First revealed in Overwatch's 2018 short, "Reunion", Echo has finally been added to Overwatch as a playable character and the final hero to be added before the eventual release of Overwatch 2. She is the eleventh new hero to be added to the game after launch.
Echo is a DPS hero that was made to be flexible in many different compositions and situations. One of her main points of interest for players is her ability to replicate other characters in the match and have complete access to their movesets. However, there are many aspects of her vanilla moveset that allow her to change the tides of most battles if used correctly.
Glide
Glide is Echo's passive ability. It functions similarly to Mercy's passive ability, Angelic Descent, except that Echo's Glide makes her fall at 4 meters per second with the inclusion of her horizontal speed being raised by 50% while gliding. Meanwhile, Mercy's Angelic Descent makes her fall at 2 meters per second with no other affects.
Glide can be activated by holding the jump button while falling and lasts until the button is let go or Echo hits the ground.
Tri-Shot
Echo's main weapon in Overwatch is the Tri-Shot. It fires 3 pellets in a triangle pattern all at once with each pellet able to do 17 base damage each. This weapon is capable of headshots and fires at 75 meters per second.
Sticky Bombs
Sticky Bombs are a special ability that allow Echo to fire 6 bombs that stick to a surface and later detonate after a delay. These are capable of hurting Echo is she is too close. The explosions caused by these bombs have a radius of 2 meters. These bombs can be used to catch enemies off guard in tight spaces.
This ability has a cooldown of 6 seconds in-between uses.
Flight
What can be inferred by the name, Flight allows Echo to fly for a brief period of time. By pressing the button mapped to this ability, Echo will quickly dash forward before being able to freely fly for 3 seconds. Holding the jump button will make Echo fly straight up while holding the crouch button will make her slowly fall. While flying, Echo will move at 8 meters per second and the ability requires a cooldown of 6 seconds in between uses.
Focusing Beam
This ability is a beam attack with the maximum range of 20 meters that lasts for 2.5 seconds. While this attack can deal 50 damage per second on enemies normally, it will do 200 damage to enemies that have less than half health. This also includes built objects such as turrets and teleporters.
The Focusing Beam takes 8 seconds to cool down.
Duplicate
Echo's Ultimate Ability is Duplicate. This ability allows her to completely copy a targeted enemy hero including their skin, abilities, and ultimate ability. When being copied, the target cannot switch heroes until Echo returns to normal. Echo can only copy a target for 15 seconds so every second counts. However, to make up for this time, Echo charges her new ultimate gained from the target 6.5 times faster.
Tips From a Professional
During an interview with Gameinformer's Andrew Reiner, Overwatch League's Danteh for the Houston Outlaws gave out his own advice for using the omnic hero. As a DPS player for his team, he greatly enjoyed playing the new hero, citing her mobility and abilities.
Danteh recommended for players wanting to try out Echo to get used to changing play styles based on the composition of the other team. As Echo is very good at breaking shields, she should be used for that purpose if the other team is relying on heavy shield usage. Echo players should also stay in the sky less when the other team has characters capable of hit scan, as she can be shot out of the sky very easily.
In order to break shields, Echo players should use their Sticky Bombs as often as possible. After getting the shields down below half of their total health, Echo's Focusing Beam can be used with it dealing 200 points of damage to the shield to help quickly take it down. This strategy also works when taking down enemies themselves, as the goal is to get them to below half of their health so Echo can finish them off with her Focusing Beam.
For using Echo's ultimate, Danteh advises to pick any hero that has "good survivability and gets their Ult really fast". As Echo gets her new ultimate much faster than the original hero, having a new hero with a sudden ultimate can quickly change things up.
When working with other players Danteh points out that it becomes very hard to work with Lucio and Moira, as Echo works very well while airborne for the most part and those two have healing abilities that are more ground-based.
Overall, Echo should try to be mobile at all times and use as much cover as possible. Her abilities combo very well with each other and can lead to some very destructive plays in upcoming Overwatch matches.
Overwatch is available now for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Gameinformer
