Competitive Apex’s Early Meta Development

The competitive Apex Legends scene launched just shy of a year ago with the EXP Invitational event at X Games Minneapolis on August 2nd, 2019. I started watching competitive Apex shortly after the event and it quickly captured my attention. Initially, I was drawn in by the sheer mechanical skill of the players, but the more I watched, the more I started thinking about the strategies at play and the metagame overall. Eventually I found it so downright fascinating that I started tracking developments in the meta to satisfy my own interest. Well, almost one year into the game’s competitive history, I figure I might as well share.

To go back to Apex’s competitive start, we should probably make a quick note of what the scene looked like prior to the X Games invitational. Apex itself launched on February 4th, 2019, putting six months between the game’s arrival and its first major tournament. In those first six months, the highest form of competition consisted of kill races (teams entering regular public matches and competing to amass the most kills over a designated period of time) and queue-sniped lobbies. Since custom private matches were not available at launch (and would only be made available by February 2020), competitive players would organize among themselves to search for a match with their teams at the exact same time in order to “snipe” each other in the queue and have everyone land in the same lobby. As a means of practice it actually worked decently well, but without custom match options in the game it was impossible for proper online tournaments to be run. So, by the time the X Games Invitational rolled around, it was a big deal for the competitive Apex scene — serving as the first time the best of the best were all facing each other in the same lobbies and in a legitimate tournament setting.

X Games Invitational — The Beginning

As the first competitive event, the X Games invitational set the foundation for the early competitive meta. This foundation was built almost entirely on Wraith, Wattson, and Pathfinder. Wraith served as the point man of the team, scouting for information and leading engagements thanks to her void ability, and safely rotating her team around the map through the use of her portal. Wattson allowed teams to lock down the spot they had just rotated into with her fences, which doubled as a visual warning for other teams that an area had been claimed, and her generator, which both blocked grenades and improved a team’s shield economy through its regeneration. And Pathfinder would make use of his ability to hit survey beacons across the map to gain information on the next ring location, and therefore the best area to rotate into and hold. It’s a team composition that made a lot of sense on paper, and as it turns out, in practice as well.

Besides a few oddball selections (say your goodbyes to Octane while you can), Lifeline was the only other Legend with some significant use. With the rest of the cast looking pretty lackluster for competitive play, Lifeline became the de facto alternative to the standard Wraith-Wattson-Pathfinder comp. With fast heal, a small hitbox, and abilities that helped to deal with the loot-poor King’s Canyon, her use made a certain degree of sense. Still, selecting her and dropping one of the aforementioned three didn’t seem to be as successful, with the best-placing Lifeline team at the event coming in 7th place, behind six Wraith-Wattson-Pathfinder teams.

Preseason Invitational — The Big 3

Teams arrived one month later in Krakow, Poland for the Preseason Invitational, and by this point, with no new meta-significant patches, the dominant strategy had become the only strategy. Over the course of 11 games across 20 teams, 220 teams were chosen and all 220 consisted of Wraith, Wattson, and Pathfinder.

The synergy between them was just too effective for any player to consider other choices, especially considering the competitive state of other Legends at the time. Wraith and Wattson in particular would continue to be virtual auto-picks going forward, with their roles being too important, and their ability to fill them too effective, to consider being dropped.

GLL Apex Legends Series — The Tanks

Competitive Apex’s next major, the GLL Apex Legends Series, was conducted online, with Finals taking place on December 15th, 2019. This tournament marked the first significant meta shift of Apex’s competitive life thanks to the Season 3 patch released on October 1st. The patch introduced great new map in World’s Edge, a new under-powered Legend in Crypto, and a host of changes — most notably to Gibraltar, who was instantly thrust into the competitive meta.

Gibby received significant buffs to his bombardment and his dome shield, both of which could now be thrown much further and the latter of which now granted team members 25% faster healing. Of significance here is also the appearance of Caustic as a niche pick with some decent popularity on the Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) side of things. Caustic had received several slight buffs over the course of multiple patches prior to this tournament, and was played to relative success by 5th place finishers — and well-known Caustic pioneers — Alliance. Caustic was a peculiar Legend, being incredibly strong in some situations (e.g. defending a building) and severely lacking in others (e.g. rotating with poor cover), with his gas hindering his own teammates as well as opponents at the time. This meant playing him effectively required a lot of deliberate coordination from all team members, and many teams did not want to invest the time to learn such a different playstyle just to use a Legend that had yet to prove he could be part of a winning squad.

This tournament also marks the beginning of diverging trends in the meta between North American and European players. While Gibraltar was picked at a respectable rate in NA, he was an instant star in EU, leapfrogging over Pathfinder with a 65% pick rate. European teams seemed to favor a more aggressive, brawling playstyle, which Gibraltar enabled thanks to his dome, rather than the passive Pathfinder playstyle favored by the majority of NA teams. Case in point: Luminosity wins in EU running Wraith-Wattson-Gibraltar, while TSM wins in NA with Wraith-Wattson-Pathfinder. Caustic was also favored by EU teams relative to NA, a trend which would continue into the new year.

Early Online Tournaments (1 & 2) — Settling In

The first couple online tournaments of 2020 took place in early February and late March, replacing planned LAN events that had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. Not content with their earlier buffs, Respawn gave Gibraltar a faster revive while in his dome shield with the January 14th Grand Soiree patch, which bumped Gibby up to a solid 30% pick rate in NA, and a sort-of-crazy 85% pick rate in EU for OT1. European players then seemed to have collectively realized they may have gone a little overboard by OT2, where Gibby was reeled back in to 60%. After all, the more teams running Gibraltar and looking to fight near the edge of the ring, the more real estate available for Pathfinder teams looking to play in the center of the ring. On the other side of the pond, Pathfinder continued to dominate as the preferred complement to Wraith and Wattson.

We do see Crypto appear here for the first time as well thanks to the drone HP and EMP buffs included in the Grand Soiree patch, but unfortunately this hacker is doomed to mostly remain in the shadows as players consider him too high-risk of an option. The Season 4 patch, released before OT2, was more or less a dud in terms of impacting the overall competitive meta, with minor buffs given only to Crypto and Bloodhound, and Revenant being under-powered on release. At least the inventory stack changes introduced were nice to see.

Notably, the EU winners of OT2 were Alliance, running Wraith-Wattson-Caustic, giving Caustic his first major tournament victory. This performance cemented Caustic as a viable niche pick — provided your team is willing to learn how to work with and around him — and demonstrated his ability to command small endgame rings, with Alliance winning two out of five games and placing no worse than fifth in the rest. In NA, both tournaments are won by Wraith-Wattson-Pathfinder squads.

Mid Online Tournaments (3 & 4) — Path Zips Across the Atlantic

To this day I find many people still consider Europe to be the “Gibby region” and NA to be the “Path region”. Truth be told, the latter is more accurate than the former. As we see here with April 2020 OTs 3 and 4, Pathfinder quickly gains a lot of ground on Gibraltar in EU; ground that he mostly maintains beyond these two tournaments.

There’s nothing patch-wise pushing Pathfinder’s usage here — the more likely story is that there was a lot of congestion in trying to play along the edge of the ring with so many Gibraltar teams, and a portion of the EU scene naturally shifted towards Pathfinder and a center-ring strategy as a result. In NA, Path continues to be the preferred complement to Wraith and Wattson, though Gibby is no slouch himself. Pathfinder teams got a full sweep, winning both tournaments in both NA and EU.

Late Online Tournaments (5 & 6) — Jostling

By this point, the overall meta had been very firmly established, and the competitive scene was chugging along accordingly. Three tournaments after Alliance’s win, Caustic finally appeared in an NA Finals lobby. European players, meanwhile, were still torn on Gibraltar and Pathfinder, with them swapping positions as first-choice complement between OT5 on May 3rd and OT6 on May 31st. While OT5 was played after the mostly-inconsequential Old Ways patch, OT6 was played on the Season 5 patch, which included a big cooldown nerf to Pathfinder’s grapple, a big nerf to Gibraltar’s dome shield duration, and an under-powered Legend in Loba (I’m sensing a trend here). With Gibby and Path both receiving nerfs, it’s interesting that it’s Pathfinder who gained the edge in OT6, likely due to his survey beacon ability, and not his grapple, being core to the playstyle he encourages, as opposed to Gibby’s dome shield being integral to his effectiveness.

Gibraltar snagged a second tournament win in OT6 EU, while Pathfinder grabbed another win in NA, along with wins in both regions in OT5.

Summer Circuit Online Tournament 1 — The End of an Era?

As the final tournament before the impactful Lost Treasures patch, the Summer Circuit Super Regional OT1 is where I’ll end off for now. With another three weeks having gone by since OT6, Pathfinder now held a firm grasp of the third role, nearly doubling Gibraltar’s pick rate overall.

Otherwise, not much had changed here, except for the appearance of Bloodhound for the first time due to Complexity’s unorthodox, aggressive playstyle. As the only team purposefully looking to take isolated fights as much as possible, Complexity had no need for Wattson’s defensive capabilities, opting for Bloodhound’s tracking abilities to find opponents and his scan to help them win the engagement — which they did often enough to net themselves a solid 4th place finish. It was a very unique strategy compared to the established meta, but not a winning one quite yet, as Wraith-Wattson-Pathfinder teams secured victory yet again in both regions.

And that’s where things stood prior to the June 23rd 2020 Lost Treasures patch. I’ll be covering meta developments for events past this point in future stories.