The legend changes in season 16 of Apex Legends were not kind to many of the most popular characters in the game. This included Horizon, a once-niche pick that rose up the pick-rate charts thanks to fun movement options in her Gravity Lift tactical and Spacewalk passive, as well as her popularity with the game’s top pros and streamers.
The season 16 changes, however, severely hampered one of her most popular uses in Apex: taking fights in her Gravity Lift. Players used to be able to rain bullets down on their enemies with perfect accuracy while strafing quickly from side to side, making her great for players that just wanted to hot-drop and fight as much as possible with plenty of one-vs-ones. That gun accuracy was nerfed, specifically adding spread to weapons fired while in the Skirmishers’ tactical.
While Horizon’s pick rate went down in season 16 according to Apex Legends Status, an interesting pattern has emerged in the numbers: Those top-ranked players that helped make Horizon so popular in the first place haven’t really abandoned her. In fact, she’s one of the only characters picked more often than fan-favorites like Octane and Bangalore among Masters and Apex Predator players.
In fact, the lower you go down the ranks on Apex Legends Status, the less popular Horizon gets. She goes from a 12.1-percent pick rate in the highest ranks of the game (the third most-picked legend) to a lowly 4.1 percent in Bronze, down in the middle of the pack.
So, are you ignoring a character that could be winning you more game of Apex? Well, that depends.
The accuracy nerf did hamper one of the most popular playstyles on Horizon. Many players that picked her up as a main just wanted to frag, and the combination of the Gravity Lift and her weapon accuracy on it was a very powerful tool to do just that. It was also very easy to do. With that weapon spread now increased while using the Lift, she’s not as good or simple of a character for the solo-queue warriors dropping in Fragment East.
Related: The rarest Horizon skins in Apex Legends
But her movement abilities and engagement potential with the Black Hole ultimate can still be very useful in a team setting, despite the loss of one of the easiest applications of her abilities. The Black Hole, at bare minimum, forces teams to divide their attention. Do you stop shooting at Horizon and her team to destroy the Black Hole? Do you even have time to destroy it while trying to escape grenade spam? And if you do escape it, have you now put yourself out into the open for easy shots?
And while her Gravity Lift is no longer the easy one-vs-one trump card so many players were used to playing, it’s still a solid movement ability that can also be useful to a team, and not just Horizon herself. That’s evident in the clip above, when TSM’s ImperialHal uses the Gravity Lift not to move himself, but to quickly transport one of his knocked teammates behind cover from out in the open, where they were in danger of being finished.
Horizon might not be the DPS monster she once was. But she clearly has retained her usefulness despite the Gravity Lift nerf, as well. It just takes a little team coordination and thinking a bit more outside the box with her abilities.
