Charge target ult, copied Echo dies, but she’s able to contribute far more since her toolkit is even more loaded than Junkrat kit. Not even Junkrat can burst a tank down as fast as Echo can, and her bombs stick.
Echo can use her ult from a safe position by simply flying, then drifting as she can pick her copy target before ulting. And mentioned as well, she has i-frames when she ults. The copy range isn’t exactly short either.
Junkrat tire is loud, has a long startup, can be killed (Both him and tire.), and if he uses from a safe distance, you can actually hear it and prepare for it. It’s also 100 hp, no abilities aside from self-destruct, can’t be healed, pocketed, bubbled and standing behind a barrier forces it to come close.
Echo ult however, can turn a fight from a 2/2/2, into triple tanks, with all of their ults, abilities and barrier on the use.
Functionally, Duplication is exactly like D.va’s mech. That’s about all they can do with the current engine limits. If you don’t understand, there’s not much more I can do to explain it.
But with the way the game is optimized; Echo is loaded out of the game and temporarily replaced with an existing enemy hero. When that duration expires or is destroyed, Echo is loaded back into the game as fresh new character. Nearly exactly how D.v works.
Echo needs that survivability because she needs to play more boldly than the character she copied in order to actually get value from her ultimate. If she plays as normal, then Echo may as well have not used her ultimate.
Also, it’s not too hard to pin down an Echo that finds herself in a bad spot while using her ultimate, so even despite having that bonus she still may not even make it out of their unless she accomplished what she set out to do.
I think one of the problems is it’s sometimes used for her to escape death (like DF). But she doesn’t escape, she does whatever she wants and then comes back to full health, while potentially getting two ults super fast and gaining two extra lives.
She just flies off instantly
Just seems like she has the best of everything in this situation with no real downsides.
Well, just flying around doesn’t automatically mean she’s gonna get away
And again, the downside of her ultimate is that if she can’t build ults during hers, then it’s basically useless. This means she is required to play more recklessly than normal and can lead to Echo accomplishing nothing and dying.
This is like people ignoring Mercy (or Pharmercy) because they’ve already come to terms with the idea that they can never kill her
Then they hop on the forums demanding Mercy nerfs
The animation of Echo swapping in/out of heroes looks and feels clunky. That feels more like a tech issue rather than balance, though (like Symmetra/Reaper’s teleport)
Outside of that, I think the “extra life” is hardly an issue. Echo’s ult leaves a ton of room for error but it is also very flexible; players should feel like they have a chance to make the most out of a hero rather than hardlocking tanks because anyone else would melt in the game (especially since Echo is more mobile than most)
Most likely, the devs tried and saw that leaving her to die during her ult or retain the same HP only highlighted how clunky the transformation mechanic truly is. (They have a hard enough time working with DVA’s meka/pilot forms; I think that “call mech/transform” animation helps them swap hero models/kits seamlessly and in a way that gives other players time to adjust or react.)
She’s locked in place during the transformation and is easy to react to
She has to build up a second ult charge to get value from her ult
The enemy team can anticipate her plan since Ultimate abilities have too much value in this game
Most heroes depend on healing to survive and Echo transforming mid fight while flying out in the backlines means that her supports need to suddenly keep her alive and adjust to whatever hero she decided was worth swapping to. Her swapping in with reduced health just seems like Echo wasting an ult
Maybe if Echo’s transformation was faster/had no “root” then the “she doesn’t recover health afterwards” idea could be interesting. I think the game has bigger problems but it would probably reward skilled Echos and punish bad ones, at least haha
I was in a game the other day when she got hammer down, then smashed everyone on the floor, then when they got back up, just hammered down again lol. There was nothing we could ‘do’ as a team to prevent that.
Because that’s not how they made her. She’s a pretty low health target as is, if your team is focusing her (as they should be when she duplicates) she should go down relatively fast, and as long as they’re following up she’s gonna have a hard time escaping
It is according to people that have personally tested it. Rein’s ult lasts 2.5 seconds (knockdown) and her ult lasts 15 seconds, you really think this isn’t true? I’d get the replay if it wasn’t a couple weeks ago.
