I swear, for all Blizzard’s faults, Overwatch heroes are something they’re consistently good at. They always have so much identity and presence. So let’s take a look at the newcomer, through his origin story, shall we?
I do really like the idea of another support + assault hybrid. Like Brigitte, but with more range. Usually Overwatch characters can be delineated between three aspects: damage, mobility and sustainability. You can have two of those, but you’re going to be poor at the third, which is how you’re supposed to approach the given hero and it looks like Baptiste is going to be good at dealing damage and sustain. It probably means that much like Ana, he’ll be very vulnerable when caught off guard in close range by say, Reaper.
And his weapon is certainly interesting. Some are speculating that it’s a grenade launcher of sorts, which would be neat. If Baptiste can switch between two types of grenades, ones that can heal allies and ones that damage opponents, that would be a very interesting combination. Being able to lob grenades over obstacles to reach team mates who are ganged up on is a delicious prospect and something no other support hero is really capable of doing (that’s the major pain of playing support, not reaching your dying team in time).
However, it also resembles the syringe gun Medic from Team Fortress 2 uses, so maybe those aren’t grenades, but syringes that can heal team members and damage enemies, like Ana’s biotic rifle? Maybe. Hard to say for now, and says nothing about his ‘shift’ and ‘e’ abilities, not to even mention his ultimate (I hope it’s purely offensive, that would be a nice change of pace for supports).
Either way, for someone like me who loves playing support, but also likes the classic Soldier 76 playstyle of run & gun, this is very exciting. No news on when he’s going to enter test servers, but hopefully soon.