Apex Legends designer Daniel Z. Klein says Respawn Entertainment plans to tinker with Lifeline's abilities, likely nerfing her passive and buffing her ultimate.
Lifeline's passive, Combat Revive, allows her to deploy a drone to revive teammates and shield them. Some players believe the ability to be too powerful. Klein, writing on the game's subreddit, said the team planned to tinker with the ability.
Respawn devs saying they wanna buff Lifeline's Ult and thats cool but itd be cool if they buffed her heal drone's healing speed but make it like Octane's Passive where it heals pretty fast but only if the people healing dont take damage otherwise its the normal slow heal rate
— Its Will (@MetroidSkulls) March 6, 2021
The simplest solution would be to remove Lifeline's shield entirely, although Klein says that would "gut her." Fans have also proposed adding a cooldown to the ability. Klein says the idea makes some sense, but runs into problems from a communication perspective.
"Also should it be a cooldown on Lifeline or a per-teammate cooldown? The latter seems more logical/more fair (I don't understand why my Lifeline can't drone res me because maybe I didn't realize she just drone res'd my ally not too long ago), but that makes communication even harder.
"I think we should try a version without the shield and see how that goes," Klein said. He did not share when that change would go live.
Lifeline's ultimate ability, Care Package, lets her call down a drop with at least one guaranteed equipment upgrade. Klein says a buff is headed for the ability.
"It runs out all we had to do there was applied a minimum of smarts to picking what's in it and suddenly the skill was good," he wrote.
"I'm not gonna talk about it much more because the earliest it might ship in Season 9. But I'm hopeful, as someone who plays a lot of Lifeline and wished her tactical and ultimate weren't memes."
Apex Legends Season 9 is expected to arrive May 4, though Respawn Entertainment has yet to confirm a date.
