Is Crypto good in Apex Legends? How to play Crypto in Season 16

Crypto used to be one of the least-picked characters in Apex Legends due to how his abilities force him to stay stationary. He might not appeal to a larger portion of the fanbase like how most of the heroes in the other classes do, but he can still be an effective pick, especially with the new class-specific perks introduced in Revelry.

Apart from some notable changes, Crypto has remained mostly the same, which begs the question: is Crypto good in Season 16?

Is Crypto good in Season 16?

The short answer is yes, though this may depend on who you ask.

Now that Crypto doesn’t automatically go into Drone View when tossing out his Surveillance Drone, he’s more able to join a firefight while still feeding the locations of enemies to himself and his team with the help of his passive, Neural Link. If needed the hacker can manually pilot his drone to fly over a site and manually dictate where the enemies are.

Crypto’s Surveillance Drone is now more useful in a pinch since using it no longer takes him out of combat. This means that he’s a bit safer to pick when queuing with random players as he won’t be as reliant on team-wide comms as much. However, he is still at his most effective with a pre-made team, especially one where all three players actively talk with each other.

In Season 16, all recon characters received the ability to reveal enemy positions for 30 seconds by interacting with Modified Survey Beacons. This gives Crypto the opportunity to be more hands-on with combat engagements as long as he’s able to get to the beacons before anyone else does. Once the effect ends, he can retreat and provide overwatch once again or lay down the pressure together with his teammates. This new perk also means Crypto can stand toe-to-toe with other recon legends a little bit better than he used to.

How to play Crypto in Apex Legends

Here are a few tips on how to make the most use of Crypto‘s abilities:

1. When in Drone View, check the nearby banners on walls and cliff faces. This will show if there are any enemy squads within 200 meters of Crypto
2. EMP can be activated even when outside of Drone View. Use this to prepare for an aggressive push when the blast connects with enemies
3. EMP blasts can cancel enemy abilities and damage (or outright destroy) gadgets like Caustic’s traps and Watson’s pylons
4. Deploy the drone towards cover whenever possible to prevent it from getting immediately shot down
5. Crypto will automatically reload weapons while he is in Drone View
6. Doors and containers can be opened while in Drone View
7. The drone can be used to alert players of flankers and other approaching squads by positioning it behind Crypto’s team

As mentioned above, Crypto’s value comes from his ability to feed information to his allies in real-time, acting as a literal eye in the sky that keeps track of enemy positions and conditions. He can also damage shields and cripple hostiles over a sizable area with Drone EMP, which can skew a fight in his team’s favor.

On the other hand, the main drawback of these is that Crypto’s drone can be shot down. He’s also defenseless when manually piloting the drone, so flankers and third parties can easily take him out.