These Apex Legends Need New Passive Abilities

Apex Legends is experiencing Power Creep when it comes to Legends and their Passive abilities. As Apex Legends has evolved, certain Legends and their Passive abilities have become obsolete. 

This became evident with the release of Valkyrie. Valkyrie’s Passive ability grants her VTOL Jets, allowing her to fly around in the air. Alone, this would arguably be the best Passive ability in the game. But that’s not all. Valkyrie can also scan enemies during the use of her Ultimate, and as a Recon Legend, Valk can scan Survey Beacons to reveal the next circle.

This is an absurd amount of power placed within one Legends’ Passive ability. It’s made worse by the fact that a few of Apex’s early Legends have substandard Passive abilities or practically no Passive ability at all.

It's time to give some urgent attention to a few of Apex's forgotten Legends and their Passive abilities.

Click to enlarge

Pathfinder - Passive Ability

Pathfinder’s lack of a true Passive ability has been a major topic of discussion as of late. Originally, Pathfinder had the unique ability to scan Survey Beacons to reveal the next zone. However, nowadays, all Recon Legends have this ability. This effectively left Pathfinder without a Passive ability. With Path’s old Passive ability being distributed to the masses, it’s about time Pathfinder gets a new Passive.

Since Pathfinder is the king of ziplines, it would make sense that his Passive ability revolves around ziplines. A few suggestions we’ve seen tossed around include giving Pathfinder increased accuracy on ziplines, faster movement on ziplines, or the ability to heal on ziplines.

Horizon can heal while in her Gravity Lift, so why shouldn't Pathfinder be able to heal on a zipline? Looking at the other suggestions, Increased movement speed on ziplines would be a minor buff, but at least it’s something. The dev team would need to be careful with the last proposal of improved accuracy on ziplines. A Passive such as this could be a push. You don’t want Pathfinder mains zipping around and beaming players like it’s nothing.

Another Pathfinder Passive suggestion that has been tossed around for a while is giving Path the ability to naturally scope or zoom in as a sort of binoculars attachment. Pathfinder’s description is “Forward Scout”, after all. This ability would allow Path to scout locations out and relay intel to his squad.

What if when Pathfinder scanned a Survey Beacon, the location of all enemies within a set distance from the beacon were revealed on the map? This ability could work like Crypto’s Map Room on Kings Canyon. Now that all Recon Legends can scan Survey Beacons, Pathfinder lost his advantage. An ability such as this would give Pathfinder some much-needed redemption.

Finally, Pathfinder could be suited for a Passive ability like Revenant’s that allows him to climb higher. Pathfinder’s kit is all about movement, and an increase to his climbing skills would serve him well. Plus, it just makes sense. Pathfinder is a heavily modified Mobile Robotic Versatile eNtity (MRVN). An individual of Pathfinder’s nature should be able to scale walls easily.

We can’t say which of these many Passive ability reworks is the best choice, but Pathfinder deserves a real Passive one way or the other. 

Click to enlarge

Crypto - Passive Ability

Crypto is another Legend that has been robbed of a real Passive ability. Crypto’s Passive, Neurolink, highlights and detects enemies within the view of Crypto's Surveillance Drone.

Why is this ability not built into the Drone? This perk seems like something Crypto's Tactical ability should do automatically. Other Legends have Passive abilities that stay persistent throughout the entire duration of a game regardless of the situation. If Crypto does not have his Drone active, he literally has zero abilities. He’s just a regular guy running around in the Apex Games.

Crypto deserves a true Passive ability that isn’t completely reliant on his Drone. One idea we came up with is Tracker Rounds. Enemies Crypto lands shots on will be revealed for a short duration. An ability like this fits his persona and would give him a much-needed buff outside of his Drone.

If that’s too aggressive of an ability, here’s a more defensive-oriented one; Crypto cannot be scanned or revealed by enemy Legends. This would allow Crypto to hard counter Bloodhound and Valkyrie, two of the most popular Legends currently in the game. An ability like this would allow Crypto to effectively “stay off the grid”, something he insists on through his voice lines.

If the developers really want to keep Crypto’s Passive Drone-related, how about allowing the Drone to follow Crypto and hover around automatically? As of now, Crypto players need to patch into the Drone every time they want to use it. With a Passive like this, Crypto’s Drone would be more self-regulating.

Crypto players could focus more on the action rather than being stuck flying a Drone around half the game. And, this ability would be super noob-friendly. Playing Crypto is intimidating to less experienced players due to all of the upkeep related to managing the Drone. A Passive ability such as this would help with that.

There’s an argument that a buff to Crypto could make him too strong, but maybe that’s a good thing. According to data, Crypto has one of the lowest Legend pick rates in the game at a rate of 1.7%. And Crypto isn't one of those super annoying Legends to fight against like Caustic or Horizon. Buff Crypto's Passive and change up the meta.

Click to enlarge

Revenant - Passive Ability

Unlike the other two Legends on this list, Revenant does have a Passive ability. However, it needs something extra. Revenant synchronises well with certain team compositions, but it’s not thanks to his Passive ability. Right now, Revenant is bottom-tier as an individual Legend, and a big part of that is his weak Passive ability.

Revenant's Passive ability grants him increased crouch walk speed and the ability to climb twice as high. But why should Revenant's ability to climb be limited at all? The developers cite the need for movement to be predictable as a reason for limiting how high Revenant can climb. They don’t want Revenant players climbing up to secret spots that no one would expect to look.

That philosophy made sense when Revenant initially released, but what’s the excuse now? Valkyrie’s Passive grants her the ability to literally fly around with a jetpack. Horizon can Gravity Lift to extreme heights, and Loba can teleport with her bracelet. Allowing Revenant to climb higher seems minor in comparison.

Movement is the meta in Apex Legends. The Legends with the most powerful movement abilities have the highest pick rates. In Revenant’s official cinematic, we see the Synthetic Nightmare scale a skyscraper. He’s obviously capable of climbing higher, but the devs are holding him back. Allow Revenant to compete with the rest of the Legend cast by granting him the ability to climb even higher.

Apex Legends revolves largely around the characters and their abilities. Described as a hero shooter, it’s important that the Legends are balanced as much as possible. It’s clear that the trio of Pathfinder, Crypto, and Revenant’s Passive abilities could use some love. Applying some of the Passive reworks suggested above could be just what each of these three needs to get back in action.

Images via Respawn Entertainment