The Finals: The Only Macro Guide You Will Ever Need
Intro
Hello, I'm Piggy, and welcome to my ultimate macro guide. If you've mastered the basics of combat in the finals, it's time to elevate your gameplay by diving into macro play. In this guide, I will go over essential macro strategies to help you dominate in the arena and control the flow of the match, whether you play as a solo player or as a part of the team.
These advanced tactics will help you think like a pro. Let's get started. First of all, if you have no clue who I am, here are my credentials. I've been playing this game since the close beta and have reached Diamond every single beta and season. As of recording this article, I'm currently ranked number 21, playing light only.
Also.
Whats macro?
I've been PR in Apex if that said something, so what is Microplay refers to the high-level strategic decision that impacts the course of the game; it involves map awareness rotations, resource management, and team coordination. Next up, I want to talk about macro versus micro. Microp Play focuses on individual skills like aiming to use your gadgets to their fullest potential, and it's just overall mechanics, while Microp Play focuses on broader strategies like controlling objectives, controlling space, and understanding how to control space.
I will talk about how to control space later in the article, so now I want to talk about understanding how volts and cashouts work on every map. There are two volts that spawn and two cashouts that spawn. Your job is to tap the vault, bring the money to the cash out, and defend for 130 seconds. It seems simple at first, right?
No, there's actually way more depth to this game mode than you would actually think there is, and what do I mean by that?
Manipulate cashouts
You can manipulate the cash out and volts. There are many ways to manipulate the cash out and put it in places it's not supposed to be, and a lot of you have probably already seen the goo strategy. Let's take the green bridge on Soul, where you put Goo on the bridge, and then the cash out on the moving platform drops so you can defend it from the hospital.
Manipulating where the cash is allows you to control more space and make opponents play into your strategy. Let's take the green bridge as an example. It's super hard to push teams playing hospital when both cranes and bridges are broken, and the cash out is in the middle of the green bridge, meaning it's almost free to hold.
I also mentioned vaults. There is only one class that can manipulate vaults, and that is the light CL with the gateway. A lot of people don't really understand what The Vault does. And that's what I want to talk about next, and what I want to talk about next is actually Cash Out Tempo.
Cashout tempo
The vault instantly cashes out, and there's a super good reason why they do it: a fun fight. I was one of the first people to discover this technology. The main reason for tping the vault or speedr running the vault to the cash out is to create a Tempo advantage on the map. What do I mean by that?
So let's say you deposit the money in the cashout super quickly. While you're already defending the cash out and chilling, the other teams are fighting to try and deposit their vaults into the cash out. This creates a temporal advantage. And why is this so bad for the other teams, you might ask?
So if your cash out is at 50% and the other team's cashout just started, this means your team has a chance to effectively third-party the other cashout. You never want to be the team defending against three teams. The chances of you losing the game skyrocket. If you lose tempo in the match, that's why creating tempo is so important in this game.
Now, let's say you're super slow, you can't deposit super fast, and the other team is already cashing out. You should not. I repeat, you should not deposit the money into the other cash out because what's going to happen is that, yes, you have to defend against three teams, and you have a high chance of losing it.
It's what I just talked about if the other cash out is at like 25%. You can deposit the money, but if it's around 50%, you should not deposit, so what should you do instead? You should either toss the money away and fight for the ongoing cash out or bring the money to double stack. This basically eliminates, the fact that you're going to get third parted by the other cash out when they're done so let's say you toss the Mone away and you want to go fight for the on goinging cash out basically what's going to happen is the other teams are probably going to fight for the same cash out as you that doesn't really matter cuz you have another shot later like let's say you're fighting right and another team decides to go deposit the Vault you just threw away, then you have another chance at fighting for 10K, which is going to eliminate the fact that you have to defend against three different teams and let's say the Vault you just threw away is not deposited yet into the cash out.
You should not go for the 10K; you should go for the 15K because that's a lot more valuable, and you should try and deposit the 15K at the same time as the 10K gets deposited because once again, that limit is the fact that you have to deal with three different teams, or if the 10K vault is super slow, you can probably create a Tempo Advantage there again by delaying the money before the other teams.
And that's pretty much everything you need to know when it comes to tempo and game pace. Next up, I want to talk about objective control.
Objective control & positioning
And positioning: A lot of people who play this game play it like they're playing a team death match, when in reality this game is based on cash outs and collecting money. That's why you should always prioritize. Objectives over kills A good example of this is, for example, if you killed two people while fighting the first battle.
You should instantly go for the cash out with the vault instead of fighting. I've seen so many people drag out the first fight when the first fight doesn't really matter; all you care about is the money. Why is this important? Getting the cash out first allows you to set up the cash out and establish control of the cash out, and like we talked about earlier, it creates a temporary advantage.
And how do you prepare the cash out? Well, you pretty much just make holes in the walls, you take spacers on the cash out, you break cranes, and you prepare C4 in the cash out like you just set everything up, so when the enemies come, you are just fully prepared and ready to fight them, and you manipulate the cash out like I talked about earlier.
