According to Dexerto, a few hours after the premiere of season 15 in Apex, Albralelie tweeted that he was unhappy with the new legend and described her as “as awful as day 1 fuse.” He brought highlighted issues with her other abilities and criticised her Dark Veil ultimate ability, in particular its failure to counter Seer’s Exhibit ultimate.
Catalyst is as bad as day 1 fuse. Unfortunate, her ult not blocking seer ult is the nail in the coffin on top of other issues (mostly geometry related) with her q and ult. Passive is great tho, wish it kept doors alive thru horizon ult is all.
In the Eclipse launch trailer, it appeared as though Dark Veil could block Exhibit and other scan abilities, prompting many to hail Catalyst as the end of the “scan meta.” It’s not clear whether Dark Veil is supposed to block Exhibit: one reply to Albralelie’s tweet called its current interaction a bug and said that the ultimate is supposed to block Exhibit. Dot Esports has reached out to Respawn Entertainment for comment.
The one aspect of Catalyst’s kit that Albralelie did like was her passive, Barricade, which allows her to reinforce doors and doorways to protect her squad or trap others. Even though he enjoyed it, he revealed that he wished it protected doors affected by Horizon’s Black Hole ultimate. Horizon has had one of the highest pick rates among high-ranked players for the last several weeks, with a staggering 23.3 percent of Master and Apex Predator-level players picking her at time of writing, according to Apex Legends Status.
In the comments, fellow pro player Reps suggested Albralelie try playing Catalyst alongside Seer for maximum impact. Albralelie disagreed, responding that it isn’t worth swapping out a legend seen as more powerful, like Horizon or Valkyrie, to run Catalyst-Seer. No legend nerfs were issued at the beginning of season 15, meaning the legend meta will likely stay where it is unless Catalyst is able to make a significant dent.
Apex season 15 is live now.