A new patch hits Apex Legends today, and with it comes more efforts to address the hitboxes of larger characters like Gibraltar.
Although Gibraltar’s kit makes him a classic tank — he has a shield when he aims down sights, and his ultimate is an impenetrable shield — players hardly use him. Because his character is larger in size, he has a larger hitbox, meaning that he’s easier to kill. Larger characters Caustic and Pathfinder have a similar problems.
While previous changes to the size of hitboxes seems to have worked for Pathfinder, today’s update further addresses this issue by giving Gibraltar and Caustic a new perk to their passive ability called Fortified, which reduces damage taken by 10 per cent. Gibraltar’s gun shield damage has been increased as well, and has Caustic’s gas damage and Ultimate throw distance.
“At the start of Season 1, we previously talked about how our beloved Thicc Bois (Pathfinder, Gibraltar and Caustic) were getting crushed due to their hitbox size compared to other Legends. We first wanted to try adjusting hitboxes to better fit the model. For Pathfinder, this change worked very well,” a representative from Apex Legends’ development studio, Respawn Entertainment, wrote on Reddit. “However, after looking at the data and player feedback, Gibraltar and Caustic only improved slightly with the hitbox adjustments.”
“We don’t believe that hit box and character kit tuning is sufficient to bring Gibraltar and Caustic in line with their smaller competitors,” the post continued. “Over the week or two following this change, we will be watching how they perform with this additional protection and aggressively tune it if they are still underpowered relative to their size. Our goal is to ensure both Legends are viable picks by the end of this process.”
The patch also contains weapon changes to make sniper rifles more viable by reducing sway and damage reduction, increasing energy weapon magazine size, and nerfing the Wingman’s magazine size “so that it doesn’t dominate the stock gun vs. stock gun battle early on due to its super high damage per bullet.” The Wingman has dominated Apex’s meta since a few weeks after launch.
The changes are explained in detail in the patch notes, posted on Reddit, and arrived for all players at 1pm Eastern time.
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