Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller warned players that the game’s newest support hero, Illari, might be especially powerful. After the previous new hero, Lifeweaver, was underwhelming, Keller said the team wasn’t making the same mistake twice, and based on former Overwatch League pro Seagull’s first impressions, they certainly didn’t.
Testing out Illari shortly after the start of season six today, Seagull immediately knew that the Peruvian hero was going to be a force just by running around the training room. Testing out abilities on bots, Seagull could tell that the healing and damage values of her Solar Rifle and Healing Pylon were nothing to scoff at.
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“Her numbers are insane,” he said. “She’s going to do so much.”
As he started to play matches on the game’s new Flashpoint maps with other content creators, Seagull continued to talk about how powerful he expects Illari to be. While some fans in his Twitch chat suggested that the aim and range requirement of her healing could be limiting, Seagull continued to praise how strong her kit is.
“Illari’s heal is on her rifle, it’s on a right-click that you have to track your teammates with, and it has pretty short range,” he said. “But it heals for 120 HPS. It is insane how much healing it is. It is not at all underwhelming. That is some of the strongest healing in the game.”
Once Seagull finally got an opportunity to try Illari out for himself in a Flashpoint match, all he could do was repeatedly call the hero’s tuning “insane” as he dominated the battlefield.
Ahead of the new season, Keller made it clear that Illari might be a little bit overpowered. Knowing that people would be playing the new hero no matter what, the team wanted for people to at least have an enjoyable time, and just a few hours into her being playable, that has certainly been the case for Seagull and his fellow Overwatch 2 creators.
