In a recent stream, Mande clutched up in a 3v1 by using solid tactics and a necessary skill: shield swapping. If you don’t know, Mande is a famous Apex Legends player that plays professionally for TSM. In the recent clip, Mande does a lot of things right — he nails all of his Peacekeeper shots, he uses a battery at the right time, and he uses his downed teammates as shields — but a highlight for all players to notice is the shield swap in Apex Legends.
What is Shield Swapping in Apex Legends?
Really quick, if you don’t know what shield swapping is (if you do, keep scrolling), shield swapping is when you open a deathbox and swap your broken shield for a full one in the middle of combat. It doesn’t matter if the swapped armor is less rare, the point is to remove your broken armor for a fresh piece.
Successfully performing a shield swap, or armor swap, in Apex Legends is vital to winning fights. When you can’t pop a battery, the best thing to do is to swap your armor with any deathbox around. Shield swapping is a tactic that is even more useful than stealth most of the time.
Mande Clip in Apex Legends
Okay, onto the clip of Mande. In this particular stream, Mande uses his team’s communication and his superior positioning to his advantage. However, it is extremely difficult to win a 3v1 unless you shield swap.
On top of everything else Mande does right in this clip, he makes great use of swapping his shields not once, but twice. Since his objective was to eliminate three enemy players, he needed full armor but didn’t have the time to use a battery to recharge his shields.
As Mande takes out each player, he hides behind cover and swaps his shields with one of the many deathboxes in the area. The first time he does it, it is with his own team member since he needs it more than them. The second time, he uses a random deathbox. Notice the speed at which he does it, which is key to staying in the battle.
Hopefully, with this clip of Mande, you’ll recognize how important shield swapping is and start to implement it into your own Apex Legend games. You can shield swap with any legend, but if you want to become the best Bloodhound you can be, we’ve got you covered.
Apex Legends is available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, IOS, Android, and PC.
