Overwatch 2: Echo’s Role in The Game

We take a look at how Echo will fare when Overwatch 2 drops in October.

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There are all sorts of interesting DPS heroes in Overwatch. Some are swift, and others do tons of damage, but you can also come across names that offer both. Echo is definitely a hero that falls in this category.

Due to her ability to fly and burs targets with little to no effort, Echo is one of the best DPS heroes in the game. The hero can easily outdamage almost every DPS in the game, including some of the most popular options. However, the fact that Echo is hard to play makes her one of the rarer picks in OW.

Despite that, it seems like Blizzard thinks the hero is too strong right now because it will nerf him in Overwatch 2. So unless the company changes something in the future, Echo will go through two big changes. The first one is related to the hero’s Focusing Beam, which will now deal 175 maximum DPS. As you probably know, this ability used to inflict up to 200 damage.

The second important change to Echo is related to the hero’s ultimate. Instead of copying a given hero and having access to all of the stats, the copies will have a maximum HP of 300, even if the hero has more. 

These two changes are definitely not that good and will have a negative effect on the hero’s strength. However, we believe that Echo will continue to play an important role, so let’s learn more about the hero.

The Damage Dealer

Unsurprisingly, Echo will continue to be one of the main damage dealers for her team in Overwatch 2. Even though we will only have five heroes in a given team, we are confident that Echo will continue to play a crucial role.

Nowadays, the hero is used as a counter to some of the most annoying DPS in the game. However, Echo can also work in all setups, especially when Mercy is one of the healers. We won’t expect to see that combo often because most teams will probably have only one healer. Yet, once the double tank setups become popular, we can expect Mercy and Echo to become popular again.

Generally speaking, Echo can do well in conjunction with DPS heroes that deal a lot of damage or have high bursts. For example, the hero was an excellent pick alongside things like Pharah because she used her beam to finish the targets that received a lot of damage from the rockets.

Echo’s ability to finish her targets has been nerfed a bit, but this doesn’t mean it is not good. On the contrary, the hero has all of the tools she needs to kill every low HP hero in Overwatch 2.

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Echo and tanks

One of the problems that many Echo players had to deal with is facing the double shield tanks. Even though the hero’s right-click ability allows it to rip through shields pretty fast, Echo is not that powerful. The hero can deal a lot of burst damage, but it is usually not enough to destroy a shield. Hence, the enemy team’s DPS heroes can quickly kill her after that.

With that being said, it seems like Echo will have an easier time against some tanks in Overwatch 2 thanks to the changes. As you know, heroes like Rein have weaker shields and focus more on having raw HP and Armor instead of blocking damage. This is great news for heroes like Echo and Hanzo because they can do much more damage than before.

Aside from the “weaker” shields, Echo’s ability to fly allows the hero to easily bypass some of the chokepoints and surprise her enemies from behind. Even if she fails to kill a couple of heroes, the fact that she flanks mean that the enemy team needs to keep attention to a couple of angles. Needless to say, this should be enough for her team to take advantage of the situation and score a kill.

The potential double DPS combos with Echo

Echo is a hero that can work with a lot of DPS, depending on the situation. Sure, she is not perfect with names like Widowmaker because the team won’t be able to take 6v6 (5v5 in case of OW2) fights. Fortunately, this is pretty much the only exception.

If we put aside the deadly Sniper, Echo can be a good pick alongside heroes that require the enemies to focus on them. One of the best examples is Junkrat because this hero deals tons of damage simply by spamming his skills. Since the enemy team has to dodge his granted, Echo can use this to her advantage and catch them off guard.

As mentioned earlier, Pharah is also a pretty good option to use in conjunction with Echo. Even though it may seem like both heroes have a similar role because they can fly, this is not the case. In reality, Pharah is an AoE damage dealer whose job is to break shields and try to one-shot squishies. As for Echo, this hero excels at killing lower HP targets and flanking her opponents.

Speaking of flanking, we also have to mention Tracer and the new Sombra. Overwatch 2 will add a few changes to these two heroes, but they shouldn’t hurt them. Hence, we can expect to see them even more often in the future, especially in combination with aggressive DPS that can fly, such as Echo.

Final Verdict

Echo is definitely an interesting hero, to say the least. She is not the tankiest nor the fastest DPS in the game, but her ability to fly and kill low-HP unit make her the go-to option for many people. 

Although the nerfs will have a negative impact on Echo’s win rate, they shouldn’t be that harsh to remove the hero from the meta. Of course, we are yet to see what will happen once Overwatch 2 becomes available. There are just a couple of months until we can play, so keep an eye on our site for more information.