Apex Legends dev confirms Gibraltar gun shield nerf coming
Gibraltar’s gun shield is set to incorporate bleedthrough damage in an upcoming update of Apex Legends, the devs have confirmed.
The Dome shield and Gun shield make Gibraltar a walking tank that can be hard to put down in Apex Legends. He’s great for players that possibly need to sustain one more hit, and he’s also incredibly useful for teammates due to the size of the Dome shield.
Gibraltar’s gun shield is where his balancing issues start to become questionable and players have complained about the strength of it.
The shield received a buff months ago to increase his selection eligibility across the player base. In doing so, Respawn Entertainment possibly made him too powerful. However, they are now looking to rectify this in an upcoming update.
Respawn EntertainmentGibraltar bleedthrough gun shield fix in Apex Legends
As it is now, if a player uses Gibraltar and aims down his gun, they will automatically activate his gun shield – a strong barrier that requires 75 hitpoints to break.
This is reasonable as Gibraltar has always been punished by having one of the biggest hitboxes in the whole of Apex Legends. But on the other hand, the shield currently avoids any bleedthrough damage, which means players have to land another successful shot to damage him.
For those unaware, bleedthrough damage is when a player damages another player’s shield. But regardless of how much damage they inflict, it will only count towards the shield’s HP, not the character’s HP.
For example, if Gibraltar’s gun shield has 6hp left and he gets hit for 50 damage points, only Gibraltar’s gun shield HP will be depleted. Whereas if bleedthrough damage was enabled, he would lose the 6HP remaining on the shield, and an additional 44HP off his base health bar.
A post on the official Apex Legends subreddit has indicated that the devs have a fix in the works for the tanky Legend.
One of the game’s Live Balance Designer’s said: “Unfortunately a couple of meaningful tweaks to the gun shield just missed the cutoff for next week’s patch: (1) Bleedthrough and (2) damage counting towards stats/Evo to mitigate some of the shield economy difference in poking engagements against a Gib.”
It seems like the Gibraltar patch will miss the Season 8 launch, but it will be added further down the line.
Season 7 of Apex Legends is set to finish on February 1st with Season 8 to start soon after. We’ll have all the latest news and updates on Apex’s newest season.
Image credits: Respawn Entertainment