Playing Ranked in Apex Legends has a totally different feel to public games, where everyone dives in, utterly unafraid of death, and has a big bar brawl-style scrap in the middle of the map.
As the name suggests, Ranked is all about climbing through the ranks, and a few bad games will see you demoted. That means everyone plays a bit more carefully.
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People actually pick their battles in Ranked, hanging back to third-party a pair of teams who are already fighting, and running away when a fight starts to turn sour.
One of Apex Legends’ best innovations is the respawn system, which allows you to grab the banners of dead teammates and respawn them at specific points around the map.
But its genius lies with the timer – you have just over a minute to get a banner after a teammate dies, or they’re gone forever.
In Ranked, you often have to weigh whether it’s worth risking a run for a banner, or whether it’s time to run.
If you choose the latter and you’re the last one alive in your squad, that means one thing: it’s ratting time. Being a good rat is an artform.
In Ranked, your finishing position is the most important metric for getting Ranked Points.
Kills and assists only become important if you end the game in the top eight anyway, so the goal of the rat is to run and hide, attempting to finish in second – or, even better, swoop in on the final fight and take the win.
Because this is a battle royale game, you can’t just hide for the entire match. You often have to run for the zone, find a little camping spot, and wait it out.
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Sometimes the best tactic is to play the edge of the zone and move in with the wall of death that pushes the players together.
With the maps being as large as they are, Respawn has basically created a meta-game of hide-and-seek within Apex Legends.
Spot an imperfect piece of the environment on a cliffside and you might be able to nestle in there and watch as players run by unaware.
Octane, Vantage, Valkyrie, and Ash are particularly adept rats, thanks to their movement abilities.
Hiding like this creates these tense moments where you’re hunkered down between two teams, trying not to make a sound. I’ve had an entire team hop right over my head before. It’s thrilling.
You also have to know when to crouch-walk, and when to risk the noise of running, limiting your bursts of speed and timing them with gunshots.
Being a good rat is almost like being good at an entirely different game – a game within a game – and it’s about time rats got more respect.
Written by Kirk McKeand on behalf of GLHF.
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