A Pathfinder Guide: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Tips for Optimal Play.
Let’s talk about my boy Pathfinder. This jolly fellow brings a lot of positive energy to Apex Legends and he’s one of my favorite legends to play. I achieved 100 or more kills on all 8 currently available legends and none provide the mobility options Pathfinder does. I want to write an article for each legend to provide helpful tips to optimize using each with their abilities and gameplay styles. So, I figured I’d start with one of my go-to legends.
Pathfinder is a mid- to long-range skirmisher who excels at aggressively finding angles in a fight in a rapid manner. He’s also very effective at finishing fights by quickly closing the gap once one or two enemy players are knocked down. Pathfinder offers versatility in mobility options for both himself and his team. Verticality is his friend. To fully explain, we’ll dive into his three abilities.
Passive Ability: Insider Knowledge
Insider knowledge is probably his least useful of his three abilities. I’m not saying it’s useless, just not on the level of other passives like Bloodhound’s or Lifeline’s. Survey beacons are pretty distanced across the map and require you to be locked in an animation for a few seconds. They’re also generally in completely exposed locations, allowing you to be an easy target for a sniper.
In all honestly, Pathfinder’s passive is the reason why I don’t consider him to be top tier alongside the likes of Wraith or Bangalore. The inconvenience and high risk just don’t justify the reward of knowing the ring’s next location. This information is certainly a reward, but players can generally rotate around the map effectively with movement abilities (such as Pathfinder’s own tactical and ultimate abilities), so this information is rarely needed. It’s a good pair with Caustic’s need to know where to set up traps, but Caustic’s on the bottom of my legend tier list and can generally make a quick setup when needed anyway.
Ultimate Ability: Zipline Gun
What really elevates Pathfinder (Ha!) into effectiveness are his tactical and ultimate abilities. Zipline gun is a fairly straightforward ability that allows Pathfinder to create a zipline from his standing location to another within designated ranges, typically determined by elevation. This helps travel along the map faster to loot, get to a fight heard in the distance, or escape the zone. The ultimate also has an extremely short cooldown compared to the ultimates of the other legends. I haven’t timed it, but it feels around a couple minutes. I generally create close to ten ziplines every match I play, which usually last around twenty minutes.
Now that we’ve covered the basic uses of the ultimate, we can get into the REALLY fun stuff: mid-combat ziplines usage. At least once per game, I’ll find myself using the zipline creation to rapidly get an angle my team previously didn’t have off to the side, or on top of a build you otherwise can’t get on top of, or close the gap rapidly to finish a team that has one or two downed players. A recent example was a distanced skirmish in Cascades where I downed a player who crawled behind a rock to their ally. I knew they were going to get the revive and I didn’t want the effort of getting a knock to go to waste. I immediately launched a zipline to a location right next to the rock. I threw an arc star onto the player reviving while ziplining in, shot down the player who just got revived, then finished the reviver. Suddenly, our team was at a 3v1 advantage and easily finished the fight.
Another example of ziplining for combat was during one of the final zones. All 3 remaining teams were fighting in the Thunderdome. One team was inside the skybox holding high ground and shooting at the large building to the north. I attach a zipline from a distance to the top of the skybox and my team takes it to get on top of the first team to shoot down at them. Our high ground advantage forced them to escape from the box and find a place to fight elsewhere. Forcing them out caused them to run into the second team and they battled until one of their teams were left standing. Neither enemy team had a Pathfinder, so my team knew we had the positional advantage. My friend also had a sniper and we took free shots from above at the remaining team. After getting two knocks, I created another zipline and we took it to aggressively finish the final player for the win.
Tactical Ability: Grappling Hook
The zipline isn’t the only way for Pathfinder to get to hard-to-reach places quickly (it’s just the only way to let his team come along). The grappling hook allows Pathfinder to latch a line onto an object to pull himself towards it rapidly. This allows Pathfinder to zip around buildings for quicker early game looting or to get on top of buildings or to other angles faster than other players expect to catch them by surprise in a fight. The speed of the grappling hook is useful for getting out of bad situations like enemy fire or the ring closing in.
Some creative applications of the grappling hook would be to attach the hook to an object slightly to the side of your intended path (something like a tree or pole works perfectly). Shoot the hook at the object while moving in your intended direction. If you jump as the hook connects and starts to pull you forward, you’ll begin a swinging motion that launches you forward and beyond the object to allow you faster movement along your path.
Another fun application of the hook is to attach it to an enemy player. This is very difficult to pull off with Apex’s naturally fast pacing, but a successful hook onto an enemy allows you to pull them to you like you’re Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. This effectively acts as a stun on the enemy as well, which allows for an easy kill. The risk is high as your hook is your primary means of getting out of hairy situations. Be sure you have a fallback option if you go for this risky play.
Weakness:
We covered the weakness of the passive ability earlier. Additionally, Pathfinder requires an area that is open with moderate cover and tall structures to really shine. Being caught in a vast open area like some of the desert transitional locations leaves nothing to hook onto for cover. Close-quarters combat inside claustrophobic places like small buildings is also terrible for Pathfinder. The hook and zipline are absolutely useless without being able to freely move. With a fairly large character model, Pathfinder is an easy target when simply strafing in a fight.
General Play:
You want to be able to freely move around buildings, trees, cliffs, etc. to get away from being the focus of the enemy. If you think of the fight like American Football, Pathfinder is more of a Wide Receiver. You’re not really plowing down the middle as a Running Back like Bangalore. Dance around the edge of the fight looking for creative angles to attack the enemy where they’re not expecting you. Find flanks and wait until the fight’s numbers are in your team’s favor before closing the gap to fight close range and finishing the fight. The exception would be if an enemy is a straggler from the pack. Using a zipline for your team to swarm the lone wolf is a great tactic.
Pairing:
I love pairing Pathfinder with Bangalore so we can use the smoke as cover while setting up a zipline to escape or engage a fight. Another great pairing is Caustic, who lacks mobility. Setting up a zipline for the Caustic to push a house to make use of his traps and ult aggressively or to allow Caustic an angle from above to get an easy ult drop on someone behind cover. Pathfinder excels at fighting as a distance and high angles too, so being caught in your teammate’s gas is rarely a problem.
Summary:
Without a Gibraltar dome or Bangalore smoke for cover, I rarely bother using the passive. But, the grappling hook and zipline convenience factors, speed, and versatile playmaking provide a fun experience every match. With Pathfinder, every angle seems available to you and you rarely feel like there’s no way out of a pinch. If you enjoy dancing around the edges of a battlefield and pouncing on wounded prey, Pathfinder is the guy for you.
