With Overwatch’s newest hero Echo now finally on the live servers, everyone from PC gurus to console players who are getting their first look, will be wanting to try her out. Here’s five tips that can make your Echo gameplay stand out and dominate the opposition.
The first thing you need to be aware of with Echo is that you are essentially a glass cannon. While you can dish out large amounts of damage, you’re still only 200 HP. Even though you can hit like a truck, you can die very quickly if you get focused down.
Because of this, our first tip is very simple:
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Mercy pairs extremely well with Echo
Just like with Pharah, having a pocket Mercy to heal and damage boost you can enable even an average player, so just imagine how dangerous you can be if you can hit your shots.
Plus, with the damage boost, Echo’s Sticky Bombs have the ability to essentially one-shot squishy targets. Normally if all the bombs stick to a target, they’ll do approximately 180 damage upon explosion because of the initial impact damage.
With Mercy damage boosting for an extra 30%, those Sticky Bombs will kill most heroes in the game.
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Additionally, if the enemy is clustered, as long as one other bomb sticks to another 200 HP enemy, Echo can eliminate them too thanks to the splash damage.
Focusing Beam can melt barriers
One of Echo’s best abilities comes in the form of Focusing Beam. While it only lasts 2.5 seconds, when a target or barrier is under half health, it goes 200 damage per second. This means that you can deal a whopping 500 damage to an enemy barrier if it’s half health.
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If the barrier or target is above half, the attack is far less powerful, only dealing 50 damage per second.
Cracks in shields only begin to appear once a barrier is under half, so be mindful of this when deciding to use Focusing Beam.
This can be important to remember when your team is investing Ultimates such as McCree’s Deadeye and don’t want barriers to be blocking the damage.
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When to use Duplicate
Duplicate is one of the most powerful abilities in the game and knowing when to use it can pay dividends.
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A good general tip is to use your Sticky Bombs or other abilities prior to activating the Ultimate just to get a bit more damage.
Additionally, Duplicate can act as an escape. Just like Doomfist’s Meteor Strike, you can go in as Echo, do some damage, and before you die, use Duplicate to become an enemy player, regain health and stay in the fight.
At the same time, it helps immensely to know what enemy hero you want to transform into. If your goal is to transform into an enemy Reinhardt, timing Duplicate will be crucial, because of the enemy Reinhardt dies, you’ll miss your opportunity.
Because of how fast your Ultimate charges when using Duplicate, it may be best to use the ability near the beginning of a fight where you can maximize the value in those fifteen seconds.
Which enemies are best to Duplicate?
Considering how fast your Ultimate charges when using Duplicate, there are a couple of things to consider: what does your team need, what’s your win condition and do you have the ability with whoever you Duplicate to get that value?
So far, Reinhardt is probably the best hero in the game to Duplicate because of how fast Earthshatter charges and the value you can get with that move. Additionally, Reinhardt’s charge can be used a bit more carelessly because dying as who you Duplicate will restore Echo to her normal form.
Aside from Reinhardt, Junkrat and Tracer all have extremely fast-charging Ultimates and you could probably get multiple Tires and Pulse Bombs during your time playing as them.
While it’s unlikely you will get multiple EMPs, Molten Cores and Primal Rages, Sombra, Torbjorn and Winston will also be able to get their high-impact Ultimates with ease, so they would be strong picks too.
Know when to swap
While Echo is very powerful, she’s not without her counters. If the enemy team is running a McCree, Widowmaker or Sombra and is constantly shutting you down, you’ll help your team out way more by switching off Echo.
Just like with any hero in Overwatch, be mindful about what you’re up against and act accordingly.
The last thing you want to be doing is dying constantly and not get any value. There will be games where you absolutely dominate with Echo, but there will be games where the difference between victory and defeat is you changing heroes.
There you have it – our top five tips for playing Echo. Now, what are you waiting for? Go queue up!
