There’s more to Apex Legends than just good aim and lucky loot. A huge part of the game is mobility, and whether that’s sliding down a hill or zipping up a zipline, Pathfinder can help you find the way to victory. Here we’ll go over some of the basic Apex Legends Pathfinder tips, as well as some advanced tips and tricks you can use to become the Apex Champion with our best robot buddy.
Pathfinder is technically a support class, alongside Lifeline the medic. Much of that support role comes from his ability to find out where the next ring is going to close in on. But he can also give the whole team an escape route, or a highway into the dangerzone, by setting up a zipline.
Here’s his full armory of abilities:
- Insider Knowledge (Passive Ability): Allows you to use a survey beacon (marked on maps as a small radio tower) to find out the location of the next circle.
- Grappling Hook (Tactical Ability): Throws a grappling hook that can attach to surfaces or other players, pulling you towards the grapple point.
- Zipline Gun (Ultimate Ability): Launches a zipline up to a large distance to create a permanent route for you, your allies and even enemies to slide along.
Beginner Tactics
If you’re still finding your feet in Apex Legends then there’s few better characters to get you running, jumping and sliding your way around the map than Pathfinder. For one, his boundless optimism is infectious for you and your team, no problem is ever more than a happy mistake. But you can still be a huge tactical advantage as well. Try to drop near active Survey Beacons which you’ll be able to see on the map even before you launch. While your friends are still looting, you can find out where the circle after the currently closing one will be, allowing you to plan your game out a bit further in advance. Do this whenever you can, but if there’s just a few seconds left until a circle finished closing, wait until it completes to get even better future intel.
The grapple gun isn’t your best friend at first, it takes a while to understand exactly how the physics of Apex Legends works, but the best advice for beginners is to keep using it. It comes off cooldown every 15 seconds so use it to skip stairs, or relocate to the top of buildings in teamfights, out of danger or gaining a high ground advantage. Aim just for the edge of walls to easily hop up over them. To swing across gaps, try aiming at surfaces perpendicular to your travel and hold the movement direction away from the grapple point. You’ll understand more about the momentum of your swing the more you use this.
One of the greatest benefits to your team is letting them have access to the same height advantages you get, so set up ziplines for them to scale impossible walls or buildings too. Try not to use this to get out of teamfights as your enemies can follow you as well, but feel free to use it as often as you want otherwise, or even to initiate if you land a few good long-range headshots and don’t want to give the other squad time to heal up. The Zipline Gun comes off cooldown every 90 seconds so you’ll have it up before every engagement, most likely. Don’t forget to use it to help your team out if they’re lagging behind outside the ring, or find themselves out of position and need a quick way to get back to the safety you’ve found yourself.
Advanced Tactics
So much of Pathfinder’s skill set is about moving around the map, to get the most out of him you need to really push your advantage when it comes to mobility. Use the grapple gun to give yourself boosts when moving around firefights. Even using it on a ground-level box to get some momentum which can be used to enter a kneeslide to surprise opponents behind cover.
After practicing with it enough you’ll notice that momentum plays a huge role in your grapple gun’s swing trajectory. Get speed up by sliding down stairs or short slopes in urban environments and you can use the grapple on building corners to catapult yourself longer distances. Also, use the grapple on enemy players to surprise and confuse them, or pull them out of position or into melee range if you’ve run out of ammo.
In areas like Cascades, where there are plenty of ziplines already, you can use your own to create a network of criss-crossing ziplines that allow you to very quickly reposition to any one of five or six vantage points. This is perfect for mid-to-late-game fights in the area, because you could end up with multiple squads attempting to pick you off from competing angles with long, open sightlines. You can jump from one zipline to another to change direction, or to look like an incredibly bad-ass movie star. It’s win-win.
