Apex Legends' Newcastle Isn't a New Gibraltar

gamerant.com:

Since Apex Legends Season 13’s Newcastle was revealed (and perhaps even when he was leaked), many have compared him to Gibraltar. There are concerns over a rising Shield meta, especially because many high-ranking teams always carry a Gibraltar. His defensive abilities, as well as the ability to eat a Kraber shot with his arm shield, make him a strong addition to any team.

But, Newcastle is not Gibraltar. The concerns are understandable, but there’s no immediate and huge benefit to having Newcastle and Gibraltar on the team. On paper too, Newcastle and Gibraltar’s kit are vastly different—they both offer protection but are defensive nonetheless. It does remain to be seen how effective Newcastle is, or how effective Newcastle and Gibraltar are, when Apex Legends Season 13 launches, but as it stands, there’s no reason to be concerned over a broken new meta.

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Passive vs. Passive: Gibraltar’s arm shield breaks after a certain amount of damage, but it can sustain a lot of damage at once because nothing passes through. In other words, Gibraltar can get hit by a Kraber head-on and remain standing, with no damage carry over. Meanwhile, this lets Gibraltar take the front in firefights, and it makes any 1v1 against him (with a turbocharger + devotion) worse because he can take more damage.

Meanwhile, Newcastle’s tactical is the ability to drag an ally out of that line of fire. He deploys a shield and drags them wherever he wants, which is a pretty standard FPS feature. It’ll have its uses, but it’s certainly circumstantial given that downed players can crawl anyway. The big part of the ability is the shield deploy when doing so, but that’s going signal to enemies what