Lifeline hit with major changes in Apex Legends Season 9: Legacy

Confirming previously reported changes from developers, we got our hands on Lifeline during a Season 9 playtest, and there are some major buffs and nerfs to discuss.

The biggest change, and the one that attracted a lot of ire from players when developers first revealed it, is the removal of the res shield.

Although Lifeline still has her combat revive passive, allowing her to continue fighting while her D.O.C drone gets the res, there is no longer a shield to protect the downed teammate.

This means you’ll need to be much more careful with where you choose to revive teammates as Lifeline. But, as Respawn acknowledged, this change ‘guts’ Lifeline, so they have given her some buffs too.

Lifeline Ultimate buff in Season 9

Lifeline’s ultimate, the care package, has had a major cooldown reduction. In our testing, the cooldown is now only 300 seconds (5 minutes), rather than 360. A full minute less.

Also, the Ultimate itself will contain guaranteed upgrades to your kit. For example, if you have a purple shield, the care package will drop a gold one.

Another buff to Lifeline is the removal of Low Profile. Low Profile has been removed from Apex Legends totally, meaning Wraith, Lifeline and Wattson no longer take 5% more damage from bullets.

Whether these buffs are enough to balance out the nerf of removing the res shield remains to be seen.

Overall, we’d say Lifeline is a bit weaker, just because of how powerful the res shield was. But, ultimately, Respawn wanted to make her less frustrating to play against, and these changes will almost certainly achieve this.

Apex Legends Season 9 will launch on May 4. The update will introduce new Legend Valkyrie, the Bocek Bow weapon, a new-look Olympus, and more.