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Catalyst Guide: How to play the new heroine in Apex Legends

Tressa Crystal Smith – aka Catalyst – was introduced in the new Apex legends Season 15. With her, Apex... Fragster | 5. November 2022

Tressa Crystal Smith – aka Catalyst – was introduced in the new Apex legends Season 15. With her, Apex gets a defensive legend that can be really strong once you understand how to play her. She uses her abilities to form ferrofluid, which can be used to do very useful stuff.

It’s a bit tricky, but if you can play Catalyst, you have a whole new way of influencing a fight. In this guide, we show you how you can best use and combine Catalyst’s abilities.

Catalyst’s abilities

Passive: Barricade

With her Passive named Barricade, you can reinforce and rebuild doors with the ferrofluid. You have to press dodge to do this, and since many don’t use this ability, you should check the settings to see if the passive is actually assigned or not.

Conveniently, Catalyst allows you to fortify two doors at the same time, and your opponents will need 4 melee hits to break them open. This gives you an advantage because you can easily open the doors and surprise or bait your enemies while they try to destroy the door.

catalyst gameplay 1

Tactical: Piercing Spikes

Piercing spikes works like an alarm system. With this ability, you can drop some ferrofluid that turns into spikes when enemies get close. Think carefully about where the spikes should go! Although you have two charges, the cooldown is quite long at 25 seconds.

It’s also worth staying close to the spikes. If an enemy touches the spikes, they will be slowed and take 15 damage. Incidentally, the spikes remain until they are activated, destroyed, or deactivated by you. It’s a perfect alarm when you want to barricade an area.

Catalyst gameplay 2

Ultimate: Dark Veil

With Catalyst’s ultimate, she creates a 55-meter wall of ferrofluid that is permeable but blocks any enemy scans launched on the other side. Only the Seer’s ultimate, which he uses to lean over the wall, is unblocked. Any other enemies that walk through the wall will be blinded.

You will need a bit of brains to use this ability efficiently. With a two-minute cooldown, the wall can be extremely useless when your opponents can just take a different route.

Catalyst gameplay 3

Gameplay tips

Hide your spikes as they are quite obvious and can easily be bypassed. That’s why you can combine it with the ultimate, if an opponent stubbornly runs in, it’s a godsend for you. They’re blinded, slowed, damaged, and like an insect that landed on your spider web. This should take the wind out of the sails of aggressive and unwary enemies. With this combination, you can punish enemies who follow you and cut off their path.

Tactically you should fight near doors. With the passive, you have a strong and underused ability that can make a difference in some gunfights! If you need to buy time to heal or reload, use Barricade. When you’re on the run, kite your enemies through buildings and just fix the door behind you. This gives you a head start if your pursuer has to destroy the door again and then you’re already long gone or get ready when they’re about to come through the door.

With that, you should be well prepared next time you play Catalyst. She has a lot of potential, but it certainly has to be tried out and practiced first. Good luck with the training!

Photo credit: EA