Respawn Entertainment is feeling the pressure from fans once again, following the emergence of a newly-discovered bug affecting certain Apex Legends characters. Since launch back in February, the developer has pushed out several balance updates for the battle royale in an effort to ensure every Legend has a role in the metagame. Said patches have achieved varying degrees of success, though two particular characters have consistently failed to attract new fans.
Caustic and Gibraltar, despite being positioned as ‘tanky’ classes able to soak up damage and protect teammates, have been progressively ignored by the wider player base due to their in-built weaknesses. Both characters’ slower movement speed and larger hitboxes were originally intended to be trade-offs for their additional bulk, but it quickly became apparent that the chink in their armor was too detrimental to their overall performance.
In an attempt to boost their pick rate and popularity, last week’s patch 1.1.1 added a brand new passive ability to both heroes in the form of Fortify. The perk, which provides a flat 10% damage reduction to both heroes, awarded Caustic and Gibraltar the extra protection fans have been crying out for, though a newly-discovered bug has effectively nullified the change. As reported by fans over on Reddit, damage intended to be negated by Fortify is actually still being applied when players of either character have full shields. Instead, damage bypasses the latter entirely and still causes health damage, making the perk completely redundant.
Thankfully, Respawn wasted no time in acknowledging the fault, stating that, while it has no ETA for a fix, the team is working on a remedy “internally” that’s currently in testing. Sad news for Caustic and Gibraltar mains, then, but it’s reassuring to hear that Respawn is on top of the issue.
In the meantime, there’s still an eclectic roster of Apex Legends characters to chose from, with at least one more newcomer planned for Season 1: Wild Frontier.
