After a few days of hints and some pretty damning leaks yesterday, Blizzard and the Overwatch team have unveiled their newest addition to the roster of heroes. Hailing from Sweden and filed under the support role is Brigitte Lindholm, daughter of Torbjörn and goddaughter of Reinhardt.
Prior to the reveal, the development team touted their newest creation as something that would be “meta-defining,” and it looks like they’ve actually made good on their promise. The most dominant strategy in Overwatch at the moment is “dive,” built around high-mobility characters that can quickly descend onto a target and eliminate it before the enemy can counter. Brigitte’s kit may not be as unique as some of the other heroes, but the way in which the elements synergize with other heroes makes her one of the strongest anti-dive hero picks available.
Brigitte falls into the support category, but also sports the type of utility you might find in a tank. Her default attack is her Rocket Flail, a melee weapon with both decent range and spread that lets her hit diving enemies with ease. She also comes outfitted with a mini-Reinhardt shield, though it has less than a third of the HP and only covers her character model.
As for abilities, she can send out the head of her flail to attack a single enemy and apply some heavy knockback, heal a single target (and apply temporary armor if she heals them above max HP), and perform a shield bash that will stun an enemy and cancel any channeled abilities. To round out the package, her ultimate heals and gives armor to all allies in range while increasing her own movement speed, and armor gained persists until it’s removed by enemy damage.
Brigitte is uniquely positioned to counter the dive meta: she can crowd control incoming enemies, protect herself and close allies, and mitigate an impressive amount of damage with her ultimate. It’s an ideal character for the job—the pros have even described something very similar when asked about what this hero might look like—and this figures to be one of the most popular additions to the cast in Overwatch‘s young history.