As is the universal ruleset of battle royale games, victory in Apex Legends can only be achieved by being the last player or squad left standing among the corpses of 90-odd other players but consistently donning the champion’s crown is much easier said than done. Sure, there’ll absolutely be the odd occasion where you’re placed in a lobby of relative newcomers and breeze your way to victory, but in absence of any skill-based matchmaking, you’re just as likely to go up against individuals who consider you little more than target practice.
Whether that’s an issue of imbalance is a topic requiring further discussion, but don’t let the skill-gap scare you away – there’s plenty of content out there ready and waiting to help you improve. YouTuber Staycation, for example, has put together a short, concise video that goes over certain tricks of the trade, if you will, of how best to ensure you emerge from any gunfight with your brain still intact. The general overarching strategy for any combat scenario, according to Staycation, is to always stay on the move and treat each encounter like a fighting game match.
StayCation likens the to and fro of any such engagement to that of Mortal Kombat in the sense that you want to be ‘stacking’ the manoeuvres detailed to make your opponent hitting you as hard as possible. The first of these key skills is strafing. Veteran FPS players will assuredly be well aware of the tactic, but what of sprint-stopping and jump-sliding?
Starting with the former first, sprint-stopping describes the process in which a player will intentionally run away from an opponent in a zig-zag motion and, instead of maintaining maximum sprint speed, will either stop or jump backwards. As attacking players generally presume to follow the path you were taking before changing course, sprint-stopping will cause them to readjust their aim. Jump-sliding, on the other hand, describes the act of abusing changes in height and elevation to make players miss. This works particularly well on steep inclines and uneven terrain.
For the full crash course on how to dodge bullets in Apex Legends, check out the video above. And for additional tips, like how to be among the first to land in Kings Canyon, see here.