Apex Legends Tier List Season 31

Apex Legends Tier List Season 31 Quick Summary:

• Revenant is one of Season 31’s biggest winners, while Crypto climbs after his major rework.
• Seer and Loba both fall into A-Tier after meaningful nerfs.
• Season 31 looks relatively balanced overall, with most Legends sitting in A or B rather than being outright weak.
• Diamond+ Ranked now includes Legend bans, so having at least one backup main matters more than before.

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Apex Legends Cipher Legends Tier List

Season 31 doesn’t bring drastic meta changes as it did in the previous two seasons, with the last one overhauling the game in some of the most significant ways with loot rebalancing. Instead of global changes, developers focus on a few characters who receive major updates. Crypto has the biggest update that changes his whole gameplay flow. Lifeline somehow becomes even stronger despite already being one of the best Supports, and Revenant gets his grit back. Unimportant to the article, but I just can’t ignore it. This season also adds Strongholds, which give Controllers more fixed positions to fight over, and Diamond+ кanked now has Legend bans, so being a one-trick is no longer an option. Before I rank all Apex Legends characters for Season 31, here’s what each tier means:

• S-Tier: Strongest Legends. Either OP or extremely hard to find an alternative for.
• A-Tier: Strong and reliable Legends that fit most teams, but don’t completely break the meta.
• B-Tier: Playable, but either outclassed or too dependent on player skill and situations.
• C-Tier: Bad. Not totally useless, but there’s barely any reason to pick them

The devs are selling this season as being pretty balanced, but then I look at overbuffed Revenant and raise my eyebrow. Then I squint my eyes and see Ashe and Ballistic dwelling at the bottom of pick rate for the umpteenth season. According to their Season 31 notes, no single Legend is miles ahead in pick rate anymore, and the most-used Ranked team comp is below 1%. That’s honestly a pretty good sign cause Apex had metas before where seeing the same three Legends every match became borderline depressing. Here’s my full Apex Legends Season 31 Tier List:

Tier	Legends
S-Tier	Lifeline, Revenant, Octane, Alter, Conduit, Mad Maggie
A-Tier	Seer, Crypto, Loba, Axle, Bloodhound, Pathfinder, Wraith, Gibraltar, Newcastle, Caustic, Fuse, Catalyst
B-Tier	Rampart, Bangalore, Mirage, Vantage, Sparrow, Horizon, Valkyrie, Wattson
C-Tier	Ashe, Ballistic

The biggest changes from season 30 here are Revenant and Crypto. Rev moves straight into S-Tier, and Crypto finally becomes a Legend I can recommend to people who don’t want to spend half of every fight being a glorified CCTV. I guess for Crypto mains who enjoyed this kind of gameplay it’s a downside, cause their favorite character has been changed into an almost new Legend. Seer moves down cause his Tactical received a rather hard nerf by removing Silence and the turning-effect slow. Loba receives pretty significant nerfs as well, but not big enough to say that devs killed her. The biggest nerf is that her Ulti’s cd was raised from 120 to 150 seconds.

S-Tier Legends Season 31

S-Tier stays pretty much the same from the previous season, with the addition of Revenant, who got a huge buff. He returns as the king of aggressive dives and one of the scariest characters to be attacked by. Lifeline, though receiving a minor rework, is still the strongest support in the game, so there’s nothing much I can say about her. The rest are Legends who were already strong and didn’t receive any nerfs to take them down a position or two. These are the S-Tier Apex Legends in Season 31:

• Lifeline: I genuinely can’t wrap my head around the fact that they decided she needed this many buffs. D.O.C.’s cooldown drops from 25 to 15 seconds, and Lifeline can now receive D.O.C. healing while gliding. I thought this sounded kinda whatever until I saw it in motion. You can mantle boost, glide away from someone, and recover HP while moving, which makes her way harder to kill, given an already longer TTK in Apex. Then there’s the Level 3 Revive Shield, which deploys a shield while D.O.C. revives someone, much like it was in ye olden days. Still the best Support and the cornerstone in most teams.
• Revenant: Strongest Legend in Apex Legends Season 31 in my own humble opinion. I once was a Revenant main cause I liked how edgy he is, and the face dive is how I usually played. With the new changes, he’s really strong. Perhaps a bit too strong. Shadow Pounce cooldown goes down from 20 to 15 seconds, and his Ultimate is down from 180 to 150 seconds. While this is already nice, the best part is his new upgrades. Silence makes landing from Shadow Pounce create an AoE that silences nearby enemies, so if you land accurately, they can’t just escape and are forced to fight. No Escape can refresh Shadow Pounce when you mark a low-HP enemy, and Ever Lasting adds 10 seconds to your Ult after you knock a player. Revenant was supposed to be aggressive, but other Legends became better at aggression than him. This patch fixes it.
• Octane: Nothing really changed, and tbh nothing needs to. He’s been a top choice for skillful players for several seasons now because movement is king in Apex. Squad Rush is still one of the best skills in the game. His Stim lets you force fights, and Launch Pad gives the whole team mobility. After he received these changes, I doubt he’ll ever go down unless his skills are purposefully downgraded.
• Alter: Still one of the strongest Legends. Her portals give you rotations and escapes that other characters simply can’t top, and her deathbox looting passive is even better with valuable loot being harder to come by since the last season. Though newly added Strongholds can’t be breached until captured, so she loses one cheesy interaction there, that’s nowhere near enough to kick her out of S-Tier. She’s somewhat hard to play, so take a look at this guide explaining her in depth.
• Conduit: A really strong support on a more aggressive side. Kind of a different take on Lifeline. Her shtick is pumping your HP so you can eat the bullets and come out from the shootout on top. Temporary shields let your team keep fighting when you would normally have to back off. Her Ultimate controls space, and faster revives are perfect for mid-shootout help. Not as ridiculous as Lifeline, but extremely reliable.
• Mad Maggie: Cover? What cover? This season is even more cover-based than the previous one with Strongholds. Strongholds introduce even more fights around barriers and fixed defensive positions, so Maggie fits this season beautifully. Riot Drill is gonna be especially useful to push people out from behind cover.

Get ready for Lifeline and Revenant complaints filling up the Internet. They removed Lifeline’s shields cause they were OP, and now they bring them back. Granted, people are way more skilled nowadays, but I still feel like this is gonna backfire, especially with developers' claims that this season is very balanced. Let me remind you once again that with Legend bans now active in Diamond+ ranked, it’s worth having a backup if either one becomes a popular ban.

A-Tier Legends

A-Tier is the biggest tier with the most characters stacked in here. I think that Apex has a lot of characters that are good without being completely OP, and this list confirms it. Devs got progressively better with the character gameplay designs, so we barely have any outright abysmal characters. The main winners and losers here are Crypto, who goes up a tier, and Seer with Loba, who drop from the previous season’s S-Tier to A. While they are weaker than before, they are pretty much just balanced and are well designed at the current state, so in my book A-Tier characters are as potent as S-Tier. In short, don’t be afraid to pick em, and don’t be disheartened to see your goat drop lower. Check out a list of A-Tier Legens for Season 31:

• Seer: I initially wanted to keep him in S, but experiencing him hands-on in Season 31 changed that. His Tactical lost Silence and the extra turning slow, although the normal slow remains. He’s still great at gathering information and setting up fights, but the ability is no longer as oppressive once you actually get hit by it. Still very good, just not S-Tier for me anymore.
• Crypto: The biggest star of Cipher. While his reworks are huge, I can’t put him in S-Tier yet. I don’t think they make him super strong, just different and more involved in teamfights. These are all Crypto’s changes in Season 31: his drone now uses a 25-second battery, has 360-degree scanning, and marks enemies for 8 seconds even if the drone gets recalled or destroyed. After recall, you can deploy it again without waiting for a traditional cooldown, although recalling takes 6 seconds. EMP can now be activated without staying in drone view. With visuals on the enemy, it wipes the target’s full shield and applies a stronger slow, while with no line of sight, it deals 50 damage and a weaker slow. Crypto doesn’t damage himself anymore either, which was an incredibly stupid balancing choice. This season, be ready to see more Crypto than when he came out. For Crypto mains, these changes will take some time to adapt to, but good Crypto mains could absolutely make him S-Tier.
• Loba: Still strong, just nerfed enough to move down. Her Bracelet cooldown increases from 25 to 30 seconds, while Black Market goes from 120 back to 150. She also can’t steal Stronghold loot before it’s captured. Imagine if you could just skip all the challenges and steal loot from there. Loba would be insufferable. Still, Black Market is a must-have skill in this season, much like in the previous one.
• Axle: Her nerfs from October carry straight into Season 31. She has less lateral control while sliding, Nitro Gate has a smaller initial push, and her Ultimate chases for less time and launches people less aggressively. She’s still fast as hell, though. You just can’t drive her around corners like Kimi in this season of Formula 1.
• Bloodhound: The Season 30 rework saved this character. They’re still great and going strong. Allfather’s Cloak gives the team a great disengagement and reposition option, and the raven system gives useful information without forcing you to stop dead in your tracks. A very good Recon pick, just not as oppressive as the top Legends.
• Pathfinder: Good ole Pathy is either complete dog water or has the craziest movement you’ve ever seen, fully dependent on the player who runs him. This doesn’t deny the fact that he’s one of the best team movement Legends. Grapple has a high skill ceiling, and his team rotations are especially valuable with Valkyrie still being weak. Good Pathfinder players are an absolute nightmare to chase.
• Wraith: It’s Wraith, what else can I say? Great rotations, great resets, high skill ceiling. She’s been relevant since the release because her kit is all about core Apex gameplay.
• Gibraltar: Strong defensive character, and Strongholds give him another use case for Bubble. He’s still enormous and slow, though, which stops me from putting him any higher.
• Newcastle: I’ll keep saying it: this character could be S-Tier if you can learn how to play him properly. Outstanding utility with strong shields, strong revives, strong repositioning, but there’s so much to manage that most players never realize his full potential.
• Caustic: Is gonna be a nightmare to play against in Strongholds, but that’s just true for his kit and enclosed spaces in general, which is why he ain’t going any higher than A. If you know where enemies have to come from, traps and gas are broken. Rotating with him is… Well, you won’t run away from the fight you’re forced into.
• Fuse: Still good, still straightforward. Knuckle Cluster provides pressure for free, his Ultimate forces people out of areas, and he’s one of the easier Assault Legends to recommend because his abilities always have some use.
• Catalyst: Strong around buildings and choke points, which this season gives you more of. She’s less oppressive than Caustic in my opinion, but still very reliable when you need to defend a position.

I admit that I’m still on the fence about Crypto’s ranking. His problem was never that his abilities were weak. The problem was that getting maximum value out of them often meant not participating in the actual gunfight. Season 31 directly attacks that flaw, but for now, since everybody is learning or re-learning how to play him, he doesn’t feel that big of a threat yet. Losing your shields isn’t pleasant, but the fact that his drone is so noticeable now makes losing shields completely your problem.

 

 

B-Tier Legends

The word of this section is “potential.” These Legends are playable. Some are even very strong in the right hands, but most of them are either outclassed by someone above or need a specific situation to work. Cipher doesn’t do much to rescue any of them:

• Rampart: High B Tier thanks to Apex continuing the positioning trend, now adding Strongholds. These definitely help her because they create fights you can expect around fixed cover, but the second you have to rotate, you remember why Rampart is in B.
• Bangalore: Perfectly fine. Smokes still save lives, her Ultimate still controls space, and she works with almost anyone. She just doesn’t do anything so well that I’d pick her over the strongest characters, and I know that many people consider her to be around S or A tier, but be real with me, she’s the definition of an outdated Apex design.
• Mirage: I love him as a character, but he’s a noob killer. Decoys become less potent when everybody you fight has played Apex for hundreds of hours. His revive utility is aite, but if I need Support, I’m picking Lifeline.
• Vantage: Perhaps I was too cruel to her in older tier lists. I tried playing her in season 30, and she isn’t terrible. Echo gives decent movement, and being able to inspect enemy equipment is useful, but I still don’t see her becoming a priority pick.
• Sparrow: Sparrow isn’t bad. He’s just a middle child of Recons. Seer is good, Bloodhound got reworked, and Crypto just got a gigantic buff. The Recon category is giving him rough competition, and he doesn’t win here. Love his design tho.
• Horizon: Good Horizon mains are a real threat. Poor Horizon players launch themselves into the sky, miss every shot, and then die blaming everyone. Her potential is still there, but other aggressive Legends are easier to get value from.
• Valkyrie: Still suffering from Season 30. I like Valk a lot, but I just can’t ignore how she was gutted like a fish. The nerfs hurt, and Pathfinder is currently more suitable for team movement.
• Wattson: You can build an insanely annoying defensive setup if the enemy actually has to fight you there. Strongholds help a bit, but Caustic and Catalyst are less situational than her

Most of B-Tier is fine for pubs, and you can rank up with these Legends with some effort and knowledge. You’re just gonna need more effort to get the same value S and A-Tier characters give you naturally.

 

 

C-Tier

Time to rename the category to “Days without Ashe and Ballistic buffs.” They’re still trapped here. At this point I’m starting to think they signed a lease.

• Ashe: She’s not unsalvageable. That might be the nicest thing I can say. Her Ultimate is useful, and there is a functional Legend buried somewhere in there. The numbers and overall synergy just aren’t good enough compared to basically every other choice.
• Ballistic: No. Crypto gets a rework, Revenant gets Silence back, Lifeline gets a revive shield, and Ballistic gets to watch all of this happen from the bottom of the tier list. There’s no time to play him, and no reason. Unless you genuinely love him, pick someone else.

Season 31 doesn’t completely change the previous meta, but the characters that did change got some massive updates. Lifeline becomes even harder to kill, Revenant finally comes back to his prime era and feels like a truly aggressive Legend again, and Crypto’s rework fixes the most boring part of playing this character. Overall, Cipher looks pretty balanced, but if you’re planning to grind Diamond+, learn more than one character. With two Legends potentially getting banned every match, the days of knowing only one main might be over.

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