Hero 27: How Overwatch’s meta could shift with Brigitte

This week, Jeff Kaplan and the Overwatch team revealed the newest hero, Brigitte Lindholm. Expected to be a tank, she was revealed as a support, with tank tendencies. Essentially this makes her akin to Zarya and Roadhog, off-tanks that can produce massive amounts of damage. Brigitte will be a support, that can also protect/save her teammates. Blizzard is looking to disturb the meta by adding a whole new layer.

“I Will be Their Shield”

Source: Overwatch

Brigitte is the first support that is designed to be in the thick of the fight. While her repair pack ability offers a great deal of healing, as well as armor potential, her main healing output is through her passive. This ability, Inspire, offers her and surrounding allies to be healed every time she damages an enemy with her rocket flail or Whip Shot. This heals for about 80 points over the course of five seconds, making it a slower heal. This is close to Lucio’s range of healing, and means that Brigitte best heals her teammates when she’s doing damage. Additional damage will refresh the healing, but will not stack.

Her repair pack has a very long range, and offers up to 150 points of healing, with additional points over maximum health reaching up to 75 points of armor. This armor goes away after six seconds, the same length as repair pack’s cooldown. She also has a small barrier that protects her, and anything immediately behind her. It is able to withstand 600 points of damage before bursting, and enables her to use shield bash. Shield bash functions as a small burst of movement forward, and stuns enemies much the same as McCree’s Flashbang.

Lastly, her ultimate ability is Rally. Rally provides Brigitte with a movement speed burst, and in the same vein as Zenyatta’s transcendence, gives surrounding allies armor over its duration. It generates about 150 points of armor for all allies within 10 meters over its duration.

Brigitte Support Synergy

Source: Overwatch

Brigitte’s status as a hybrid support/tank has people dreaming of new compositions. With her strong ability to do damage and healing at the same time, she works great paired with other AOE healers. A team running her and Lucio can speed boost to aggressively attack points and teams, and catch them off guard. This also gives the team two over time heals, and adds extra damage. Her pairing potential with Moira is also huge, as the healing output of the both of them, plus the damage they can both provide, allows for strong, decisive attacks. Brigitte is also going to be a great support that can quickly assist any under-fire supports.

Her long range whip shot, as well as shield bash stun make her particularly frustrating for flankers. The long range and armor potential of her repair pack will also make killing squishy characters much harder to achieve.

Anti-Dive and Resurgent Tank Meta

Source: Overwatch

With her versatility and different abilities, Brigitte is the perfect addition to counter the popular dive meta. The first blow the developers gave the dive meta was the elimination of Mercy. Her nerfs severely reduced her ability to influence team-fights, and with only a single, channeled resurrection, the quick moving heroes make swift work of her. She still sees some play, but she is not as crucial to the make-up of a team as she once was.

Since the patches hit, triple and quad tank compositions are working more effectively, and are seen more. This is the perfect slot and comp for Brigitte to join. Most effective at close range, she can join the tanks and heal them as the other support, in a quad tank scenario probably a Moira, heals from slightly further away. Her ability to heal and armor teammates, as well as heal over time by outputting damage, will make her a valuable addition to tank heavy compositions. Not only this, but with a long range knock-back and short range stun, she has all the tools to punish dive.

When a Winston dives in, she can either knock him back mid-jump with whip shot, or wait till he lands and stun him for the team to collapse and finish him off. If a troublesome Tracer or Genji has been harassing the back-line, she can quickly shut them down. Genji is unable to reflect her stun, making her more effective than McCree at stopping him, but she still needs damage support.

She has a good deal of damage output for a support character, but she is still mainly a support. Her focus is on protecting and healing her allies. Players will also need smarts for when and on whom to use her abilities. Brigitte will not be a mainstay and become a mandatory pick. She has all the potential to be a strong character when used and built correctly around, however.

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Featured Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment