We don’t know who needs to hear this, but Apex Legends’ Crypto is no-longer the least popular character in Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale. If there was any doubt about Apex Legends being one of the best competitive FPS games on the market right now, this should surely clear things up. Despite no mention whatsoever in the latest Apex Legends patch notes, Crypto has seen a 14.6% usage increase over the last few days and now sits joint least-popular with Newcastle – who has seen a usage rate drop of 1.2% – according to Apex Legends Status.
If you’re sitting there wondering where this unusual spike of Crypto popularity has come from, it’s hard to say given his lack of technical changes. However, Catalyst could very well be a catalyst for this.
We know Gibraltar and Newcastle are Catalyst’s kryptonite in Apex Legends, but his pick rate has been in decline for some time now. When you couple this with the fact that Catalyst is a “liability” when countering scans, her popularity could actually be influencing the viability of Crypto in the battle royale at the moment.
However, it still really doesn’t make a lot of sense – when you think about it. Respawn Entertainment has implemented a total of zero updates to Crypto’s kit. But, we haven’t let this influence his place on our Apex Legends tier list. He’s just a very situational pick, which – while that doesn’t make him necessarily bad – does make him unpopular.
As you can see below, though, it looks as though Crypto’s climb above Newcastle was something of an inevitability. In recent days, he has been on the rise – and Newcastle has been steadily declining. Not only this, but there was a period in the latter half of Season 13 where he was actually more popular than Newcastle – which is damning given that this was only a few weeks after the defensive legend’s release.
Is this the start of a Crypto renaissance in Apex Legends? Are we going to see this upwards trend continue? Well, we wouldn’t go that far – but, this is one of the best battle royale games for a reason. With any luck, this will convince Respawn Entertainment to look at Crypto’s kit again ahead of the next major update. There’s life in this legend, yet.