Yesterday, on February 28th, the release of the new Overwatch hero Brigitte took place on the PTR. The daughter of the Swedish engineer Torbjörn is a support character. And she seems to really shake up the meta.
Since yesterday, Brigitte has been playable on the Overwatch PTR. The PTR (for Public Test Region) is the testing area for all new patches in Overwatch before they reach the live servers. Here players can test changes in advance and provide feedback to refine them.
The current PTR patch brings a new hero and thus a larger change. According to Jeff Kaplan, she is “exactly what Overwatch needs.” Many players and pros have concluded after testing: She could really change the meta significantly.
Brigitte, the enemy of Dives
The current meta is still dominated by dive compositions despite the nerfs to Mercy. These rely on fast, mobile heroes who lead a targeted and joint attack to split the opponents and eliminate individual targets.
Heroes like Winston, D.Va, and Tracer are best suited for this and are seen in most cases in these compositions. However, Brigitte has abilities that will make it difficult for them to remain effective. The streamer and former pro-gamer emongg has relevant scenes.
Brigitte will be Tracer’s new nemesis
Tracer players will likely have the hardest time against the new hero. Although she is a support, she deals significant damage and can even kill Tracer with just one combo.
She just needs to hit Tracer with her shield bash (hold right-click, then left-click) to follow up with a normal attack using the flail and a flail smash (Shift). The shield bash stuns Tracer long enough to kill her with the quick succession of attacks afterwards.
Winston gets trolled
Somewhat more challenging, yet equally effective and much funnier, is Brigitte’s counter to Winston. His strength in the dive composition lies in his ability to jump into enemies from a great distance and disrupt them while shielding himself with a barrier.
However, due to the long range of Brigitte’s flail smash, it is possible to send Winston back from the air to where he came from. This leaves the team without a tank in a crucial position, and the dive will likely not succeed.
The scourge of flankers
Similar to how she is against Tracer, Brigitte is strong against Genji and other flanking specialists. With her control abilities, which also come into play very quickly, it is difficult for flankers to bypass her effectively.
Even key dive tanks like D.Va fall victim to her flail smash just like Winston. They are deprived of the ability to split the enemy team and free up targets for their own team.
Her weakness is that she can do little against damage from a distance. When her team is attacked by heroes at medium or long range, she can barely heal them. She has to hit with her attacks to activate her healing or use a high cooldown ability. This, however, encourages the choice of other heroes as flankers against her.
Will Brigitte’s release shake up the meta?
As it currently looks, Brigitte will have a significant impact on the current meta gameplay. However, she is, similar to Symmetra, more of a “defensive” category hero and not a strong healer. This will make it difficult to place her.
Whether she will be implemented as she is currently playable on the PTR remains to be seen. It is quite possible that her damage will still be adjusted. Nonetheless, as things stand, she would be a factor that makes diving significantly more difficult.
If you want to see more interesting content about Overwatch, visit our Overwatch group on Facebook!
