Apex Legends Bloodhound guide – Abilities, backstory, and our best tips for playing them

Apex Legend Bloodhound is a pretty iconic character for many veteran fans of Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale. Having launched with the game, Bloodhound is often recognised as one of the original meta choices, and a pioneer for team tactics.

Here, we’re going to cover everything you need to know about Apex Legend Bloodhound. We’ll take a look at their abilities, background, and analyse who they are, how they’ve changed, and if they still hold up as one of the best Legends after all this time. If you’re curious who their Apex Legends voice actor is by the way, check out our dedicated guide.

Bloodhounds abilities and skills – What are they capable of?

Here are Bloodhound’s passive, tactical, and ultimate abilities.

• Passive ability: Tracker. This ability allows Bloodhound to follow footstep tracks left on the ground by players who recently moved through the area. The age of the tracks is shown by colour, and they’ll slowly decay over time until Bloodhound can no longer see them. This passive also occasionally spawns in a White Raven, which will fly in a direction to indicate the nearest opponent or team and slightly recharge your abilities.
• Tactical ability: Eye of The Allfather. Also sometimes called Sonar. When Bloodhound’s tactical button is pressed, they’ll unleash a scan of the surrounding area as an orange wave of energy. This will reveal all enemy positions within the scan to them and their team, as well as highlight any traps or clues nearby.
• Ultimate ability: Beast of The Hunt. When activated, Bloodhound launches a White Raven and gains enhanced senses which allow him to see cold tracks. They move faster, and they can extend the duration of this ability by knocking down other players.

Bloodhound is a Recon Legend, and the first of this Apex class to enter the game. They’re all about tracking, and their abilities revolve reliably around pinning general or precise locations of enemy combatants. This can make them an invaluable asset in many different team setups.

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Did you know?

Bloodhound’s tactical scan ability Eye of The Allfather bears some striking similarity to Titanfall scanning tech. The ability itself is loosely derived from Titanfall 2’s Pulse Blade, minus the blade of course, and the way the way the scan propagates is a close match to the Active Radar Pulse from the original Titanfall.

Bloodhound’s backstory – Who are they?

Apex Legend Bloodhound’s backstory still carries an air of mystery, even given their longstanding presence in Apex. As a child, Bloodhound lost both their parents to a meltdown accident at the New Dawn industrial plant on Talos. They’d spend roughly the next ten years being raised by their uncle, Artur, who would teach them the ways of the Allfather. This practice focuses around hunting and connection to nature in favour of modernity, but Bloodhound would always find themselves drawn to the allure of technology.

Eventually, after Artur’s death and an attack on their home village by a Goliath, Bloodhound would learn to combine the teachings of the Allfather and the hunt with modern technology, taking the best of both world with them. They’d slay the Goliath, though at the cost of scarring and lung damage which would require them to make heavy use of a respirator mask going forward.

As they grew, Bloodhound would seek an ever-greater challenge. For a brief time they’d find it with their first lover, Boone. Boone betrayed them in a joint hunt, and eventually died at the hands of the creature they’d both been tracking when it broke free in the Thunderdome. It was after this event that Bloodhound would move onto the Apex Games, seeking eventual entry to Valhalla by claiming as many victories in the Outlands as they could. To this day, Bloodhound still seeks to hone their skills and claim their place through the Games. Oh, and they may or may not be canonically dating Fuse.

How does Bloodhound fit into the current Apex Legends meta?

Bloodhound has the fortunate advantage of belonging to arguably the best class in Apex. Recon class Legends are information gatherers, and their abilities are invaluable to any fireteam they’re a part of, providing tracking and locational data which gives massive advantages to well organised players ready to take the initiative.

Bloodhound may have been the first, but they remain one of the best to this day. Simply put this is because of the sheer utility and scope of their abilities.

Bloodhound’s abilities in-depth

Their passive gives Apex Legend Bloodhound the capacity to direct a squad from the outset of a match, allowing aggressive playstyles to thrive. It’s just as useful for noting whether looted areas might still have active teams nearby. The White Ravens simply increase this utility further, allowing for even greater consistency in when this passive comes into play.

Their tactical is a common sight during games, immediately giving away enemy positions. While this does alert enemy teams to the proximity of a Bloodhound player, the advantages are obviously one-sided. Knowing precise positions of opponents is the kind of information that serves pushes, ambushes, duels equally well. A disorganised enemy team is also likelier to make mistakes on realising their positions are compromised, opening new opportunities for knocks and kills.

Lastly their ultimate effectively takes these basic recon abilities and amplifies them, whilst boosting Bloodhound’s combat effectiveness.This puts Bloodhound in a stronger position when alone as well as when working in a team.

All said and done, Bloodhounds skills give away general enemy presence, specific positioning, and more, giving their team nearly unparalleled insight and enough information to form solid plans of action and coordinate more effectively. Only a few other S-tier legends like Seer can match up to Bloodhound’s usefulness.

Does Bloodhound have any weaknesses?

If Bloodhound has any drawbacks, it’s a slightly reduced versatility for defensive team playstyles, and their preference for team play.

Obviously information on nearby enemies is still extremely useful, especially for counterattacks and optimised positioning, but if you’re not actively tracking prey, then you’re not getting the full use out of Bloodhound’s potential.

When solo, Bloodhound still gains a huge informational advantage, but they lack any support, offence, or defence skills to serve as direct counters to other Legends, placing more pressure on them to use their leg-up in initiative to compete.

Our best tips and tricks for playing Bloodhound

If you’ve decided Bloodhound sounds like the right sort of Legend for you, great! But that still means you’ll need to learn how to play them. We’ve covered their abilities, class, and where they excel and fall short, but now it’s time to look at a few more specific tips and tricks to help you improve your game as the ultimate hunter.

Use smokes and other obstructions to your advantage

Once in a firefight, it can become a little more challenging to find space to make the most of Bloodhound’s utility, but this is mostly a case of recognising the right tactics for the situation. Bringing a Legend like Bangalore along is a great choice, as her smoke can obscure large parts of the battlefield, while the orange player highlights of Bloodhound’s scan allows you and your teammates to see enemy positions right through it. Caustic gas is an equally good example, though if it’s an enemy caustic there’s obviously more threat to pushing through it. We’d recommend practicing turning cover to your advantage in any fight you can – you can even turn an enemy Caustic or Bangalore’s smokes against them with your tactical.

Consider utilising weapons suited to ambush tactics

There are plenty of amazing weapons in Apex. While picks like the R-301 and R-99 might rank among some of the best guns in Apex, Bloodhound can often benefit from more specialised choices. Since Bloodhound’s ultimate and passive both provide excellent long-distance tracking, it’s sometimes smarter to pick weapons which allow you to deal a lot of damage in the opening moments of a fight, and control when that fight begins. Snipers and DMRs are the obvious choices here. Some good options include picking up a Kraber or a Sentinel, and pairing one with a strong mid-range option like a G7 Scout or a Nemesis Burst AR.

Learn the niches of your abilities as soon as possible

Although Bloodhound’s abilities are strong on the surface, there even stronger once you understand the finer points of how they work.

Your passive is one example. We mentioned earlier that footprints and tracks will be colour coded depending on their age. Grey tracks are old, and mean the enemy has likely moved on, red tracks are fresh, and usually indicate someone is nearby. Tracks can last for up to 90 seconds without your ultimate, and certain Legends interact differently with them, too. For example, Mirage will still leave tracks even while cloaked, but Wraith won’t leave any if she’s moving via her phase rift. The White Ravens will only appear when there’s no one nearby, and you can use your tactical to interact with them – doing so will fully recharge it from cooldown, too.

Bloodhound’s ultimate ability is another. It’s geared for aggression and combat efficacy, but the speed boost is significant – around 30%. This means that you can quite comfortably use it as an option to help retreat or disengage from combat, should you so choose. We’d also advise using Bloodhounds Eye tactical as soon as Beast of the Hunt is active – as scanning the White Ravens it spawns in will help recharge your abilities.

That covers everything you need to know about Apex Legend Bloodhound. There are plenty more Legends to learn about in-game though. Whether you’re curious about Catalyst, Conduit, Ballistic, Octane or any of the game’s other characters, we’ve got you covered.

Apex Legends Bloodhound FAQ

When was Bloodhound added to Apex Legends?

Bloodhound was added to Apex Legends at launch, coming as one of the original roster of characters for the battle royale.

Is Bloodhound non-binary?

Yes, Bloodhound has been confirmed to be non-binary by Respawn Community Manager Jay Frechette, VA Allegra Clarke, and Narrative Director Mohammad Alavi.