Apex Legends firefights can get pretty hectic at times and those with quick reactions often have a huge edge, but this isn’t the case when it comes to switching to gold shields.
Apex Legends players often switch shields in combat, particularly when the enemy damage begins to ramp up. In fact, switching from a broken shield to a shiny new one can often be the deciding factor in a close fight.
Not only does it give you the chance to stave off more damage, but it can also force your enemy to expend further resources.
While searching an enemy death box or finding a replacement shield on the ground can be fairly quick, the process to equip gold armor can take a long time.
This is especially true when you’re going from the game’s red shields down to gold. It’s because of this sluggish performance, that players are now calling for Respawn to fix this issue.
Apex Legends Gold shield swap frustrations
Posting to the official Apex Legends Reddit page, enrique960417 pointed out just how frustrating this scenario can be. In the clip, the player can be seen getting into a firefight with an enemy team.
After narrowly avoiding death and eliminating two enemy players, enrique960417 tries to loot a shield from one of the death boxes.
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This is a pretty common tactic and it’s certainly not out of the ordinary. After scrolling through the Death Box, the player finds a gold shield – something that could potentially save enrique960417 in the fights to come.
However, instead of instantly replacing the broken red shield with the new golden one, the player is met with a length replacement animation.
It’s during these split seconds that an enemy Revenant appears and guns down the helpless player. “Apex really needs to remove the hold to swap to gold armor mechanic, it cost me countless times and just seems unnecessary,” says enrique960417.
This is certainly a frustrating issue and many players believe that if a nearby shield has more health than your current one, then it should be instantly replaced.
Whether Respawn will address this issue in a future update remains to be seen, but for now, you’re best of only swapping to gold when you have the seconds to spare.