New Overwatch Damage Hero Echo is on the PTR now! Here are her (possibly overpowered) abilities.

It’s been the week of Echo out of the Overwatch team, after several social media teases for the new hero and the release of her Origin Story trailer yesterday. It looks like today caps off that campaign by having noted Twitch streamer TimTheTatMan throw a reveal stream for Echo’s gameplay alongside Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan.

Here’s what we’ve learned from the stream about Echo’s role, abilities, and her radically gamechanging ultimate. The details are likely subject to change during the PTR, but here’s what we know so far. Surprisingly, she’s a damage character, not Support like we all guessed.

Echo

An evolutionary robot programmed with a rapidly adapting artificial intelligence, versatile enough to fill multiple battlefield combat roles

• Health: 200. Echo doesn’t have any natural shields or armor.
• Tri-Shot. Primary Fire. 3 shot projectile, 17 damage each, 51 damage per full 3-shot burst, 15 round “clip”.
• Stickybomb. Alternate Fire. Sprays delayed-blast small explosives, does impact damage and then AOE explosion. 6 shots per volley, 5 damage per impact, 30 damage on explosion.
• Focusing Beam. Ability 1 (E). Range 20m, 2.5s duration, 50 DPS normally, 200DPS if target health below 50%. Works on Barriers.
• Flight. Ability 2 (LSHIFT). Launches her in the direction she’s aiming with a slow descent, hang-glider type movement. Higher speed laterally than Mercy, so very high mobility while in the air.
• Duplicate. Ultimate (Q). Pick any enemy player (that isn’t Echo), and play as that hero for 6 seconds. While you are that enemy, you have extremely accelerated ult generation. If killed while in Duplicate, you revert back to Echo.

Overall, Echo plays a great deal like a mix between Tracer and Pharah, between having great vertical mobility and high damage potential in a bursty manner. Duplicate is clearly the game-changer though, with skilled players able to get 1-2 ultimates of the copied character off during the 6-second duration. Depending on the enemy team’s composition and the layout of the map, that can easily change the entire dynamic of an engagement. It’s easy to imagine an anti-Echo meta, where each team intentionally picks Heroes which don’t synergize with Echo’s ult well — or maybe just a sniper-heavy meta, to take her out before it’s too much of an issue.

The PTR is live already, so feel free to hop in and test her out — though good luck finding somebody playing anything other than Echo to test out her Ultimate ability. All of her cosmetics are still unrevealed, but that’s sure to change quickly as the testing period goes on. As soon as we know more, so will you.