This is our ranking of all 28 legends for Season 30: Marked, which went live in early August 2026, and it is built from two things only: what the patch notes changed, and what class each legend belongs to. Respawn publishes no tier list. It does publish detailed balance notes, and this season those notes rewrote Bloodhound, handed Loba and Rampart real buffs, and cut Valkyrie, Axle and Seer down.
One warning before the tables: the pick rates further down are not a ranking, and the gap between the two is the most useful thing on this page.
Short answer
- Ranked for Season 30: Marked, on the reworked World's Edge and the new loot pool.
- Biggest movers by patch note: Bloodhound reworked upward, Loba and Rampart buffed, Valkyrie, Axle and Seer nerfed.
- The most picked legend is Pathfinder at 10.4%, and the least is Ballistic at 0.7% — both figures from ApexLegendsStatus across all ranks and modes.
- Sparrow is left unranked: we have no patch-note movement and no hours of our own on the legend.
- Build your own board in the tier list maker — paste the legend names as custom items, there is no Apex preset yet.
What did Season 30 actually change?
Respawn shipped Marked in the first days of August 2026 with no new legend and a very long list of adjustments. The ones that move a tier list:
| Legend | Direction | The change that matters |
|---|---|---|
| Bloodhound | Rework, upward | Tactical scans the full body for 3 seconds instead of 2, plus four snapshot scans 1.5 seconds apart; white ravens reach 400m; the new ultimate, Allfather's Cloak, cloaks for 8 seconds, keeps cloaking for 12 after you leave and adds 20% move speed. |
| Loba | Buff | Bracelet deploys in 0.4s instead of 0.6s, throws around 15% further, and the ultimate cooldown drops from 150s to 120s. |
| Rampart | Buff | Wall health becomes 600/700/800 instead of 400/600/800, walls go up half a second faster, and Sheila's firing move speed jumps from 70 to 104. |
| Valkyrie | Nerf | Missile damage 25 → 15, ultimate height cut 15%, Eye In the Sky scans 100m through walls. |
| Axle | Nerf | Slide boost window 5s → 3s; the ultimate now hits his own squad with stun and displacement. |
| Seer | Nerf | Reduced turn slow, and the Home Base cooldown modifier drops to 2.5. |
Weapons moved too, and they change which legends feel good: the 30-30 Repeater went to the care package, the G7 Scout came back to floor loot at 33 damage instead of 37, and the R-99, Alternator and RE-45 each lost a point of damage per shot. Energy ammo boxes were removed entirely — energy weapons now carry a stockpile that regenerates a magazine over about 18 seconds.
Our rows, class by class
Skirmishers — the class the season belongs to.
| Legend | Row | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Pathfinder | S | Grapple plus zipline covers rotation and repositioning, and no nerf touched him this season. |
| Axle | S | Still the fastest way to close a gap even with the slide window cut to three seconds; the ultimate now needs a callout. |
| Octane | A | Speed without a cooldown problem, at the price of health you often cannot spare. |
| Wraith | A | The smallest hitbox in the class and an escape that has never stopped working. |
| Alter | A | The only legend who reopens a fight through a wall; brilliant with a squad, wasted without one. |
| Ash | B | Excellent at starting a fight and poor at surviving the one she starts. |
| Horizon | B | Vertical control that reads better than it plays since the ordnance rework. |
Supports — quietly the strongest class in the game, and the pick rates do not show it.
Newcastle and Lifeline hold S. Newcastle is the only legend who can drag a downed teammate while shielding them, which decides more endgames than any damage ability, and Lifeline turns a knock into a free reset. Loba moves to A this season on the back of the buff — a bracelet that lands in 0.4 seconds is a different tool from one that took 0.6. Conduit and Gibraltar sit in A as well; Gibraltar's bubble is still the cheapest way to survive a mistake. Mirage stays in B: the decoys work on strangers and stop working on anyone paying attention.
Assault. Mad Maggie and Bangalore are our A-row: smoke plus speed, and a drill that ends a bubble fight. Fuse is A on maps with tight endgames and B on open ones. Revenant sits in B — the ultimate still rewards a squad that commits, and solo it gets you killed politely. Ballistic is the honest C: the class perks carry him further than his own kit does, and at 0.7% he is the least picked legend in the game.
Recon. Bloodhound is S after the rework, on the strength of the notes above. Vantage is A for the only sniper mark in the class that a whole squad can use. Seer drops to B after the turn-slow nerf, Valkyrie to B after losing missile damage and ultimate height, and Crypto stays B — a drone that gives your team everything and asks you to stand still while it does. Sparrow is the one legend we left out of the rows entirely: no balance change in the Marked notes, 3.2% pick rate, and no hours of our own. A placement would be a guess, and a guess in a table looks exactly like knowledge.
Controllers. Catalyst and Wattson are A: doors and fences still decide who gets to hold a building. Caustic is B. Rampart is B despite a real buff, and that is worth saying plainly — the wall health and Sheila speed changes are genuine, and her pick rate was still 1.4% when we checked. Buffs and adoption are different clocks.
Pick rates are not a tier list
ApexLegendsStatus publishes pick rates from a very large sample — the page cited 34.4 million players across all ranks and modes when we read it on 6 September 2026. It does not state a time window, which is the first thing to hold against it.
| Most picked | % | Least picked | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pathfinder | 10.4 | Ballistic | 0.7 |
| Axle | 8.5 | Crypto | 0.8 |
| Loba | 8.2 | Catalyst | 0.9 |
| Mad Maggie | 6.8 | Newcastle | 1.0 |
| Fuse | 6.4 | Horizon | 1.4 |
| Octane | 6.1 | Rampart | 1.4 |
Read those two columns together and the trap is obvious. Newcastle sits in our S row and in the bottom four by pick rate. Pathfinder tops the chart because a grapple is fun, not because grappling wins the ring. A number this size tells you what players enjoy and what they have unlocked; it tells you very little about what wins a match, and nothing at all about high-ranked lobbies, because the sample is every rank at once.
The exception is worth naming: when a legend is both rare and strong, the small sample is made of specialists, and their results look better than the legend deserves. That trap and its cure — always show pick rate next to win rate — are laid out in our guide to building a tier list people argue with.
Should you switch mains after a patch?
Usually not. A legend rework changes numbers; it does not change the four hundred hours you have in a movement pattern.
The exception is a nerf to the thing you actually used. If you played Valkyrie for the missile damage and the ultimate height, both of those moved this season, and the legend you liked is not the legend you have. If you played her to rotate, nothing changed for you.
For everyone else, the useful reaction to a patch is smaller: spend twenty minutes in the firing range with the two weapons that changed, warm up on the aim trainer before your first ranked game of the season, and check that your settings survived the update — our Apex settings guide covers the ones that reset themselves.
What usually goes wrong
A patch-note buff is treated as a tier jump. Symptom: Rampart is declared meta on the day the notes drop and disappears again a week later. Cause: a buff changes what a legend can do, not whether the format rewards it. What to do: wait for the buff to show up in your own games before you move the row.
Pick rate is used as a ranking. Symptom: a list that reads exactly like the popularity chart. Cause: the easiest data to find is the least meaningful. What to do: put the pick rate in a separate column, as above, and let the disagreement between the two columns be the interesting part.
The rank band is never stated. Symptom: two players argue about Ballistic and neither is wrong. Cause: the same legend behaves differently in a lobby where fights end in ten seconds and one where they last three minutes. What to do: write the rank band into the image before you post it.
The map is ignored. Symptom: a controller-heavy list built while the rotation favours open ground. Cause: Season 30 reworked World's Edge, returning Sorting Factory and Construction Stacks and adding Tree Settlement and War Camp. What to do: date the list to the season, since the map changed inside it.
Weapon changes are left out of the legend list. Symptom: a legend feels worse and nobody can say why. Cause: the R-99, Alternator and RE-45 each lost damage this season, and energy weapons now run on a regenerating stockpile instead of looted ammo. What to do: read the weapon section of the notes before you rank the characters who carry them.
Build your own version
The disagreement worth having is the Support row, because it is the one where our ranking and the pick-rate chart point in opposite directions. Paste the 28 legends into the tier list maker, write the season in a row label, and post the link rather than the picture. If you would rather rank guns than people, the same job is done for CS2 weapons and for the current Fortnite loot pool, and the character version lives in the Valorant agent tier list.
FAQ
Is Pathfinder the best legend in Season 30?
He is the most picked, at 10.4% across all ranks and modes on ApexLegendsStatus. That is not the same claim. Pick rate measures how many people choose a legend, and a grapple that gets you onto a roof is fun to use regardless of whether it wins the game. We rank him at the top of Skirmishers on his rotation speed, not on his popularity.
Did Bloodhound get better after the Season 30 rework?
Yes, and by a lot on paper. The Marked notes extend the tactical scan to three seconds with four follow-up snapshots at 1.5-second intervals, push white ravens out to 400m, and replace the ultimate with Allfather's Cloak — a cloaking dome that lasts eight seconds, keeps cloaking you for twelve after you leave it and adds 20% movement speed. The pick rate had not caught up when we checked: 2.7%.
Which legends were nerfed in Season 30?
Valkyrie, Axle and Seer. Valkyrie lost the most: missile damage dropped from 25 to 15, her ultimate height was cut by 15% and Eye In the Sky scans only 100m through walls. Axle's slide boost window went from five seconds to three and his ultimate now affects him and his squad, not just enemies. Seer's turn slow was reduced and his Home Base cooldown modifier fell to 2.5.
Is there an Apex preset in your tier list maker?
Not yet — the ready rosters cover Valorant, CS2, Brawl Stars, Minecraft and League of Legends. For Apex, paste the legend names into the custom items field; it accepts a list separated by commas, so one copy from the tables on this page is enough to start dragging.
How often should a legend tier list be rebuilt?
Every time a patch touches a legend, and Apex touches several per season. Season 30 alone reworked Bloodhound, buffed Loba and Rampart, nerfed Valkyrie, Axle and Seer, and changed the loot pool underneath all of them. A list without a season number on it is not wrong, it is unverifiable.