Newcastle is no doubt the star of Apex Legends' latest season, Saviors. His kit offers a plethora of defensive options including his Retrieve the Wounded passive, Mobile Shield tactical, and Castle Wall ultimate. With all these abilities under his belt, Newcastle more than lives up to his role as a defense legend.
But while Newcastle hogs the spotlight (at least for the start of the season), another defense legend is slowly creeping up in the pick rates. Rampart - a niche pick in the Apex Legends community - has recently had some buffs to make her a more viable pick. She hasn't been totally reworked, but the small number of tweaks added to her ever-growing list of buffs allow her to more easily go toe-to-toe with the other legends.
Amping Up The Cover
The first two of Rampart's buffs have to do with her Amped Cover tactical ability. Amped Cover provides Rampart and her allies with cover that blocks incoming fire and buffs outgoing bullets, so to make it more balanced, Respawn Entertainment saw fit to make it slow to deploy. This made it extremely easy for enemies to walk around Rampart's Amped Cover in close quarters or shoot at it from mid to long-range. Since the amount of health Amped Cover possessed while deploying was so low, Rampart players would usually waste their tactical ability cooldowns trying to set them up only for enemies to knock them down.
With the new season out, Amped Cover's deploy time has been reduced from 4.25 seconds to 3.6 seconds. On top of that, a second buff increases the tactical's health while deploying from 45 to 120. This is a big deal for Rampart players, as previous patches for the character mostly focused on making her ultimate ability, Mobile Minigun "Sheila" more deadly. While past buffs made the character stronger, these much-needed changes to her tactical ability allow her to hunker down just as well as her other defense legend brethren. Rampart can now more easily defend an area thanks to her quick-deploying Amped Cover, and the added health to the tactical makes it so that enemies will have to spend more time and resources shooting her cover down.
The Best Defense Is A Hard-Hitting Offense
Speaking of Sheila, the Rampart bug last season that decreased her ultimate ability's spin-up time has been reintroduced as an official buff. The time it takes to charge up Mobile Minigun "Sheila" has been decreased from 1.75 seconds to a mere 1.25 seconds. This may not seem like much, but the time between hearing a Rampart ready her minigun and when it fires is integral for players looking to avoid it. Sheila is a hard-hitting, fast-firing ultimate ability, so having the time it takes for players to react lessened means that Rampart will be able to catch more opponents by surprise.
Mobile Minigun "Sheila" doesn't come without its drawbacks. While carrying it, Rampart herself suffers from a very noticeable movement penalty. Her position is also easily given away by the minigun's laser sight, the bullets emanating from it, and the ear-splitting sounds Shiela makes when Rampart fires her. The trade-off is worth it, however, as Shiela can mow down traps, doors, players, and even Newcastle's barriers - making Rampart one of the few legends that were made specifically to take down the new guy.
The buffs to Rampart may not make her a meta pick (her abilities can still be quite slow for high-ranked play), but they definitely help with her viability and pick rate. The updated Amped Cover makes her more of a defense legend, while the faster-deploying Shiela further emphasizes her "the best defense is a good offense" playstyle. Time will tell how much Rampart's buffs affect her pick rate, but after Apex Legends' first week of the new Saviors season, it is clear she is now a force to be reckoned with.
Apex Legends is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Apex Legends Mobile releases May 17.
