One of the best things about APEX is how tight, and customizable the character movement is. It feels smooth and active – giving you much control over how your legend navigates the arena.
All that movement takes a lot of balancing from the developers to ensure that each character can contribute and compete against each other fairly, which is why you sometimes see specific options removed from or added to the game.
Tap strafing is one of those features that was removed and readded, much to the delight of a large part of the community. It’s using your options for movement to change the way you jump to give you more control over where your character goes.
Getting good at tap strafing can give you an advantage and help you as you navigate your way from the Rookie league to Apex Predator.
What is Tap Strafing ?
When you move forward with the W key, APEX moves you in a straight line. However, when you tap the key, release it, and then tap it again, your character turns slightly. That’s the basis of tap strafing.
Players use this slight direction adjustment to execute tight, quick turns – up to a fast 180 turn in the air.
It gives experienced tap strafers the kind of momentum and maneuverability that can help you dodge bullets, disappear around corners, and respond to things behind you more quickly than you would without it.
Tap Strafing Demystified
Tap strafing can sound complicated to a beginner who hasn’t spent much time in APEX, but it’s not too confusing once you understand how it works.
However, even experienced players might struggle if they haven’t done it before. One of the primary reasons for this is you’ll likely have to change your keybinds.
For a good reason, many players have the scroll wheel bound to something like weapon swap. It’s quick and convenient when fights get heated, and you run out of ammo.
But you need it unbound from the standard bindings if you try out tap strafing. It’s much easier when you change it to the mouse scroll-up button.
For some newcomers to tap strafing, it can feel frustrating to have to learn new keybinds at the same time you discover an admittedly difficult way of maneuvering.
Give yourself time to adjust if you haven’t tried it before. After a dozen games, you might find it feels terrific and makes you a monster on the battlefield.
So go into your settings and make the second keybind on Move Forward the mouse scroll button. Now you’re ready to try tap strafing.
How to Tap Strafe in Apex Legends ?
Before you start tap strafing, make sure you know how to bunnyhop.
- Start running forward until you’ve reached your maximum speed.
- Press the crouch button to execute a slide.
- Press the jump button and release your forward movement key.
- Press jump again each time you touch the ground.
It might sound easy, but the timing takes some work. You should be able to continue moving forward by jumping until you lose momentum. To add extra momentum, try adding a strafe to your bunnyhop.
- Start running forward until you’ve reached your maximum speed.
- Press the crouch button to execute a slide.
- Press the jump button and release your forward movement key.
- Move your mouse to the left while you press A.
- Use jump as soon as you land.
- Move your mouse to the right while you press D.
- Use jump as soon as you land.
- Continue strafing and bunnyhopping until you lose momentum or reach where you want to be.
Both techniques take practice, but you’ll become a much better player once you understand them. It also makes tap strafing much more manageable since it builds on these core movement skills.
Tap strafing is basically bunnyhopping, strafing once you’re in the air, and then using the momentum with the scroll-wheel bound forward action to keep moving in the direction of your strafe.
- Start running and crouch into a slide when you reach max speed.
- Press the jump button and hold down the direction key that you want to strafe in, either A or D.
- Release the W key without releasing A or D, whichever you choose.
- Use the scroll wheel to move your character forward. Keep using it quickly to continue your move.
- Use your mouse to change your view to the direction you’re strafing. You will move in a new direction and maintain your speed. You can release your direction key once you’re done with the movement.
Once you’re done tap strafing, press W again, and keep running.
Tap Strafing in Practice
A lot of tap strafing is about timing. You may need to practice for weeks, even before it starts to feel good, and you have an instinct for exactly when to press and release each key.
Spending some time working it out on the firing range might be useful before trying it in competitive play.
Here are some tap strafing tips that might help:
- Tap strafing is best for high-speed turns. You can use it to surprise an enemy that attacks you from behind when you’re on the move or to dodge bullets and reposition yourself behind cover. You won’t gain speed from it, but if done correctly, it will maintain your speed even when quickly redirecting yourself.
- You don’t need to tap strafe if you’re only trying to change your direction slightly in midair. Tap strafing shines when you want to do a 180 and speed away in the opposite direction.
- You can use tap strafing to jump over rails you’re running by, quickly move around a corner, or even jump off walls once you’re comfortable with it. It gives you a lot of mobility and is well worth the time it takes to learn.
Remember, even top-tier APEX players have said it takes a lot of time to get good at tap strafing. So keep trying, even if it doesn’t feel natural at first. You will get better as you practice.
