Apex Legends adds secret Gibraltar nerf missing from patch notes

It appears that Apex Legends devs snuck in a new nerf for Gibraltar’s Gun Shield into the latest patch — one that wasn’t supposed to arrive for another season.

We all know and love Gibraltar, the tanky shield legend has been around since day one but up until apparently the latest patch, there was an issue with his Gun Shield that gave him the upper hand in a lot of fights.

Specifically, the lack of any kind of damage bleedthrough when his shield was broken. Say, for instance, an enemy Gibraltar had their shield up with 1 HP left, if you shot and broke the shield Gibraltar wouldn’t take any leftover damage from that shot no matter what weapon you used.

There are a few weapons that should be able to knock out the shield and damage Gibby with one good shot, and after the March 9 Apex Legends update, it looks like they finally can.

Respawn didn’t include any mention of a Gibraltar nerf arriving in the patch notes and specifically told us just a few days before that patch that they wouldn’t be arriving on March 9, but shortly after the patch dropped they did confirm the changes had been added.

Lo and behold, when players logged in after applying the update, a few did notice that it definitely looks like Gibraltar’s Gun Shield is allowing bleedthrough damage now.

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Take, for example, the clip we’ve posted below from Reddit user andrus0n — who put it on the Apex sub after the update went live — that certainly seems to show the Shielded Fortress taking bleedthrough from a direct Kraber shot on the Practice range

The Gun Shield is still able to shrug off some of the damage, but the big change from before is that whatever’s leftover that the shield wasn’t able to soak up now transfers to hurt Gibraltar, instead of just disappearing.

This is a change everyone except Gibraltar mains were asking for. Even though the Legend update wasn’t included in the patch notes, Respawn later confirmed that it was intended to go live with the March 9 patch.

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They added that there still might be some “minor inconsistencies” with the bleedthrough, but they would continue to tweak the mechanic going forward.

However it managed to get into the live game, it’s definitely here to stay now. So to all the Gibraltar mains good luck, as your shield won’t provide as much protection as it used to.