Apex Legends launched with eight different characters, and has added eight more since then. While there’s been a ton of variety in what each Legend is capable of, none of them have been able to quite fulfill the role of one of the originals: Lifeline.
Lifeline is classified as a Combat Medic, and her D.O.C. drone is capable of healing her and any allies that get into range a significant amount. This is outrageously useful for not only recovering after a fight, but it can also be great during the fight, too. As useful as Lifeline is, it might seem peculiar that Respawn hasn’t added another character into Apex Legends capable of accomplishing a similar task. But, there are a few good reasons for this.
One good reason for this is probably that it would be absurdly frustrating to fight a squad that had both Lifeline and whatever the other theoretical character capable of healing allies would be. Players already target Lifeline because her healing ability can really change the flow of a fight. For a new healer, it would obviously depend on what exactly their ability did, but it could be a very difficult task to take down a squad capable of putting out that much free healing. This would severely impact the meta, and make players feel like they couldn’t bring a creative squad composition as often simply because these characters exist.
A way around this would be limiting the number of Legends that fulfill similar roles that are allowed in a squad, like limiting it to either Lifeline or this other Legend, or only the soon-to-be-nerfed Octane or Pathfinder, something similar to that. But, that doesn’t really seem to be what Respawn is trying to do with Apex, nor does that really seem like a good idea. A fun part of Apex is the ability for players to bring whatever Legends they want and whatever squad lineup they want; implementing rules like this would severely dampen that.
Adding another character capable of healing like Lifeline would make items like Med-Kits and First-Aid a little bit more irrelevant, especially when both Legends are present in the squad. This would mean there’s a ton of loot on the ground that players aren’t really interested in picking up. While this might not seem like a huge issue, the loot pools in games like this are carefully constructed and monitored; doing something as drastic as this would probably mean those loot pools in Apex, which might be changing soon anyway, would have to be tweaked again in order to add a Legend like this.
Not to mention, there are already a couple of characters that are capable of similar things to Lifeline, albeit in a smaller capacity. Starting with the possibly underpowered Wattson, her Ultimate Ability, Interception Pylon, slowly recharges hers and any other Legend in the vicinity’s shield over time, on top of everything else that Pylon does. While this doesn’t exactly heal the actual health of characters, it still fulfills a similar function to Lifeline.
Octane is also capable of healing, though in his case, it’s solely his own health. When outside of combat, Octane passively heals himself over time, saving himself quite a lot of First-Aid in the long run. This is certainly a smaller scale healing ability than Lifeline, but it is passive, so it’s of absolutely no cost to Octane. Combining him and Lifeline already makes for a Squad that can reasonably pass up more First-Aid than other squads. Adding another healing Legend into the mix would really shake things up, possibly more than Respawn is ready and willing to do.
Apex Legends is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
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