Apex Legends’ Lifeline Needs A Bit of A Buff

A lot of Legends have changed over the years in Apex Legends. Caustic was terrible and then incredible and now just good. Pathfinder was a metal god, flinging himself around the map like Rey Mysterio on steroids before he was nerfed. When she lost her goofy Naruto run, Wraith also became a far more balanced Legend, though she still remains the undisputed pick of the sweaties.

However, with so many Legends and a constantly shifting meta to account for, it’s to be expected that things aren’t always perfectly balanced. Lifeline, who’s been tweaked a few times since launch, is one such Legend who feels like a weak pick in the current landscape of Apex.

Lifeline’s kit fits the healer role of Apex’s hero shooter BR hybrid, meaning that she’s good for picking knocked teammates up and giving health thanks to her D.O.C. Heal Drone. Her passive, Combat Revive, will make D.O.C. pick up a downed teammate while also shielding them, freeing up Lifeline to move around, and she can also get extra loot from Supply Bins. Compared to Lifeline’s earliest versions, where she had to stand still and pick up teammates herself, it’s a definite step up.

That’s probably the only place where Respawn have been kind to Lifeline, though. As a smaller character with a trickier hitbox, she has the Low Profile “perk”, meaning that she takes 5% more damage. That might not seem like a lot, but it is when so many of Apex’s firefights are decided by one bullet among the chaos. She’s harder to hit, but she’s also a fairly normal shape, unlike Wraith, who still bobs and weaves like an anime villain.

Her healing in general should also probably be a lot stronger than it is, just because it takes so long to sit and wait to heal up with her drone. Normal healing items (that seem to work much quicker anyway) aren’t exactly rare either, and when you have an Octane on your team, its usefulness goes down even further.

Her Ultimate is the most disappointing aspect of her, though — it really doesn’t have much of a place in Apex these days. Lifeline’s Care Package calls down a pod containing some typically rare gear. Sounds fine, but when you consider that Loba is able to passively hoover up loot from nearby, Replicators easily create good gear for you, and that there are constant loot drops around the map, it’s pretty underwhelming. Add the fact that it takes what feel like 95 days to become available and you have maybe the worst Ultimate in the whole game.

Lifeline now being a worse healer than Gibraltar is probably why Respawn have announced that they will be tweaking her for Season 9, but it seems to be a nerf and buff at once. Her healing will be faster and the Care Package will contain better loot, but her revive shield will be taken away. It’s a bonkers change on paper — why not change the shield to be destructible instead? That revive shield is the key selling point for her entire kit, so it will be hard to see how these changes do anything but nerf her overall.

It’s the Ultimate that’s the least exciting though, especially in comparison to the wild and just plain fun Ultimates the other Legends have at their disposal. No amount of balance changes will make it more interesting, but what are the alternatives? While it’d almost certainly break the game a bit, it’d be intriguing to see how some kind of AOE health “splash” would go down. It could work as the opposite of Caustic’s gas grenade, healing players — friend or foe — in a particular area, whether that’s in one large chunk or gradually over time. Granted, it might make the drone feel a tad weak, but it makes much more sense than what we have right now.

I don’t envy Respawn — or basically any developer for live service multiplayer games — when it comes to balance as it tends to shift back and forth so quickly, but right now Lifeline needs a lifeline of her own.

Apex Legends is a free FPS game available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X | S, and Switch.

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