their situational awareness.

Here’s a squad that can plan, connive and adapt if things go sideways. (Image: Respawn Entertainment)

Loba is in the planning, scheming, conniving & bamboozling playstyle because her tactical ability to teleport, Burglar’s Best Friend, usually leaves her helpless if used mid-combat. As Loba, you should frequently use your ultimate ability, Black Market Boutique, to help your squad prepare for the battle ahead and maybe steal some quality drops from the Vault or a Care Package close by. Her tactical ability is to be used in relatively safer situations rather than right in the middle of a gunfight. That’s why you should plan ahead, even if just a little bit. You can also lure in opponents by leaving your ultimate available after you’re done with it. The ability to just pull in free loot is a great temptation for a lot of players.

Mirage is also in the scheming playstyle. I wonder why. The ultimate master of bamboozling, Mirage is how you drive your opponents crazy while forcing them to position themselves in your favor rather than theirs. While not a scanning Legend, Mirage can reveal the positions of your opponents in multiple ways. You can use your tactical ability, Psyche Out, to draw in fire from your opponents, revealing their positions. Also, if one of your holographic clones (holo-clones for ease of use) gets hit, you’re notified of the shooter’s exact location, their distance to you included.

Utilizing Mirage to his full potential requires a lot of experience and quick thinking, but once you get familiar with how Mirage works, you’ll play your opponents like a fiddle. Bonus points if you manage to pronounce difficult words such as bamboozle in one try.

Rampart was a niche Legend where you were required to have an even more diligent preparation process than Caustic or Wattson. Then came her buff, where she suddenly turned into the Heavy from Team Fortress 2. Wrong TF, Respawn, but okay. Rampart’s Amped Cover provides a good enough cover and a substantial damage boost to your weapons when you fire through them. From the correct side, of course. You don’t want to find yourself on the wrong side of the Amped Cover.

Utilizing Amped Cover will help you get set in a secure position and defend it until you’re forced to move again. Plus, now that her ultimate ability—Sheila—is a mobile weapon, you can shred everyone in sight without making yourself a sitting duck. Still, Rampart is best used with good preparation and adaptation skills. Pulling Sheila out is not a get-out-of-jail-free card in emergency situations.

Revenant… Well, I wasn’t kidding about Revenant in the previous guide. You really can make calculations for a lot of different scenarios before engaging the opponents as Revenant. His climbing ability is wildly buffed, and now he can scale pretty much any building that’s not a landmark skyscraper. This gives you a vertical advantage against your opponents because Revenant is the only Legend who can launch an aerial attack on unassuming opponents without making too much noise.

There are ways for other Legends to climb high places, of course, but they need to use noisy abilities to do so. Revenant, being the creepy stalker he is, just climbs the wall to catch people off-guard, and this is only one of his cool abilities. His ultimate, the Death Totem, basically gives you a free engagement ticket where you can damage, kill or assess the current situation of your opponents. Be careful where you place the Death Totem, though, since anyone, friend or foe, can use it.

“Everyone against everyone! Chaos!” - Mille Petrozza, who obviously has trouble picking his main. (Image: Respawn Entertainment)

Seer might be the most on-the-nose name in the game. Yes, Bloodhound, Wattson, and Caustic exist, and Seer is still the most obvious one. Seer, well, sees things. He’ll scan targets from up to 75 meters away, interrupt any channeling effects they have going on, and reveal their health and shield bars. His tactical ability, Focus of Attention, will interrupt actions such as reviving and healing/shielding up. In short, he can ruin your day from the other end of the map. Plus, Seer’s ultimate provides a live feed to the footprints of anyone who's in it.

The only way to hide from Seer’s ult is to crouch and move slowly, which will cripple your enemies’ movement if they don’t want to be seen. Hiding from someone called Seer is indeed a Sisyphean task. As Seer, you can basically know everything about your opponents, including their current health and shield bars, which makes assessing the situation much easier. Quickly devise your attack plan and show them Seer is not useless. Despite his pick rate.

Wattson is your go-to when you want to be cheeky about the whole plotting and placing traps thing. Her traps deal damage and briefly disorient opponents, making them move slower and be terrible at aiming. The maps in Apex Legends have lots of entry, and exit points where you can trap with Wattson’s tactical—Perimeter Security—to watch opponents confusedly look around, trying to understand what’s going on. You can giggle and shoot them in the meantime.

“Sshh! Don’t tell them my ultimate is broken!” (Image: Respawn Entertainment)

Wattson’s ultimate ability, Interception Pylon, zaps any and all throwable items in the game, disintegrating them. These items include Bangalore and Gibraltar’s flares for their ultimates. Zapping them will cancel their entire ultimate. While Interception Pylon usually bugs out and doesn’t work properly, when it does, it’s one of the best defensive abilities in the game. Most of the time, when you set up in a choke point, your opponents will try to smoke you out with explosives. With Wattson, say goodbye to those explosives and being smoked out! There. That’s my sales pitch. Pick Wattson, guys. She’s really cool. I promise.

“Figure everything on the go” playstyle

Full disclosure, I’m playing fast and loose with the term “figure everything” in this category. The third and last category for playstyles is the one where you mostly take reactive action to certain situations. Thus, this category has Gibraltar, Horizon, Lifeline, Pathfinder, and Valkyrie. Let me explain.

Gibraltar, I believe, is the definitive Legend for the “reactive action” category. His abilities are used mostly situationally, but they will win you the fight and the match. My claims are backed up by Gibraltar’s 100% pick rate in most high-level pro Apex Legends tournaments. Gibraltar is a bastion indeed. No, he doesn’t turn into a jumping tank while making robot noises. But he will protect you from all kinds of danger. Gibraltar’s tactical ability, Dome of Protection, is probably the most broken ability in the game. It deploys a shield that lasts for 12 seconds and cannot be broken. While opponents can invade the shield, its existence means 12 seconds of full protection from the outside. Gibraltar can also revive squadmates faster while both Legends are inside the “bubble.”

While his ultimate ability, Defensive Bombardment, is a great asset, especially during the later Ring closings, dropping a bubble shield at the right time and position will decide the outcome of a battle. So as Gibraltar, you need to be very aware of your surroundings and make the correct reactive decisions for your squad's safety. Not an easy task, but when everything’s over, everybody will remember the name “Gibraltahhh.”

When all else fails, you know what to do. (Image: Respawn Entertainment)

Horizon is another fine example of a Legend that can come up with solutions in the middle of a gunfight. Her kit mostly revolves around positioning yourself for maximum effectiveness and your opponents for maximum vulnerability. Her tactical ability, Gravity Lift, will help you instantly get high ground or disorient your opponents by suddenly launching them towards the sky.

While it’s mainly considered as an ability to reach a higher position for Horizon’s squad, Gravity Lift can also be used to deny entrance to certain rooms and spaces if placed well. This, coupled with her ultimate ability—Black Hole—pulling opponents together for an explosive attack or pulling them away from safety, Horizon is one of the best Legends if you want to be able to adapt your play style on the go.

Lifeline might be the Legend with the least flexibility in terms of playstyle. Not saying this as a fact, but her kit mainly revolves around coming up with quick solutions to sticky situations. And yes, I am considering a career in rap after this article. As I joked in the previous article about picking your main, Lifeline is the ultimate “I got my squad’s back” Legend.

Reviving knocked-down squadmates without having to expose yourself to danger, healing them, and calling down the Lifeline Package; all serve the purpose of adapting to the current situation in the game. As your Lifeline Package is guaranteed to include an upgrade item for at least one person in your squad, Lifeline is great for keeping up with the other squads if you haven’t been able to get great loot until that point in the game.

Pathfinder swings between being a “planning, scheming, conniving & bamboozling” playstyle and “figure everything on the go” playstyle, ironically, because of his grappling hook… which helps him swing to places. With Pathfinder, you can plan and scheme your way through a fight with a quick flank or a zipline that will help your entire squad. On the other hand, you can quickly adapt to tough scenarios such as being flanked or ambushed by another squad, thanks to Pathfinder’s insanely high mobility.

However, don’t forget that Pathfinder’s super-high mobility is only good for himself. You won’t be able to get your squadmates out of danger without allowing everyone else to chase after you.

Valkyrie is also a mixed pick on some level, but she makes an insane amount of noise when moving around with her jetpack that was designed to move a Titan around. This makes it quite difficult for Valkyrie to be subtle and stealthy, but it will help you place yourself in great rat spots if you need to play it super safe. The noise she makes while moving inevitably puts her in the “figure everything on the go” style. Thankfully, she has just the kit for that playstyle.

I will use this picture until I’m officially asked to stop. (Image: Respawn Entertainment)

She can fly around by herself to scout ahead or get herself into a safe and/or flanking position during a fight. In terms of mid-fight mobility, Valkyrie is arguably the best Legend, thanks to her vertical capabilities. Legends such as Octane and Pathfinder also have great mid-fight mobility for example, but they both require certain environmental or external factors to achieve that. Valkyrie, on the other hand, can just fly away to come back with a vengeance.

While her ability to fly around is great, the real prize is her ultimate ability, Skyward Dive. Skyward Dive can take your entire squad for a ride, flying away from danger and into a safe spot. Coupled with Valkyrie’s threat detector while in a “dropping” (from the Dropship, Jump Towers, her ultimate, etc.) motion, Valkyrie is great at figuring out how and where to take a breath before jumping back into the action. She literally figures everything on the fly.

Conclusion

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that can be considered when choosing your main Legend. One of the biggest of those factors is your skill level. While your playstyle carries a lot of weight, if your skill level is not catering to your style, you’re going to have a bad time. At the end of the day, it comes down to your own skills. But worry no more! There’s a great way to improve your skills while earning rewards and learning more about your own playstyle through stats!

G-Loot tracks your in-game Apex Legends stats and provides insight into your performance, helping you figure out your own play style. Maybe you’re not doing so well when playing super aggressively? You can see that by checking out your stats. Your opponents will lie to you, they will trick and deceive you to get the win, but stats never lie.

With G-Loot, you can attend the Weekly Brawls to win a ticket for our Monthly Showdowns, where you can win prize money! Also, it’s not exclusive to Apex Legends. G-Loot supports a lot of great esports games such as PUBG and Valorant!

Want more insight into how these Legends work? You can click on the names of the Legends throughout this article and if you can’t click on one, make sure to keep an eye on the G-Loot Blog for a future guide for that Legend!

So, what do you think? What method would you use to figure out your Apex Legends main? Did I miss anything? Join us on Discord to discuss with fellow G-Looters!

See you on the hunting grounds, Legends.