Using the ping button in inventory menus allows you to request certain loot items from your squadmates. Ping a gear or attachment slot to request that attachment or piece of gear. Ping one of your weapons to request the appropriate type of Ammo. Ping an item in the Health Kit wheel to request health or shields. Changing the data center and checking your ping is unnecessarily difficult in Apex Legends. This is a big problem, as professional gamers pay a lot of attention to these factors. As a cross-platform multiplayer battle royale game, Apex Legends is available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Pings are callouts for communication with teammates without the need for voice or text communication. They cover many actions such as marking enemies, announcing loot, calling 'dibs' on announced loot, telling teammates where you are going, and many others. Each ping triggers a voice line from your legend, and a text message in the chat if enabled.
Pings are bound to / / by default. Holding the button brings up the ping wheel.
- 1Location pings
- 2Vocal pings
Location pings[edit | edit source]
These pings put a marker on the map for everyone in your squad.
Basic ping[edit | edit source]
By default, the basic ping triggers a 'let's go here' voice line. However, it can also be used to highlight and vocally point out items, map features, or enemy ability usage. The following things can be pinged with unique voice lines:
- Any weapon or loot item
- Death Boxes
- Doors, closed or open
- Supply Bins, closed or open
- Care Packages
- Ziplines
- Respawn dropships
- Vault doors
- The Geyser
- Lava
- Enemy
- Enemy
- Enemy Smoke
- Enemy Gas
Ping wheel[edit | edit source]
Bringing up the ping wheel allows for seven more options. These pings do not change depending on what you ping. They are, in clockwise order:
- Enemy Here (default F on PC)
- Looting Here
- Attacking Here
- Going Here
- Defending Here
- Watching Here
- Someone's Been Here
The 'Someone's Been Here' ping is also used when Bloodhound pings Tracker clues indicating enemy movement. When the clues indicate combat, the Recent Battle ping is used instead.
Other location pings[edit | edit source]
- When dead, you can ping the location of your death box for squadmates to find and retrieve your banner.
- When your squadmates have your banner, you can ping the nearest respawn beacon that is inside The Ring.
- Mirage's decoys automatically ping the location they get shot from.
- Wattson's fences automatically ping enemies that cross them.
Vocal pings[edit | edit source]
These pings only trigger voice lines for yourself and squadmates.
Response pings[edit | edit source]
The following are options when pinging another squadmate's ping:
- Ok - used to acknowledge a basic ping, an Enemy Here ping, or a Someone's Been Here ping
- No
- I Can't
- I'll Join You - response to Looting / Attacking / Going / Defending / Watching Here pings
- Dibs - response to weapon or item pings, to indicate you want that item
Thanking squadmates[edit | edit source]
When a squadmate revives you, or when you pick up an item that a squadmate dropped or pinged, you have the option to thank them. They have the option to respond with 'you're welcome'.
You can also thank squadmates for putting down , , , or a using the basic ping.
Requesting items[edit | edit source]
Ping Menu Apex Legends
Using the ping button in inventory menus allows you to request certain loot items from your squadmates.
- Ping a gear or attachment slot to request that attachment or piece of gear.
- Ping one of your weapons to request the appropriate type of Ammo.
- Ping an item in the Health Kit wheel to request health or shields.
Other vocal pings[edit | edit source]
- Using the ping button on a downed squadmate announces that you're coming to help them.
- Using the ping button on a dead squadmate's death box suggests that you should retrieve their banner.
- Using the ping button on a reviving enemy to alert your squadmates.
- When down, you can use the Help ping to alert your squadmates that you need to be revived.
- Wraith can share the warnings she gets from .
Apex Legends Lag Fix Guide
Apex Legends demands accuracy, reflexes and skill – but even the best players can be handicapped by lag. If you’re serious about racking up victories, you need every button to feel responsive and for every shot to be on point. In this guide, we’ll fill you in on the best ways to fix lag for the best connection in Apex Legends.
Ping Menu Apex Energetics
Fixing Lag
Let’s start with the main cause of lag. When you are put on a server far away, you will experience more lag. It’s just like real life – the further you have to travel the longer it takes. Games are no different. What’s worse, other players in the game who are located nearer the server will have an advantage over you as their experience will be much more responsive.
Check out this map of all the servers you can be connected to in Apex Legends:
If you lived in California, you could expect your ping to Europe to be over 150ms. That means every button you press will have a delayed response, putting you at a disadvantage compared to players who live closer to the server.
Select Your Server
The in-game server selector is the most widely used workaround. This will allow you to choose the best low-ping Apex server available. Check out the steps to access the Data Centers menu below:
Choosing your server on Xbox One / PS4:
- On the title screen, wait for two minutes.
- Open the Accessibility page.
- Close the Accessibility page, then press R3.
Choosing your server on PC:
- On the title screen, wait for one minute.
- Press ESC to access the Accessibility page.
- Cancel the Accessibility page, then click on Data Centers below.
Now that you’re on the Data Centers screen, you’ll be able to see your ping to any available Apex server and select the best one. The lower the better – though if you see a server with -1 Ping, it usually indicates that you won’t be able to connect to it.
Does it Work?
Apex Legends Ping Menu
Choosing a data centre with the lowest ping seems like a quick solution to Apex lag, but it’s not that simple. When you search for a game, it’s actually very rare to connect to the server you’ve selected. This means you will still get laggy games most of the time even after selecting the best server.
With the New York server selected, we used the Netduma Geo-Filter to track our connections and put this solution to the test:
As you can see from our results, we only connected to our chosen server twice out of ten games. Without a Netduma Geo-Filter, most Apex players are unaware of just how unreliable the Data Center selector is. The results are conclusive: selecting your server in Apex is not a good way to secure a low ping server.
Get a Low Ping Server
Ultimately, to get the best ping in Apex Legends – or any online game – you need to connect to the closest server to you. And we have the only solution to this massive problem:
The Netduma Geo-filter allows you to set a custom radius around your location and FORCE the game to put you on a local server. This significantly reduces lag for you and most of the game’s other players. The effect on your game will be very noticeable, with improved response time and fairer gameplay.
If you are getting connected to a laggy dedicated server, you can use the Denyfeature to permanently block that server and never connect to it again.
Watch it in action here:
You can order a Netduma from this link. Use the code ‘Apex Lag‘ for 5% off your Netduma R1 router. Our DumaOS software is also available on the powerful NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming range: https://www.netgear.com/npg/
If you are not able to invest in a DumaOS Powered Router then your next best option is to leave lobbies that are playing particularly poorly. It’s not ideal but hopefully you will have better luck with your next lobby. If you’re already using DumaOS, check out our Optimal Settings Guide for Apex to get yourself set up.
Open Your NAT in Apex Legends
Another reason you might have a bad connection in Apex is because the ports required for the game aren’t open, meaning you don’t have an Open NAT. A strict or moderate NAT can cause you to be unable to connect to other players online. With many routers you can activate a setting called UPnP, which will automatically open the ports you need to play. If you don’t have this setting, or it’s not working for you, use the table below to find the ports for your device to open manually:
Reduce Local Congestion
Did you know that High bandwidth speeds do not mean you will have a faster gaming connection?
Games only need less than 0.5mbps, so what actually matters isn’t how much bandwidth you have – it’s how much congestion there is. Congestion is caused by other people in your home when they hog the bandwidth with streams and downloads, creating gridlock on your Internet connection and grinding your game to a halt. This problem is far worse on devices connected via WiFi, and you can read why in our WiFi VS Ethernet blog.
We found that no QoS solutions out there really tackle this problem for games, instead relying on inefficient and outdated software. That’s why we invented a unique algorithm that will totally eliminate all congestion, meaning you can game lag-free whilst everyone else uses the Internet as much as they need to. You can read more about our QoS solution and the problems caused by congestion in the Beginners Guide to Bufferbloat.
That’s concludes our Apex lag fix guide. We hope it has helped you to solve your lag issues. If you are interested in buying a Netduma to crush your lag then you can use code ‘Apex Lag‘ at checkout for 5% off!
Our software is also available on the powerful NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming range: https://www.netgear.com/npg/