With Season 9 and the Legacy update, the new Bocek Bow has been added to the weapon armory in Apex Legends. The Bow is great at medium-to-long ranges and can be equipped with two Hop-Ups simultaneously,
Like many of the new features that arrived with the Season 9 Legacy update, the Bocek Bow was discovered months ago in Apex Legends files by dataminers. Similarly, new Legend Valkyrie and her abilities along with the new Arenas mode were also leaked prior to the Legacy update.
The Bocek Bow is a completely new weapon that can be found on the ground and in supply bins throughout Apex Legends matches. It is also part of the new ‘Marksman’ weapon category along with the G7 Scout, 30-30 Repeater, and Triple Take which is now a care package weapon. The Bocek Bow is a high-mobility and stealthy medium-to-long-range weapon that deals massive damage but with a relatively slow fire rate.
Using The Bocek Bow:
Apex Legends players that have used some of the bow weapons in Destiny 2 will find that the Bocek Bow behaves very similarly. Whether hip-firing or aiming, players need to hold down the fire button to draw the Bow and release it to fire. Arrows travel extremely quickly, precisely, and with minimal drop. Players will only need to compensate for arrow velocity and drop at longer ranges and against targets that are moving laterally.
Arrows deal the most damage and travel fastest when the Bow has been fully drawn. This is indicated by the Bow icon just below the hip-fire crosshairs turning blue, and the lights to the right of the Bow’s sights when aiming. A fully drawn arrow can deal up to 70 damage to the body and up to 123 damage to the head, meaning the Bocek Bow’s damage gets close to that of the Triple Take and Sentinel Sniper Rifles. Tapping the reload button while an arrow is drawn will cancel the shot and reset the Bow, so players will need to hold down the fire button again to redraw the bowstring.
Tapping the fire button launches arrows quicker but at the cost of significantly less damage and extremely low range due to their slow travel speed and rapid drop. A tap-fired headshot will only deal up to 31 damage, and with the Bow’s slower fire rate, it becomes far less effective than the G7 and 30-30 Repeater, even at closer ranges. Players should always try to fully draw the Bocek Bow unless a quick kill can be secured by tap-firing arrows at close range towards a weakened player.
While the Bocek bow has relatively slow handling compared to most other weapons in Apex Legends, it has two distinct advantages over other weapons in the Marksman category as it has little to no movement penalties while aiming, making it ideal as a strafing weapon, and does not need to be reloaded. Arrows are automatically nocked as soon as one is fired, meaning players with large arrow reserves can provide constant long-range suppression on enemies until they run out.
Arrow Ammo:
The Bow is also the only weapon to use the new arrow ammo type that is commonly found on the ground or in supply bins with the Bow itself. Every arrow ammo brick holds 16 arrows, and players can hold up to 48 arrows in one inventory slot.
Fired arrows will also stick into surfaces and can be retrieved automatically by walking over them or manually by getting near and pressing the item pick-up button. However, arrows stuck in enemy players can only be retrieved once that player has died, at which point the arrows can be looted from their Death Box. With this in mind, players should find that two inventory slots for arrows is more than enough to last a full match.
Hop-Ups and Optics:
The Bocek Bow is unlike any other ground loot weapon currently in Apex Legends as it can have two Hop-Ups slotted at the same time but cannot use the attachments of any weapon class except for the Marksman weapon optics.
The first Hop-Up is Shatter Caps, which is a mod that can be toggled on or off by the player to convert the Bocek Bow’s arrows into short-range pellet spreads like a shotgun. Shatter Caps arrows are otherwise exactly like normal arrows and need to be fully drawn to deal maximum damage.
Toggling this Hop-Up on will change the Bocek Bow’s hip-fire crosshairs to reflect the new seven-pellet spread pattern that Shatter Caps provides. Players will also notice that the Bow’s draw indicator lights up orange instead of blue when Shatter Caps is toggled on.
Shatter Caps is certainly an effective Hop-Up – fully drawn body shots will deal up to 77 damage – but players should definitely not rely on it as their close-range weapon option as many other guns do far better jobs at dealing damage up close very quickly. With that said, having Shatter Caps is never bad. Players can toggle it on before rushing into a fight and switching to their close-range weapon to have as a backup weapon to finish off opponents. The fact that the Bow never needs to go through a full reload means players can keep up the damage while enemy players reload.
The Bocek Bow’s other Hop-Up, Deadeye’s Tempo, is far more useful and any Bow users should always be seeking out this mod. Deadeye’s Tempo provides a passive improvement to the Bow by increasing its draw speed whenever players perfectly time their arrow shots. Once players reach maximum draw speed with the Hop-Up, the Bow’s rate of fire feels around twice as fast as usual.
A higher rate of fire means players can knock down enemies far quicker than usual and secure easy kills at the Bow’s intended medium-range. Players that are able to maintain precise aiming between arrows will find Deadeye’s Tempo to be essential in downing enemy players in two or three rapid shots. The Hop-Up also improves the Bow’s long-range suppression ability, provided players are able to maintain the fastest draw speed and do not run out of ammo, and enhances its close-range capabilities as it also stacks with Shatter Caps.
In terms of optics, the Bow has a very small ring sight with a small holographic dot inside by default. This sight is somewhat functional at close range but is especially difficult to use when aiming at far away targets. The Bow can be surprisingly versatile, so any of the optic options can work well and it is down to player preference.
The 1X Holo and 1X HCOG offer no more zoom magnification than the normal sight but are much larger and clearer, making aiming much easier at any range, but particularly close-to-medium ranges. Meanwhile, the 2X HCOG is a great option for medium-range shooting thanks to its decent magnification and precise reticle. Any players that want to use the Bocek Bow for long-range sniping and poke damage should definitely find a 3X HCOG.
Weapon Loadouts:
Even though the Bow’s two Hop-Ups add some helpful versatility to the weapon, its strengths still lie in its accuracy and damage at medium-to-long ranges, and players should always bear that in mind when wielding the Bow. Players that favor the Bow as a sniper weapon should always be searching for a 3X HCOG and a Deadeye’s Tempo Hop-Up. Whereas players that want to use the Bow as their main weapon should maximise the Bow’s versatility by getting both Hop-Ups and any of the other optics.
Given the medium-range strengths of the Bow, a powerful close-range weapon will always pair extremely well with the Bocek Bow. Any SMG including the Volt and R-99, and any Shotgun such as the full-auto EVA-8 and reintroduced Peacekeeper are great weapons to have ready to switch to when players need to rush into a fight. SMGs with their rapid full-auto fire nicely complement the Bow’s precise but slow shots. Players can also carry plenty of ammo for these weapons due to the generous arrow ammo stacks.
The Peacekeeper, on the other hand, offers damage comparable to the Bow but at a much closer range, and will always be better than Shatter Caps arrows in a close-range fight. Since some shotguns consume ammo quite slowly, Apex Legends players can use the freed slots to equip more grenades. Now that Season 8 Legend Fuse has two Knuckle Cluster grenades on top of his Grenadier passive, Fuse players will be able to hold several grenades that can be used to pin down or weaken enemy players.
Apex Legends is available now on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
