Apex Legends Tier List: Best Legends After the Split 2 Patch

Apex Legends' Split 2 update for Season 30, Marked, went live on September 15 following the official Marked Midseason Patch Notes. Unlike a content drop, this one is almost entirely a numbers update: Respawn reworked three Legends' kits outright, carried over two hotfix nerfs from August 25, and buffed three long-range weapons. No new Legend, map or mode arrived with it — just a meta reshuffle worth knowing before you queue into ranked.

This is an opinion piece, not a results sheet. The tiers below reflect our read on how each verified change plays out in squads, built from Respawn's own patch notes and the accompanying Marked Midseason Designer's Notes rather than guesswork about what feels strong. Where a change is cosmetic rather than meaningful, we say so instead of inflating it into a rank shift.

It's worth separating this from Season 30's launch changes back in August. Marked itself opened with a Bloodhound rework alongside buffs to Loba and Rampart, and nerfs to Valkyrie, Axle and Seer — the Axle and Seer nerfs listed below actually landed in that August 25 hotfix and are only being recapped in this midseason notes post, not introduced fresh. Split 2 is the first time Respawn has touched Conduit, Fuse and Catalyst at all this season, which is why those three dominate the buff side of this list.

01S-Tier: The Clear Winners

Fuse. This is the biggest functional rework in the patch. Knuckle Jump — previously a Tactical upgrade you had to unlock — is now baked into his base kit, and Respawn freed it up further: jumping no longer eats into his Tactical cooldown, return-to-guns time is "significantly decreased," and he can now ADS mid-jump to zoom in. His new passive grants 25% Explosive Damage Resistance and highlights nearby ordnance within 30 meters, a straight survivability buff with zero downside. The Ultimate got quieter improvements too — a shorter raise time, an adjusted firing arc, faster mini-bomb detonation and less damage falloff on the initial blast. Stack the new Level 3 upgrades, Big Bang (50% larger Knuckle Cluster explosions) and Sticky Bomb (projectiles that stick and shave a second off cooldown per hit), and Fuse goes from a niche pick to one of the most mobile, self-sufficient Legends in the game.

Catalyst. Her kit got faster across the board. Tactical cooldown dropped from 20 seconds to 15, her spikes grew taller, and — new this patch — spike projectiles now actually deal damage on contact instead of just slowing. Doors she places auto-reinforce or rebuild once placed, removing a step that used to cost her tempo. The Ultimate's firing time is "significantly decreased," and allies no longer get slowed or blinded passing through her own wall, which fixes a years-old friendly-fire annoyance. The upgrade tree shuffled too: Resilient Veil (120s ultimate cooldown, down from 150s) and Ferro-Door (6 max reinforced doors, up from 4) both moved down to Level 2, meaning you reach her strongest tools sooner. The one trade-off is her passive losing immunity to other Catalysts' abilities, a minor downside in mirror matchups that doesn't offset everything else moving in her favor.

02A-Tier: Stronger, Not Broken

Conduit. Her Ultimate is the headline change: jammers fire faster, spawn higher and closer together for a tighter formation, and activate "significantly faster" than before, with a new HUD warning when a jammer breaks. The Tactical also gained a visible shield-bar preview so your squad can actually see the Temp Shield coming. But her upgrade tree was gutted and rebuilt — Battpack and Bigger Jam are gone, replaced by Concurrency (one free refire within 10 seconds, but two fewer jammers) and Jammed Up (25% larger jammer radius, plus a 10-second enemy HUD jam at Level 2). Respawn's own Designer's Notes frame this as reining in a kit that had homogenized squad compositions last season, so Conduit remains strong but asks more from the player building around her upgrades than before.

Bloodhound. Carried over from the August 25 hotfix into this patch summary, Bloodhound's Ultimate is harder to punish now: cloak visibility inside the dome is reduced, and taking ring damage no longer drops the cloak, closing off a cheap counterplay that used to end his pushes early. The Tactical's scan length is up one full second, and while snapshots fade more quickly and disappear more readily once the scanned player's head is actually seen, the net change favors a patient Bloodhound who scans from range over one caught scanning point-blank. It's a quiet buff, not a flashy one, but it removes two of his most common failure points.

03C-Tier: Nerfed, Handle With Care

Axle. The hardest hit Legend in the patch. His Ultimate's stun duration was cut from 1.5 seconds to 0.25 — an 83% reduction that guts the one thing his kit was built around — while its HP dropped from 200 to 150 and its base cooldown rose from 90 seconds to 120. The knockback arc was also widened with a lower max height, making the follow-up less reliable. His Tactical lost some reach too, with Nitro Gate launch speed down from 750 to 700. Respawn's one concession is the new Drone Deployer upgrade, which replaces Jump Gate and brings the Ultimate cooldown back down to 90 seconds — but you have to spend an upgrade slot just to undo part of the nerf. Axle is still playable, but he's no longer the free pick he was before August 25.

Seer. A single change, but a meaningful one: the turn-slow on his Tactical hit is gone entirely. That slow was Seer's main crowd-control tool for locking down a target mid-fight, and without it his Tactical is now closer to pure information-gathering than a fight-winning ability. He's still useful for intel on enemy squads, just no longer a Legend you pick expecting to win 1v1s off his kit alone.

04Weapon Tier Changes Worth Knowing

Three long-range weapons moved up this patch, and all three are now meaningfully better loot. The Triple Take got a faster ADS rate of fire and its blue magazine now holds 9 rounds instead of 8. The Bocek Compound Bow saw its arrow stockpile rise from 40 to 60 and explosive arrows per energize jump from 7 to 10 — paired with the Sparrow's Quiver hop-up, stockpile climbs to 70 and explosive arrows per energize to 12. The Charge Rifle is the standout: max-distance damage rose from 99 to 110 at ranges beyond 200 meters, and the select-fire damage penalty shrank from 40% to 25%, making it far less punishing to tap-fire at range instead of holding the beam.

Two smaller changes are worth noting if you're min-maxing loadouts. The Agile Standard Stock's movement speed boost no longer stacks with Maggie's Warlord's Ire, Gunrunning, or Gibraltar's Fast Shotties — so those Legends won't double-dip the way they used to. And the locked Executioner hop-up got cheaper to unlock, dropping from 375 to 275 materials, making it a more realistic pickup mid-match instead of a late-game luxury.

For broader season context on where these changes fit, Respawn's own gameplay trailer for Marked covers the season's headline additions — the Bloodhound rework and the World's Edge overhaul that this midseason patch builds on.

Respawn's Marked gameplay trailer, published July 28, 2026, previewed the Bloodhound rework and World's Edge overhaul this midseason patch builds on.

05Final Verdict for Split 2

If you're climbing this split, Fuse and Catalyst are the two Legends whose kits genuinely changed how they're played, not just how efficiently — both are worth learning fresh even if you wrote them off before. Conduit and Bloodhound are safe, slightly-better picks if you already know them, though Conduit mains will need to relearn her upgrade tree. Axle and Seer remain legal, viable picks, not deleted ones, but each now asks more precision and more upgrade investment than before the hotfix. Grab a Charge Rifle if you see one; it's quietly one of the biggest individual loot buffs in the patch. None of this is final — Split 2 runs through the rest of Season 30, which leaves room for another balance pass before the next full season drops.

How We Built This Tier List

1. 1We matched every number in this list against Respawn's Marked Midseason Patch Notes and Designer's Notes rather than early leaks or third-party rundowns.
2. 2Conduit and Catalyst both had their upgrade trees reshuffled, so we weighted base-kit buffs higher than changes locked behind a specific upgrade pick.
3. 3Axle's stun, HP and cooldown were all nerfed together, which we read as a much bigger hit than any single number suggests on its own.
4. 4The Charge Rifle and Bocek buffs shift which fights are worth taking regardless of which Legend you're playing, so we factored them in separately.
5. 5This list covers ranked and pubs on Split 2's current map rotation, not limited-time Mixtape or Wildcard modes that run different rules.