Apex Legends – Ranked Guide / Diamond to Masters

Strategy & Mentality

  • Holding down the fort

Depending on the type of players you have on your team, generally after you have your early points it’s almost always better to hold a house in zone and play for placement.

For that strategy you will most likely need Bloodhound x Wraith x Caustic/Wattson. Bloodhound would be use to scan beacons for the zone and obviously scan surrounding areas. Wraith for a quick portal rotation incase you get pushed or you need to move into the last zone. Wattson/Caustic to barricade the building/area and prevent people from pushing in and taking your spot. Wattson ultimate is useful if you are on high ground and potentially get a Gibraltar ultimate on you to get you off the height. Caustic ultimate is useful for clearing an area and overtaking.

  • Poking and Third Party

Essentially engaging in a third party (or range poke for a down or kill for points) then you fall back and leave. Once you have secured a few KP, you should retrieve as mentioned before.

Nice legends to run for this are Pathfinder/Valk/GibraltarPathfinder/Valk to get to higher grounds and get angles on the enemy teams, Gibby for cover and his gunshield is helpful for reducing incoming damage, his Ult is good for getting cover in open spaces and Valk ultimate to dip incase you get pushed from behind etc.

  • I knocked one, PUSH!

This is great for when you’re taking a medium to long range, clean 3v3 fight, and you or one of your teammates gets a knock on the enemy team. It is best to push this as it is now a 2v3 and the odds of winning are in your favor.

In order for this strategy to work properly, you will need a very good team and game sense. Legends to run for this are Octane/Wraith/Pathfinder/Bangalore/Gibraltar/Bloodhound.

Game Plan

  • Aim Training

Many people think aim trainers like KovaaK 2.0 and AimLab is why people are achieving these ranks and thinking that it’s how you get better, but personally, I think you can have mediocre aim and still win fights consistently if you manage to position yourself better.

High ground gives you a considerable advantage, even when zone is right next to you. Jumping down onto an enemy team is always better, rather than being slammed on from above when you have zone. The zone is only more important in the rare circumstances where high ground puts the enemy at a disadvantage due to having to run INTO zone without cover.

  • Lobby drops/team locations

Regardless of the ships flight path, you always want to know where the most teams are dropping and general rotation/locations of enemies.

If many enemies drop on the West side of the map but zone is closing towards East, you will then get a feel of the general rotation pattern of the enemies (middle of the map from left to right) and then you can prioritise your rotation/positioning to limit the 3rd party that may occur in the process of you running into zone.

  • Early KP (kill points)

In higher ranks (Diamond+), playing too passively/scared won’t get you many Rank Points… If you have no KP, the only way to get away from being in the negative is if you place Top 3/4, unless you get kills/assists. and most of the time you won’t make good placement without encountering a team.

One way to avoid that from happening is to scout where one or two teams (MAX) drop in one location, either isolate the 3v3 with the one team and wipe them early (avoid 3rd party from the other team in the location). OR wait until the other 2 teams fight and try to 3rd party to get some early KP. (only do this if loot is at a disadvantage to you and your team, as they might be more kitted than you…)

Note: Once you complete your early fight, there’s a high chance a team from the surrounding areas will hear the shots and come in for the 3rd party. Just grab the needed loot from the boxes and leave. FAST.

  • Rat? HOW?

Being a rat is sometimes the only option you have when both of your teammates die early and banner has timed out, so you should hide. It is important to do so as it will limit the amount of RP taken away from you if you die, no one likes a -48 (Diamond)…

WHERE?
Focus on being on the edge of zone and rotating to high ground where possible and tucking in a well hidden corner and stay away from enemies as much as possible. Of course you can’t really predict where enemies are or rotating from, unless you paid attention to the dropship and where teams landed, as mentioned above!

Knowing WHEN to rat is a difficult and requires willingness to leave your team behind and to not take a fight when your teammates are dead and evacuating the area, when the chance of you winning the fight is very low (1v3).

  • There’s another squad! (3rd Party)

Pushing two teams that are fighting is pretty self-explanatory, but third partying is most effective when 1 or 2 of the enemy teams have been downed.

Ideally, you’d push the two teams together, taking shots at all of them from the side, determining which team is lower on health. The last thing you want to happen is you coming in for the third party and getting focused from both teams and eliminated as a result. OR the two teams finish fighting with all 3 enemies up, getting a shield swap from the eliminated team and engaging you and you die trying.

  • Gun loadout

the Meta loadout is forever changing, and it personally depends on what guns you are comfortable with and what role you play on the team.

Ideally, one player should have long range (Longbow/Charge Rifle/Sentinel/R301 3x/Flatline with 3x scope) and the two others would run SMG (R99/Car/Volt) and shotgun (Mastiff/Peacekeeper/EVA-8) at all times.

Picking Fights (Better Players/Preds/Hackers)

Playing in the higher ranks, you will notice that the same players will be in your match because of SBMM (Skill Based Match Making). You will encounter the same crackheads that are extremely good at the game and die to them a fair amount of times, try your best to avoid that from happening. OR if you keep encountering the same team and you know that the team is near you, get yourself an advantage! Watch the kill feed and listen to the surroundings to see where that better enemy team is and 3rd party them!

Focusing fire on a particular target and coordinating your team to shoot at one isolated enemy is crucial to get an advantage!

If you are not equipped to fight off drop, and an enemy team is chasing you try running to an area where there’s another team and force the two to fight.. if successful, re-group with your
team and 3rd party them!

When this process becomes second nature, you can start to eliminate the high-value teams and greatly increase your chances of winning the match.

Servers

As you may know, you can change which servers you’re playing on via the login page of Apex but it’s pretty self-explanatory, it is based on your area and your connection to the particular server.

AVOID server/lobbies where there are a lot of sweaty players (Pros and or high ranking teams).

Some EU servers can be full of hackers but there’s no way of knowing if they’re hacking unless you encounter them in-game… So test the waters with a few games on the servers of your choice, you will get a feel of the lobbies and see the difficulty of the teams.

Depending on your area of course, if you’re in EU, you should play in EU servers (lower ping) but if you’re struggling on those, maybe go to the surrounding servers like NA or APAC (usually higher ping, which requires a bit of compensation).

I learned that you can’t win every fight and it’s better to sometimes rat and play placement with some poking here and there to get a down.

Created by GeezyFPS

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*