Titanfall 2 fans say hello to an old “friend” in Apex Legends Season 11

Titanfall 2 players will be hyped to meet an old enemy and when they play Season 11 of Respawn Entertainment's popular Battle Royale, Apex Legends. Meet Ash, the latest legend to join the games. A former titan pilot working for Blisk's mercenary group, the "Apex Predators", Ash is now part of the Apex Games, participating and competing alongside the other legends. Pretty interesting transition, then from "Apex Predator" to "Apex Legend", eh?

From a lore standpoint, Ash also shares a history with Apex Legends Horizon and Pathfinder. Before she became the lethal, ruthless murder-bot that we know she is, she was Dr. Ashleigh Reid, a scientist working on "Project Iris". She worked as an assistant to everyone's favorite Scottish scientist, Horizon or "Mary Somers".

She belonged to the same group that created Pathfinder and was working on a fuel source called Branthium. Little did they know, she was a plant tasked with stealing the fuel source, by Kuben Blisk's mercenary group.

Following an explosion at the lab, she was presumed dead but her brain was transferred to the body of a robot, turning her into a simulacrum (Revenant is one of these as well). As a simulacrum, she was recruited into Blisk's army of mercenaries known as the Apex Predators and quickly rose among the ranks, becoming the pilot of the titan, "Ronin".

Alright, enough mumbo-jumbo about her lore for now. What does she bring to the table in the Apex Legends meta and how cool is she to play? Well, she seems to have a combination of recon and offensive abilities, and also seems to work well as a counter to high-mobility legends like Octane and Pathfinder. Her abilities are very well suited for squads that enjoy third partying other squads that just got out of a fight or are still caught fighting. Here's a glimpse.

An interesting recon ability that allows Ash to scan death boxes and mark the location of the squad that killed them on her map. Interestingly, this doesn't work like the usual recon-scan with Bloodhound or Crypto's drone but only marks the location of the target squad on her map. So the player will have to ping the location of the squad on the map. This gives the squad an opportunity to figure out whether to third-party them or be wary of their presence. An interesting ability that works well for players who like to have that extra bit of intel on enemy player locations.

A great tool to counter high-mobility legends, Arc Snare visually looks like a larger Arc Star, or a fidget spinner, depending on how you see it. When she throws it towards an enemy, it releases a snare around a small area of effect. Enemies caught in the snare are tethered, slowed down, and can't escape until it is active. This could be a great counter to legends that are slippery to catch like Octane, Pathfinder, or Bangalore.

At first glance, her ultimate visually looks exactly like Wraith's ultimate. However, an important aspect about it to note is that Ash's portal works only one way. Another major difference is that Wraith can freely move around and decide the direction her portal takes players in whereas Ash's ultimate is more of a quick burst in a specific direction. This basically means that teams relying on Ash's ultimate will have to be more tactful in their approach. Save it for a quick escape, use it as a lure for a trap (With a Wattson or Caustic in the team), or aggressively jump into a fight as a third party.

As far as initial impressions go, Ash seems to be a great skill-based addition to the meta with a pretty versatile toolkit. Good players could excel with her abilities while bad players will learn the hard way that using her recklessly can lead to fatal outcomes that take you back to the lobby quite quickly. Yes, there's a lot of talk about how her ultimate renders Wraith irrelevant but we've seen such talk from Season 10 as well, with Seer and Bloodhound and Bloodhound are still fine where they are. A great part of her ability set is her tactical, which will work in tandem with legends like Wattson to slow down high-mobility legends and make them easier to kill.

Ash is one of the many interesting additions to Apex Legends season 11 and the update involves a lot of meta-changes, balancing factors, and weapon updates, and a whole new approach to ranked gameplay. The new weapon, the CAR SMG, and the new map, Stormfront all bring in new aspects of gameplay and we've covered everything in our patch notes analysis. You can read it here.

Stay tuned to esports.gg for the latest Apex Legends news and updates.