If you were running Fuse in Apex Legends games so you could exploit the interaction between his ultimate and Evac Towers, it’s time to find another legend combo. Respawn pushed a hotfix today to eliminate the exploit.
Fuse has always been a bit of a niche character and was typically seen as a friendly legend for newcomers to Apex and lower-ranked players. After all, he gets a free damaging ability with his Knuckle Cluster tactical, his ultimate is easy to understand as a big ring of fire drops from the sky, and he gets to carry a ton of grenades thanks to his passive. Gun skill? Try eating six Arc Stars back to back instead. But the Evac Tower exploit helped propel him into rarefied air within the ALGS community as targeting an Evac Tower with his ultimate allowed the Motherlode to become a much, much larger ring than it should be. Yes, those flames became disconnected and easier to avoid, so players didn’t have to worry about the ultimate’s damage or slow, but there was a bigger problem—the ultimate effectively gave the Fuse’s team wallhacks in a massive area.
Scanning players caught within the ring of the Motherlode was a buff to Fuse’s ultimate that’s been in the game for years, and actually, this Evac Tower exploit has been around for at least the past year as well. But pro complaints about the exploit came to the forefront over the last Split as Fuse’s pick rate started climbing in the pro ranks.
In Split Two of the North American ALGS Pro League, Fuse enjoyed a 23.78 percent pick rate, according to Apex Legends Status. That was the fifth-highest rate of any character chosen over the course of those matchdays. What’s more, this impressive climb for Fuse occurred after ALGS organizers implemented the POI draft system and effectively eliminated off-drop contests, which previously had been the biggest reason most teams used Fuse.
It was clear Fuse was primarily being used as an overpowered Recon legend in final circles while still gaining the benefits of belonging to the Assault class—and it was time for the exploit to go.
After the hotfix that was pushed to the game today, Fuse can no longer target Evac Towers with his ultimate. That doesn’t mean there aren’t still ways to technically exploit the ultimate and its scans; some pro players and coaches have revealed the exploit can still work on some legend abilities, such as Lifeline’s care package. And while those cases are still cause for concern, they take considerable effort and set-up to make effective in an ALGS match and require several legend picks that aren’t considered meta at the moment.
The fix comes at an important time for the pro scene as well as Apex matches at the Esports World Cup in Saudi Arabia begin in just a couple of weeks. Soon after that, the ALGS returns to LAN with the Split Two Playoffs in Mannheim, Germany on Aug. 29.
