Apex Legends dev explains why they’re not nerfing Gibraltar

A developer at Respawn Entertainment has delved into the reasons why Apex Legends’ Gibraltar won’t be getting a nerf anytime soon.

Following the plethora of announcements from the EA Play event (including the long-awaited introduction of crossplay), Apex Legends players have plenty to look forward to as a series of upcoming features were teased during the event.

While Mobile Respawn Beacons look set to really shake up the meta (should they make into the regular rotation), it’s Legend nerfs/buffs that really caught the attention of fans.

Both Lifeline and Octane are set to receive a rework. The Combat Medic will be “sidegraded” through tweaking her Passive, which will allow her to heal her allies with a ‘hands-free’ version of the D.O.C drone.

• Read more: Apex Legends dev reveals biggest benefit to new Lifeline rework

Meanwhile, Apex’s Adrenaline Junkie Octane is primed to receive a buff which will aid his squad in endgame scenarios — given how little of an impact his abilities actually have towards the latter portions of a match.

So with all these buffs in the pipeline, players have been left wondering what nerfs could be in the works — specifically with Gibraltar, whose recent run of buffs have placed him as one of the most well-rounded Legends in the game.

• Read more: New Mobile Respawn Beacons coming to Apex Legends: How they work

Addressing a question on when Respawn might nerf Gibby, Daniel Klein responded: “Third lowest encounter win rate, second lowest pick rate… I hear your frustration, but the data [doesn’t] support a nerf at the moment.”

While these stats might seem surprising to many on the surface, Klein did add that the Shielded Fortress has one of the highest squad win rates in the game. “To be clear he has a super high game win rate; his team utility is through the roof.”

After the buff that Revenant received to his Silence Tactical, the simulacrum can now act as a hard-counter to Gibraltar — disabling their Gun Shield and making them a more viable target at long-range.

• Read more: Apex Legends bug is making Gibraltar’s Ult way too powerful

When players argued that Gibraltar is too much of a ‘tank’ in 1v1 situations, the dev again explained that the data doesn’t support this. “Gibraltar performs very poorly in terms of encounter win rate,” Klein explained, giving three main reasons:

The Respawn dev also added some context to the stats, stating that his large hitbox “probably explains 90% of his low encounter win rate.”

So it looks like Gibraltar will be remaining untouched so long as the data supports it.

If you find yourself constantly being overrun by a Gibby, it might be worth giving the Synthetic Nightmare a try…