Apex Legends Wattson Guide: Tips On How To Be The Best Static Defender

Natalie “Wattson” Paquette has joined Apex Legends as the battle royale game’s tenth playable character. Added as part of Season 2, you’ll need to drop 750 Apex Coins or 12,000 Legend Tokens to unlock her. The electrifying defender is well worth the price though if you’re not the type of person who’s gung-ho to chase after enemy squads.

In the following guide, we go over all of Wattson’s skills, explain how you can get the best out of her character, and offer strategies for overcoming her weaknesses. If you haven’t grabbed Apex Legends yet, you should. The game is free and one of the best battle royales of 2019 so far. In GameSpot’s Apex Legends review, Phil Hornshaw wrote, “Apex Legends is a mix of smart shooter ideas that makes for a competitive, team-based game that gets at all the best parts of battle royale while addressing a lot of the weaknesses. Respawn’s intense focus on team play makes Apex more than just a worthy addition to the genre; it’s an indicator of where battle royale should go in the future.”

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Wattson’s General Overview

If you listen to Wattson’s dialogue, you’ll hear that she’s not terribly excited about killing people with firearms, preferring to play electricity-based pranks and make lightning-based puns to annoy her opponents. All of Wattson’s skills reflect this mindset. Though she is a defender like Gibraltar and Caustic, Wattson possesses zero offensive-driven skills. She’s Apex Legends’ first true defender character, solely specializing in reinforcing her squad’s position and outlasting any who would dare try and attack.

As such, if you’re going to try and use Wattson offensively, you’re best bet is to stop thinking like a hunter and more like a trapper who sits and waits for their prey to come to you. Wattson is not for everyone, and given how offensive-focused Apex Legends has become since its launch, it also means she’s not a necessary character to own if your squad likes speed-based teams involving Octane, Pathfinder, and Wraith. That said, if you do master Wattson’s defensive skills, you’ll find plenty of new ways to counter the other Legends when you meet them in the arena.

Wattson’s Abilities

Passive Ability: Spark of Genius – Ultimate Accelerants fully charge your Ultimate Ability, and standing near interception pylons boosts your Tactical Ability recharge.

Move over Lifeline, there’s a new Ultimate Accelerant queen who now needs those items more than you. Wattson has a wonderful Ultimate Ability that can save a squad in a pinch once the perimeter ring starts getting pretty small. As such, Wattson should always have her Ult at the ready (you never know when you might need it) and a spare Ultimate Accelerant on hand just in case. After your team’s Wattson is loaded up, pass your remaining Ultimate Accelerants to Lifeline and the rest of the squad.

Tactical Ability: Perimeter Security – Connect nodes to create electrified fences that damage and slow enemies.

Wattson can set up four nodes the second the game begins, allowing you to immediately create a wall, angled wall, or (provided the final node is close enough to the first node) a triangle or quadrilateral. After placing a node, Wattson’s Tactical begins to recharge, allowing her to place up to 12 at one time.

The electrified fences that Wattson creates is the only ability she can use to damage people and it does not do much–only 10 damage per tick. However, Wattson is alerted when someone passes through one of her fences. Any enemy passing through her gate will also slow, even if sprinting.

This makes Perimeter Security, above all else, a deterrent and nothing more. Enemies either need to suffer minor damage and a speed decrease to go through them or waste ammo shooting the nodes. Either way, you’ll be alerted. Enemy squads know this so it’s in their best interest to avoid fences. With this in mind, you can create choke points or buy your team precious time to retreat from a firefight, heal, and regroup.

Ultimate Ability: Interception Pylon – Place an electrified pylon that destroys incoming ordnance and repairs damaged shields as long as it stands.

Interception Pylon is great for bunkering down, as it will heal your squad’s shields and vastly increase the recharge rate on Wattson’s tactical ability so she can put down more fences. The ability to knock out all incoming ordnance isn’t too bad a perk either, but be warned as it will affect friendly ordnance as well. Though Wattson’s Ultimate Ability can only place one pylon per charge, she can put down three of them at once.

Tips To Play As Wattson

Wattson is one of the few characters in Apex Legends whose utility exponentially increases as the game goes on and the perimeter ring shrinks. Granted, as stated before, Wattson is at her best while bunkering down. Use the early rings to grab Ultimate Accelerants and your favorite weapons and ordnance, engaging enemies as they find you.

Once the ring gets small enough, find a spot in the center to bunker down. If you have a Pathfinder with you, all the better, as they’ll be able to tell you where the following ring location will be to better set up. Don’t bother trying to hide. Just start constructing fences, and throw out an Interception Pylon or two so that you can put up a perimeter more quickly and not have to worry about incoming grenades. Remember to place your pylons in a way where they’re difficult to reach. You don’t want an enemy squad to easily destroy all your hard work.

After that, it’s just a matter of your team holding the position. Make sure everyone has plenty of healing items and at least one good close-range weapon like an EVA-8, Mastiff, Peacekeeper, or Wingman. You can either spread out Wattson’s three pylons to cover a wide area in anti-ordnance cover or put them closer together so your squad can quickly replenish shields without having to use items. Regardless, your strategy at that point is staying put and letting the enemy come to you. Again, Wattson is not an offensive defender. She is completely devoted to holding the line and scaring off other squads from rushing forward and overwhelming you and your teammates. It’s not a glorious role, but if you set up your fence and pylons just right, your team should be able to hold off more than one squad at a time through careful collaboration.

Unfortunately, until these final moments of the match, Wattson’s Abilities are essentially useless. She can deter enemy squads from easily following her or set up a cage to stop downed enemies from crawling away, but she doesn’t excel in the wide-open firefights that typically occur in the first few minutes of each round. If you or a teammate picks Wattson, it’s in your best interest to avoid fights at the start. Consider looting on the outskirts before carefully making your way to the center of the ring. You can use Pathfinder or Octane’s Ultimate Ability to make the trek a little faster.

How To Counter Wattson’s Weaknesses

Wattson’s fences can be grappled over via Pathfinder’s Grappling Hook or phased through via Wraith’s Into the Void. Mirage can get the drop on her by sending a decoy through her fence, alerting him to her location. Octane is the best counter to Wattson by far. Not only does the speedy Legend have no ordnance Abilities to be stopped by Wattson’s pylon, but Octane can use Stim to overcome the speed decrease from the fence, rely on Swift Mend to patch up any minor damage he takes from the fence, and use Launch Pad to leap over any chokepoints.

There’s very little Wattson can do to counter these Legends, as her defensive abilities rely on the enemy approaching from a horizontal plane. Your best bet is to play as the aforementioned Legends and learn how you use their abilities to overcome enemy Wattsons. Take that knowledge and apply it when you do eventually play as the static defender. If you know how an enemy might move to overcome your fences, then you know where you can wait and hide to shotgun them in the face the second they come back down to earth. Be sure to communicate this knowledge to your squad so that they can help you respond to any attacking Pathfinders, Wraiths, Mirages, or Octanes.

from GameSpot – Game News https://www.gamespot.com/articles/apex-legends-wattson-guide-tips-on-how-to-be-the-b/1100-6468319/