Jeff Kaplan has finally revealed the abilities of Overwatch’s 32nd hero, Echo, in a stream with TimTheTatman.
Echo was first revealed at BlizzCon 2018 as part of the Reunion animated short, so fans had known about her existence for quite awhile, but it was unclear whether or not she would be coming out before Overwatch 2.
After no hero was revealed at BlizzCon 2019, fans were anxious as to when they would be able to get their hands on Hero 32, but now we have the answer. Echo is live on the PTR today.
In the training room, Tim went through all of Echo’s base abilities and her absolutely insane ultimate abilitiy alongside Kaplan.
Echo, surprisingly enough, is 200 HP DPS hero, much to the chagrin of everyone who expected her to be a support or tank.
Just like Pharah, she has extremely dynamic aerial mobility which allows her to fly up in the air – think like a mix of Pharah and Mercy.
Her primary fire ability shoots three projectiles grouped in a tight triangle that deal 17 damage each and have the ability to critical headshot.
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Meanwhile, Sticky Bomb, the attack we see her use in the “Zero Hour” Overwatch 2 cinematic, is her alternate attack that deals damage to enemies in a radius.
Additionally, Focusing Beam deals “crazy amounts of damage” to a target below half health. According to Kaplan, it does 50 damage normally, but even more to enemies and barriers who are half health. Essentially, she can melt barriers with ease.
Finally, her Ultimate is Duplicate. This allows Echo to transform into an enemy hero with extremely fast ultimate generation.
According to Jeff, the ultimate charge Echo gets when she’s using Duplicate is 650% faster than normal, and Tim was even able to farm out up to three Earthshatters with Reinhardt.
Kaplan admitted that the hero might seem overpowered in the practice range, but said devs would be closely watching players on the PTR to figure out what balance changes to make.
As Tim hopped into actual games with players Echo didn’t seem as overpowered as one might expect from her abilities, but that could change as players get the hang of Overwatch’s newest DPS.