Apex Legends Fuse analysis guide — Abilities, advantages, and shortcomings

Ultimate: The Motherlode

This Ultimate ability is one that you’re either going to love or hate — it depends on the situation. The Motherlode is an incendiary explosive that Fuse fires from a small artillery canon on his back. Once it detonates over the location you choose, it rains down fire that “encircles a target area in a wall of flame” and burns for 16 seconds. The shell also travels quickly along on a generally low arc, so you can use it in a lot more situations than you can use Gibraltar’s or Bangalore’s Ultimates. However, The Motherlode isn’t always as effective. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to compare the Motherlode to Caustic’s Nox Grenade Ultimate, as they each have the same recharge time and work as zone denial abilities. Fuse’s Ultimate certainly falls into the middle somewhere.

If we compare The Motherlode to these other Ultimates though, it is definitely one of the more difficult ones to effectively use. This is because it can be particularly hard to aim towards uneven terrain. And don’t even think about using it inside unless there’s a high ceiling. Furthermore, the fire won’t always trap enemies, as they can simply avoid it if there’s a way to clamber out. I’ve also noticed that you can get annoyingly close to the fire without taking damage. For these reasons, you don’t want to rely on The Motherlode too much.

The Motherlode does make up for its lack of utility with a fast recharge time though. I recommend spamming it in comparison to how you might use other Ultimates. Don’t waste it, but don’t hesitate if an opportunity comes about. You’ll get it back soon enough, and even faster if you keep Ultimate Accelerants on you — this is highly recommended.

The Motherlode has a recharge time of just 120 seconds, or two minutes. As you can tell, this is very low compared to other Legends. Popping an Ultimate Accelerant can get your Ultimate back in just over a minute, which can pay off in many cases.

I got a little carried away with area denial here. There’s clearly plenty of opportunity, though.

Let’s talk damage. When The Motherlode is used properly, it works great. Enemies that come into contact with it will immediately get hit with 35 damage that ticks five times for eight points. That’s an extra 40 damage, which brings the total damage up to 75. The Motherlode also slows enemies heavily for several seconds, so you have time to finish them off after they come into contact with the flames. If you can trap an enemy team inside The Motherlode’s radius and follow up with some grenades or an allies’ Ultimate, you should be able to wipe the team.

Don’t expect enemies to bunch together too often, though. Usually I found that I was able to trap one or two enemies inside of it or even used it on a downed enemy to isolate them from their team. I can’t stress how useful the latter is, because it shuts down Gibraltar bubbles and Lifeline revives unless they jump inside the ring. In which case, ‘nade them.

The Motherlode has a couple of huge things going for it, however. For starters, its range is absurd. You can fire it up to 200m, which is more than enough range for most cases. This makes The Motherlode a superb chaos-inducing, third-party utility. You can leverage sniper rifles effectively alongside this strategy to cripple multiple squads from a distance. Likewise, you can force chokepoints on enemy teams if the zone is closing. The fire will even help to slow them and get them caught outside of the ring. Think carefully and you can easily wipe or weaken enemies at range.

• Passive: Grenadier
• Tactical: Knuckle Cluster
• Ultimate: The Motherlode
• Usefulness and shortcomings
• Conclusion