Hip firing in Apex Legends is an important skill to master for high-level play. When in close quarters, hip firing can make the difference between life and death when compared to trying to aim down the sights of a weapon. But most weapons have a pretty wide spread when firing from the hip, so learning how to wrangle the spread of each weapon is key, unless players utilize this new trick discovered by an Apex Legends fan.
This isn’t the first time hip firing has been a topic of conversation for Apex. At the start of Season 6, a designer from developer Respawn Entertainment talked about why the hip fire on some Apex Legends weapons is so bad, like the Havoc. Hip fire in Apex is tough to master by design, to ensure a kind of balance between mobility and accuracy. This new trick that was recently discovered though might make hip fire a bit easier to control in some instances.
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A player on Reddit by the name WishIwasARespawnDev posted gameplay of themselves at the firing range playing as Bangalore. They compared the hip fire spread of all the guns with the spread of all of the guns while holding the tactical button (L1 on PlayStation/LB on Xbox/L on Switch) to prove that having Bangalore’s smoke launcher out greatly improves the hip fire spread of all the guns in Apex. WishIwasARespawnDev also shared another video confirming that this same trick works with Revenant’s tactical as well.
Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t work for any other legends, as none of them can still fire their weapons while having their tactical out. Many players in the comments also say that crouching and holding the tactical button is too many hinderances to make using this trick worth it, but Revenant’s passive allows him to move faster while crouched, so this could be a useful trick for at least one legend.
This trick does not work with a mouse and keyboard on PC according to those who tried it in the comments of the post, likely because aim assist only applies to players using controllers. Whether this improved hip fire accuracy is intentional for Bangalore and Revenant or an exploit to be patched out is unknown at this point. But the post is nearing 4,000 upvotes as of this writing and Respawn is incredibly active on the subreddit, with Apex’s lead game designer suggesting that major changes could be coming to the loot pool just the other day, so it is likely only a matter of time before someone from Respawn sees the post.
Respawn had two Apex Legends announcements this past week, the first of which being that watching the ALGS Winter Circuit Playoffs on Twitch will net players several in-game banner items, the second being that comic book publisher Dark Horse will be releasing a four-part mini-series of Apex Legends comics later this summer called Apex Legends: Overtime.