Overwatch fans got a sneak peek of the game’s new hero, Echo, today from the game’s director Jeff Kaplan and various popular pros and streamers. Among them was Jeff “Emongg” Anderson, who quickly realized that when Echo uses her ultimate ability, Duplicate, hero select is disabled for whoever she copied until her ultimate runs out.
During a PTR match with other popular streamers, like TimTheTatman and former Dallas Fuel pro Seagull, Emongg died while the enemy team’s Echo had copied his hero. As he waited to revive at his team’s spawn, he saw that he couldn’t choose any other heroes on the hero select screen.
Basically, the hero that Echo copies must stay active while she uses their abilities and ultimate. This means that the player on the opposing side must wait until she returns back to her original form before they can switch.
That’s a big design limit, even though it should only affect players for a few seconds. Those few seconds, however, can make all the difference when defending a point or making a last-ditch defense to win a series.
Some people in the Overwatch community are saying that this should be changed, but this is an intended effect of Echo’s ultimate, according to the game. Players will just need to get used to waiting a bit longer for their champions or will simply have to avoid getting picked as a duplication target.
