Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan and popular streamer TimTheTatman revealed all the abilities of the newest hero headed to the battlefield, Echo, today. Fans will be flying high with all the features packed into her potent DPS kit.
Her primary fire is Tri-shot and it has Echo launch three projectiles per volley. These projectiles deal 17 damage each, or 51 damage if you hit all of them. They have a bit of a travel speed, so players will need to lead a bit when trying to fire on a moving target.
Echo’s secondary fire is similar since it has her toss more projectiles. But instead of bullets, she throws out six mini bombs that attach to any surface or enemy they hit. They deal five damage on impact, but after a brief moment, they’ll deal 30 damage when they explode. This secondary fire can be spread across multiple enemies or stacked onto one tanky enemy. It also deals area-of-effect damage to anyone near the bombs when it explodes.
Echo’s Focusing Beam is another damage ability that deals more damage to targets who are at half health or less. The beam only does 50 DPS when attacking higher health targets, but it does 200 DPS to targets under half. This damage amplification also applies to things like barriers, shields, and even Mei’s ice wall. It’s a perfect ability to secure a kill that could otherwise get away or to burn down a tough shield before your team moves forward.
Her other ability is Flight, which launches her in whatever direction she chooses, depending on which way the player is moving at the time. After launching, she can hover for a bit—like Mercy—before the ability runs out. Although she falls down to the ground a lot quicker than Mercy, her horizontal movement during the decent is a lot quicker. This gives her plenty of positioning and movement options in teamfights.
Echo’s ultimate ability is called Duplicate and it’s an absolute game-changer. With Duplicate, players can choose any hero on the enemy team and play as them for 15 seconds. Additionally, when Echo becomes another hero, she temporarily has 650-percent ultimate gain.
This means that in a perfect teamfight, she can get out two or three of the same ultimates. In this clip with TimTheTatman, he’s able to get three Pulse Bombs out in one Echo ultimate.
Another feature is that when Echo is killed as a duplicate, she doesn’t die. Instead, she simply returns back to her original Echo form.
Her ultimate will probably be something that Blizzard needs to tinker with to prevent any bugs or glitches from making it to the live servers. But this first look has many players raring to try her out on Overwatch‘s PTR server.
