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If you want to pull off a win in Apex Legends, you’ll often want to find a health balance between being defensive and being aggressive–both in your thinking and your character selection. The fast and furious Octane is one of the game’s most aggressive characters–a quick and deadly legend capable of closing the gap between you and your opponents rapidly before they know what hit ’em.
Octane is an attack-oriented legend, great for catching players off guard or running them down when they’ve had their shields broken–but this speed demon mentality can also leave you vulnerable. To use Octane effectively, you’ll need quick reflexes, a willingness to push fights, and the know-how to keep yourself alive. We’ve got everything you need to know about his abilities, how to pair him with other characters, and what pitfalls you should try to avoid along the way.
A flurry of lightning-fast abilities
Describing Octane as “The Adrenaline Junky” is Respawn giving you a sense of how you should think about the character. He’s all about big risks and big rewards. His abilities boost his speed, which can make him a devastating skirmisher and front-line fighter, but he generally can take less damage than other heroes, since his tactical ability trades health for speed. That means you should be using him as a fast fighter up close with enemies to try to drop them fast, while the rest of your team supports you and mops up the people you damage.
Octane’s tactical ability Stim grants him greatly increased speed for a short time at the cost of some of his health. Luckily, this works hand-in-hand with his passive ability, which regenerates health over time.
That passive ability Swift Mend will regen his health by 1 HP every second that he’s not taking damage. It’s not much, but it can be a massive help to not have to stop and spend your time manually healing minor wounds.
Lastly, his ultimate is Launch Pad, which tosses a pad on the ground that can launch you and your enemies vertically or horizontally to reach areas quickly. This makes it an amazing tool for opening up an offensive push or aggressively running down escaping squads.
The hit-and-run master
A hit-and-run approach is best with Octane because he can be very hard to hit when moving quickly. Get in close with weapons like the R-99, Peacekeeper, EVA-8, and other hard-hitting guns, and try to knock people out or at least get them close to death as often as you can. That doesn’t mean you should be throwing yourself at well-placed three-player squads, of course, but streaking in as Octane to bust up a team’s line or scatter them can be highly effective, as can isolating one player and messing them up. Octane is a great one-on-one fighter because he’s so quick, so use that to your advantage in weakening squads. Just remember that you’re a master of escaping, too, so don’t overstay your welcome–get in and get out.
Use the Stim to your advantage with frequency
Octane’s Stim allows him to inject adrenaline to get a 30% speed boost for six seconds, and the ability cools down quickly–about another six seconds to use it again. It’s great for pressing the attack and crossing open ground and can also get you out of dangerous situations since you can boost through stuns from things like arc stars and Caustic gas. Just be careful not to overcommit or put yourself in a losing battle right when your speed boost wears off.
Octane’s speed can make him incredibly deadly. With a Stim active, you can cut distance on enemies very quickly and strafe them effectively, becoming really hard to hit–so you definitely want to use Octane to get in close and wreck enemies with your favorite and most effective shotguns and SMGs.
Your weakened health from using your Stim ability means you should focus on using the environment to your advantage. Get in close, blast away at an enemy, and get out of harm’s way by dancing around a wall or object. Use your speed to avoid getting shot, but remember that Stim boosts only last for six seconds, and the return to normal speed can be jarring. Try to time your attacks so that you get in close, do your damage, and get out before you’re stuck in a fight and going slow. And avoid tight interior areas like Bunker that will cancel out your speed advantage.
Long-range is viable but doesn’t capitalize on your kit
You can certainly use Octane to position yourself quickly for long-range encounters, but he’s still best when being played as an in-your-face character. Even when fighting snipers, your speed can let you get in close and make their long-range guns ineffective. For optimal results, carry complementary guns like an SMG and shotgun or Wingman, which will let you blast away with one, then quickly switch to the other to finish people off. For Octane, the best way to be effective is to walk away from an engagement with a knockdown so that your slower teammates can waltz in and clean up after your beautiful chaos.
You can quickly reposition, and you should
One of the best things you can do with Octane’s speed is reposition yourself in fights. Where other characters might commit to fighting in one location, and therefore become predictable, Octane can quickly move to new cover or flank around an enemy to hit them from an exposed side. Lots of players get tunnel vision when they start fighting a team from a specific direction, so if you can come at them from a side they don’t expect, you can usually finish them off. Octane’s speed makes that a highly viable strategy, but be careful you don’t expose yourself and get picked off in transit.
Launch and be launched
Launch Pads have a lot of uses. Drop one to give your team the ability to fling themselves over an enemy position to hit them from behind or just cause chaos, or bounce up on top of buildings to put yourself in a better tactical position as you engage another team. They’re also great for getaways, because people flying through the air are generally tougher to hit than those running on the ground. Even if you just use your Launch Pad to separate from your squad to force enemies to shoot in multiple directions to hit you all, you’re using it effectively. Drop them to help downed teammates get out of the fray as well–they work when the person who steps on them is crawling.
Launch Pads can be hilarious
You can also use Launch Pads in goofy ways to mess with enemies. Toss one in battle and you might wind up flinging an opponent away a bit in the chaos, forcing them to get their bearings. Leave one at the end of a Wraith portal and you could potentially shoot someone off a cliff. You can even set them in doorways to create havoc for anyone attempting to rush through it, often sending them bouncing around and letting you get some shots in while they’re disoriented. And keep in mind that you don’t need to launch people with your Launch Pads–you can also launch throwables like grenades. Get creative!
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