What is the current Apex Legends meta for the ALGS Year 5 Championship?
The pro scene’s Apex Legends meta for S27 Amped is taking form in the ALGS Year 5 Championship, with the first Group Stage games giving insight into the strongest weapons and Legends in the game.
From SMGs to most-banned Legends, here is what the ALGS Year 5 Championship games have revealed:
Current Apex Legends meta pushes R-99 SMG to the top
Compared to previous ALGS LAN tournaments, the Year 5 Championship meta appears less drastically weighted on one weapon alone. However, the R-99 SMG has the highest overall kill stats on Day 1 of the ALGS Year 5 Championship tournament.
In the S27 Amped patch notes, SMGs gained Gold Laser Sights. The addition of Laser Sights greatly improves both ground and aerial hipfire speed. Laser Sights also add reverse hipfire, with continuous firing tightening the hipfire speed.
This will likely have played a big role in the R-99 SMG becoming the most impactful gun in the ALGS Year 5 Championship weapons meta. It will also have impacted the Alternator SMG, holding the third-most kills on Day 1 of the tournament.
As is always the case with professional Apex Legends, the Kraber has also been responsible for impressive one-shot displays across multiple games.
For long-range kills, the G7 Scout inches out the Triple Take so far, with 86 kills to 54 at distances of over 50m after Day 1. For the range 30-50m, the R-99 comes in second with 26, with the G7 Scout again taking the lead at 44.
However, the R-99 still holds Day 1’s top spot overall with 378 kills, 759 knockdowns, and 171,628 damage.
Which are the most-banned legends in the ALGS Year 5 Championship so far?
Day 1 of the ALGS Year 5 Championship saw Caustic claim the title of most-banned Legend, being the first removed from the Legend pool in three out of four Group Stage sets.
Close behind Caustic is Newcastle, followed by Alter, Wattson, and Crypto at much lower ban rates.
The full list of Legend Bans for each set of Day 1 Group Stage matches was as follows:
AvB Bans: Newcastle (#1), Caustic (#2), Rampart (#3), Alter (#4), Wattson (#5)
CvD Bans: Caustic (#1), Newcastle (#2), Alter (#3), Crypto (#4), Wattson (#5)
Bans: Caustic (#1), Newcastle (#2), Alter (#3), Rampart (#4), Crypto (#5)
Bans: Caustic (#1), Newcastle (#2), Alter (#3), Valkyrie (#4), Wraith (#5)
The remainder of the competition can be expected to continue this trend, with Caustic likely being the first Legend banned in most games.
Are Controller Legends the strongest Class in the current Apex Legends meta?
Out of the four available Controller Legends, three are featured heavily in the current competitive Apex Legends meta. Caustic, Wattson, and Rampart are all emerging as key picks in the ALGS Year 5 Championship.
Back in S26 Showdown, the whole Controller Class was buffed with Zone Overcharge. This update means that Controller Legends now continuously regenerate shields while in the zone.
Controller players can also spawn a taller custom EVAC from Ring Consoles they have scanned, giving them some extra utilisation in map rotation.
Here’s how the most-used Controller Legends in the Pro League are currently being utilised:
Caustic
Caustic sits alongside Newcastle as a Legend banned in every single game series. It is fair to say that he debuted in the ALGS Year 5 Championship as a menace to the lobby.
On several occasions, well-placed Caustic gas clutched 3v3 fights.
For example, in Game 1 of the Group Stage AvC set, Panic was knocked out by caustic gas, costing them a fight in a fantastic position and destroying their chances of winning the game.
Caustic’s most important buff came in S26 Showdown.
In the update, Caustic’s gas damage increased from 4-10 to 10-15. The gas also drains movement cooldowns and velocity. These combined factors make him an ideal troublemaker for teams to utilise, up until he is inevitably banned, that is.
Wattson
Wattson is tied with Crypto as the fourth most-banned Legend on Day 1 of the ALGS. Interestingly, she is not a Legend who has been recently buffed in Season updates. Her most recent changes were mere hotfixes in S26.
However, she has slipped in and out of the competitive meta for an extended period of time thanks to her ability to hold down areas for teams, particularly those playing a zone-based strategy.
This continued utilisation is unlikely to end anytime soon, so she will likely feature as a banned Legend in a few more Championship games as the tournament continues.
Rampart
Rampart was buffed for S27 Amped, adding an Amped Shield Roof to her walls. Her walls now also have charge, accumulated by doing damage through the amped shield or having the wall damaged by enemies. The accumulated charge awards players with a 15-second speed boost.
Bringing her up to speed with current gameplay has clearly had an impact.
In the ALGS Year 5 Championship Group Stage opening matches, she became the third Legend banned in Group AvB.
However, her pick rate in the professional scene does not translate over to the main playerbase. Currently, she only holds a 1.3% pick rate across all ranks.
She is the sixth most-banned Legend on Day 1 of the ALGS Year 5 Championship.
What are the best Movement Legends in the current competitive Apex Legends meta?
There are also Legends from the Skirmisher and Recon Classes that emerged as potential Legend bans on Day 1, most notably, Alter and Valkyrie. Both are particularly useful for their movement capabilities at the micro and macro levels.
Alter
At a micro level, Alter has incredibly useful movement capabilities for instigating, manipulating, and escaping fights.
This manoeuvrability has been seen in several Day 1 ALGS Year 5 Championship games, including from incredibly successful aggressive teams such as Team Falcons. Notably, Falcons were able to execute Alter-specific tactics, such as “kidnapping,” by opening portals under players in games.
Valkyrie
In what to some experienced ALGS watchers will feel like a return to 2023’s competitive meta, Valkyrie was also a relatively frequently picked movement-based Legend on Day 1 of the Championship.
Her Skyward Dive Ultimate allows for wide macro-based rotates and repositioning, especially in the absence of an Evac Tower.
Unlike some of the other more frequently picked and banned Legends, she actually was given a notable boost in the most recent major S27 starting patch.
These changes significantly reduced the cooldown for her VTOL Jets and greatly increased both her horizontal and vertical fly speed. As the Apex Legends devs noted in the patch, “this new change rewards longer burns of the jetpack, allowing you to cover distance faster.”
Which unexpected non-meta Legends have also made Day 1 appearances at the Championship?
The Legend Ban system in the ALGS forces players to expand their Legend picks, often leading to teams making more unique selections in later games.
On Day 1 of the ALGS Year 5 Championship, Revenant was the Legend selected the fewest times – only once.
The single pick alone is incredibly unexpected, given how little he features in the current competitive meta.
Horizon follows closely behind with two selections across the four Group Stage sets. Ash and Pathfinder round out the list of least-picked Legends at four and seven selections, respectively.
Although some of the Legends with a mid-level popularity may fluctuate throughout the rest of the tournament, Day 1 was enough to demonstrate exactly which Legends are the strongest in the competitive scene’s current Apex Legends meta.
Caustic and Newcastle will, without a doubt, remain on top.
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