An Octane Guide: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Tips for Optimal Play
Do you like to go Sonic fast? Are you an MLG wonderboy with a diet of Doritos and Mt. Dew and sniff a line of energy powder before every game session (don’t do this)? Do you like to yeet yourself around the map on a regular basis? Well, Octane is the perfect choice for you! If not, then this guide will still help you take down those crazy kids.
Tactical: Stim
Pop your stim to move 30% faster for six seconds. This costs ten hp (ignores shields) and has a two-second cooldown after use. You can’t kill yourself with this ability. If you’re at ten or less hp, then you’ll use up all but one hp to get the same benefit from the ability.
Passive: Swift Mend
This passive isn’t quite as swift as the name implies. You restore one hp every two seconds. This triggers after not taking damage for a short period of time. It’s not reliable for combat and not fast enough to be too reckless with your tactical use, but it will add up pretty nicely if you’re just running around in a safe environment freely looting or catching up to your team. For combat or significant recovery, this passive pales in comparison to Lifeline’s D.O.C.
Ultimate: Launch Pad
Throw down a jump pad to catapult you or any other player (even enemies) through the air. These launch pads are on a 90-second cooldown and seem to last for the entire game. This pad can be destroyed by damaging it, but I’m not too sure when this would be useful. Perhaps throw an arc star on it while flying away to make sure nobody takes it to follow you or something? Could work, but it seems like wasted effort/resources.
I heard a lot of community members talk about how you can get extra hight or speed off this pad by jumping and/or sliding just right, but I found no difference through testing. Jump hight seems to be a set value regardless of your approach onto the pad, and the speed seems to be capped at a value that you can reach by simply sprinting onto the pad. If there is a difference from sliding/jumping, then it’s not significant enough to effectively matter. Though, the speed seems to be reduced if you slowly walk onto the pad (and reduced more if you move back while in the air. You maintain the same aerial control you normally would have).
Strengths:
Octane is a hyper-aggressive legend who excels at juking and obtaining better angles on the enemy. He’s also fantastic at finishing weakened enemies. His speed ensures he can be in an ideal position faster than just about any other character. The speed also gives an edge in a fight because you become a tougher target to hit. The passive is nice for recovery between fights if you want to save a syringe or two (or don’t have any).
Weaknesses:
The high rewards come with high risks. Burning ten flat hp is actually pretty significant and can put you in a tough spot or a lost fight real quick. The hangtime after using the jump pad is pretty significant and basically allows the enemy to feel like they’re spending their time skeet shooting if you use it incorrectly. While you have slight aerial control, it’s not nearly as fast directional changing speed as if you had your feet on the ground. So, your trajectory is easy to track. Your passive is also essentially useless in a fight.
Let’s jump into some numbers. Using your stim ability once is 10 hp and you start will 100. Two Wingman shots to the body are a combined 90 damage, which takes you out (45+45+10=100). Three melees are a combined 90 damage, which is the same outcome (30+30+30+10=100). These are just two of many additions that could mean you going down significantly faster than you would without using a single stim. The more shields you gain, the less significant the 10 hp loss becomes, but it’s significant in the early game.
Note: I can’t imagine this is an intended mechanic, so it will likely be fixed/patched soon. But for the time of Octane’s initial release, you cannot interact or swap to/use weapons if you activate your stim while vaulting over a ledge. Be sure to do these actions separately.
Tips to Play:
If you’re far from your team as they’re engaging in a fight, use your tactical to get to them faster. Being there for those few extra seconds could mean life or death for your allies. The difference in having your extra presence in the fight for that moment versus not quite arriving is incredible. You’ll be able to get that last shot into the enemy before they escape to recover or help your one-shot friend defeat the enemy just in time to save their life.
Your stim and launch pad can be useful for escaping, but they are far more suitable for pressuring the enemy. The mantra for Octane is “suffocate.” Your ability to push and finish weakened enemies is massive. No more “aw, they got away with a sliver of hp!” Pop your stim, throw down your pad, and jettison yourself at them to finish the fight before they can even pop a shield cell.
In the early game, your stim is super useful for quickly looting, especially if you’re in a safe environment where no other team dropped. Because of the movement speed, you’ll be 30% faster at grabbing gear. This helps you get all the good stuff while your allies or enemies were just too slow. If you’re in a safe area, your passive will do all the work for healing any hp you expended with this tactic. I’ve had a game with a subpar drop that I was able to recover from thanks to the fast movement speed. I dropped 40 hp from using the stim, but the speed saved me from taking even more damage due to the enemy missing shots on a difficult target.
After a fight, replenish your shields first. Your hp will start to passively recover while you’re waiting for the cells/battery to finish, which will usually amount to a syringe worth of healing (especially after you’ve spent time snagging some loot from the coffins). Be sure to continue carrying medkits/syringes like you normally would with other legends though, because you won’t really heal in a fight and using those items when you have a large amount of missing hp will always be ideal (those 3rd parties can get pretty real).
If you’re starting a fight healthy, pop your stim and get in there. Your movement speed will help you dodge enough shots with strafing and running speed that you’ll usually save yourself from taking more damage than the stim cost you. Stim speed is huge for just barely getting around cover in time. If you’re at 10hp or less, use your stim as often as you’d like. Everything but a single shotgun pellet will do 10+ damage to you anyway and that extra speed could save your life.
Tips to Play Against:
Octane struggles when caught in the open. It takes about two seconds to drop the jump pad that would only leave the Octane an easy, floating target for about three seconds. And, any damage you do to him can easily be followed up on by taking his own jump pad to chase. Just make sure you’re not getting baited into the rest of his team. If you’re too slow, don’t take the pad because he may have recovered in time and be ready to take his turn shooting skeet.
If he’s challenging you, it’s usually best to take the challenge and outgun him. He’s already burned hp to likely give you a durability advantage. His kit is all about rapidly getting to his team and aggressively taking out weak prey, so don’t get scared and run if you’re still pretty durable (especially if he’s alone). Take the fight with confidence.
*Edit: When Octane uses his stim, he leaves behind a green trail similar to how Wraith leaves a blue trail when using her phase shift. While in a fight, try to keep an eye out for this visual as well as the ability’s unique audio to track where the Octane is running. I don’t have any other tips because he kind of hurts himself for you.
Works Well With:
Lifeline is an amazing ally for providing more health recovery. Bloodhound is also a good companion because you can use the movement speed and jump pad to rapidly engage with an unsuspecting (and hopefully weak) enemy. I also really want to set up a fun play where my team baits an enemy into taking our Wraith rift that exits onto a launch pad that would send them flying off the edge of the map. Not optimal or likely to happen, but it would be a fun clip to watch.
Octance also works great with all legends in general by being able to willingly give up any gold helmet found. The durability is nice, sure. But, the ability regen speed would not be substantial. A 90-second ult charge is one of the fastest in the game already. And, the stim is a short two-second cooldown than sacrifices HP anyway (you probably won’t want to spam this ability). At a 20% cooldown reduction, you’re only shaving a minuscule 0.4 seconds off of the cooldown.
Works Well Without:
I couldn’t really think of a logical bad pairing for this section, so I guess we’ll move on…
Summary:
Octance is the perfect character to grab if you enjoy playing hyper-aggressively and don’t mind taking risks. You have to be confident in your skill to be able to effectively use this legend’s kit. Octane is an incredibly powerful legend and I’m ranking him in A-tier (based on my previously published Apex Legends Tier Ranking List). Octane’s only downfall is costing his own hp to maximize his strengths, which can really backfire on you at times. But, this almost always works to your benefit.
