GameSpot's The Lobby: How does Overwatch's new character play?

[MUSIC] Now let's change gears, gonna put the Pokemon aside, because today a new Overwatch character was announced. Yes. Yes, rumored for months as some sort of sniper person, Ana was revealed today. And we are going to go through her abilities, we're gonna talk about the trailer, break it down, I got play her a little bit earlier today. And we're gonna go for it. But first, let's talk about initial impressions. Ana, [UNKNOWN] cool. What do you guys think? Any time you have another support class, as someone who means mercy, like support is my favorite way to play. And giving you another option to be a healer, and a healer in a really I think unique way like I think it's a really exciting it seems much more difficult but, I'm kind of excited by the challenge of cuz I'm not a great damage dealing sniper but to be able be a healing sniper like I think that seems like a lot of fun. I was just playing on a public test realm right now and it was like a 7,000 person queue to get in. It only took me like half an hour. And all the matches are all 5 [UNKNOWN] versus 5 [UNKNOWN]. I was gonna say yes On the two matches I played just before coming in here, my team was all Annas, and the other team was actually taking it seriously.>> And they were handing it to you.>> Yes. They were just handing it to us. Right. And it did not feel like it was supposed to be that way. Like I would assume everyone, right now, because it has just come out, just want to try it out. Just want to try out Anna. But no, those guys were not. What I like about her is that her healing. Shots and her damaging shots are basically the same thing. You don't have to switch weapons. You don't have to go into an all fire mode. Yeah. So, I'm sorta like you. I'm not a great sniper. But I think if you're shooting and you happen to accidentally shoot one of your teammates, it's still a benefit. You don't always need to try go for that super accurate shot. At an opponent. If you're in there and you're in the fray you can sort of do it. But have you played it yet Chris? Yes so Kay and I were just live streaming it earlier and so I got to play I was on it a bunch. It's an interesting temptation to get your head around because you're a sniper but Everyone is a target, not just the enemies. Yeah. Obviously your eyes are going to look to the red outline if you want to be doing damage. And the way she does damage is you know the shot hits and there is a little bit of damage over time. So it's like the main hit They get those little ticks that indicate you're doing some sort of sustained damage. Is the [UNKNOWN] also healing over time? Yes, the healing shots are the same way, you hit your ally and you'll heal, and then heal a little bit more, and then that's it. But training yourself to look for your allies and to try to shoot them, and maybe even shoot them first is What took me some adjustment. And will probably only take a few matches for you to do it. But it's a strange sensation. You're targeting equally with the same ability allies and enemies. With Zenyatta for example. You're shooting at enemies, but you're also discord and harmony. You're targeting both like. This switching your mindset between targets was really interesting, and pretty cool. I know it's early days but do you feel you have to be closer to the action playing Anna than you would be with another sniper [UNKNOWN]? Well, when you're playing five Annas, someone needs to push the [UNKNOWN] [LAUGH]. But I do think that You don't, you do have to be a little closer. Her mobility, she does not have a mobility move. No, yes. Which seems really weird for a sniper. There's no clamber like Honzo. There's no grapple like Widowmaker. So she's got to walk up the stairs to the balcony like anybody else, or have May give her a boost on the wall. So you do, I do feel like I tend to be with the team a little more. Yeah. That's also because I mean quite frankly it's easier to blast your teammates with a healing burst when they're pretty close to you. And it seems like our abilities enforce you to be a bit closer, like her sleep dart and that grenade that she throws as well. So let's talk about the grenade. Yeah, this is, she throws it in a fairly straight line and it covers quite a bit of distance, so it's not, You know there's not as much arc on it. It's something that you can directly project onto someone from a while away. It almost feels like pharah's sort of like move back burst attack thing. That grenade bursts into an area effect. If an enemy's caught in it which is quite small right. It's pretty small you usually want to go for a direct hit and the effect on an enemy is They get this like purple outline around their health bar and they cannot be healed. Any healing to them stops. So you see in the trailer, it interrupts a road hog. You know if a [UNKNOWN] around, they're not getting healed. Also does a little bit of damage over time. Which, you know, while if it's on someone like a Diva, it's not really gonna move the needle much. But if you have like landed a shot. Or two or on a support or someone of lower health and you tag them with that grenade. You can kill them outright. So that grenade is an area effect? Yeah it has to be in an area. It doesn't have to hit necessarily. Like I can hit the ground in front of you. And it'll do an area. But it will only affect one character or everyone within that radius? I think that it will affect, it will affect everyone within that radius. So it will That enemy is not allowed to like. Mm-hm. Because it also does healing. Not only will it heal your allies but it will also temporarily increase any healing that's being done to them. So it definitely helps to increase ally survivability on a push. Also your own survivability if you are running away you can kind of use it like Torbeons armor. When you throw that down in a panic to like, re-up yourself. So those two, the grenade and the gun, work both on allies and enemies. And then, as you mentioned Randy, the sweep dart which is a tricky one because It knocks you out. And you watch them fall on their back, and actually, I think we're going to try to get together a compilation of sleeping heroes, because Zenyatta for example, when he's sleeping his legs are just all the way out. He's sprawled out on the ground. And D.Va, when you put her to sleep You just put her back to sleep. And so, she's inside the meg. Super frustrated that it won't move, making this real pouty face at jamming on the controls. But this is not like Reinhardt's Earthshatter, which knocks you down for a set amount of time. If you put someone to sleep and then you shoot them they wake up immediately. Yeah that's what I couldn't figure out in my two games. Because it seemed like sometimes they'd stay down for a while. Sometimes they'd get up straight away and I didn't know whether it was a time thing or a damage thing but is it just as soon as you get Hit? Yes, you wake up. Doesn't matter the damage. Doesn't matter what the damage, you could go over and punch them in the face for a poultry amount of damage to wake them up which is kind of a funny troll move now that I think about it. [LAUGH]. So it's more an escape maneuver as suppose to offense Defensive manuever then, right? It is. It's an escape manuever. It's also a shut down the alt manuever. I put a reaper to sleep while he was death blossoming. Cool. But there's a caveat there, cuz there's, Tae put a Genji to sleep who has just activated his dragon blade. When [UNKNOWN] woke up the dragon blade was in full effect. Okay. So that meter was on pause. So you can't really burn someone's alt off in that way. But it's also great for holding someone off on a charge. Like, say a tank is coming into support, or a healer or something, That is a great way to sort of crowd control.>> Um.>> And finally, her alt.>>Hm. And this is the one that has the potential, I think, to do a lot of weird combos. Because. So what you do is, once it's available, all your allies you see will have a Q over them. Like Zarya's projected barrier, you don't have to aim it at someone specifically, you just have to tap the button when the reticule is over them, and it charges, it increases the damage they do, decreases the damage they take, and increases their movement speed. Yeah. So you can imagine what that does to a Rhino Heart charging onto a point, right. And they show that in the trailer. Think about what that does for a May. May all of a sudden taking a lot of damage no problem. spraying everybody moving around real quick. She can like, it really increased how disruptive she can be because as we all know. Getting hosed by a May is a very unpleasant experience. Yeah. Now imagine she's like scurrying around at juiced up speeds doing that to your whole team. Maybe she's not freezing anyone in particular, but she's still reeking havoc. So who else would be good on that? We saw a Zinyata do that. And all of a Zinyata who was recently buffed to have a little bit more shields. Is a little tougher and he's slinging these, you know the discord orbs and shredding people up. In the two matches I played, it was mainly using the rhineheart. You could immediately see this rhineheart was just going nuts. He was just going right in the middle of everything and just trying to Go crazy. Once he did charge straight off a cliff, so that was fun. [LAUGH] And also Winston as well, right? Mm-hm. I mean a super charged Winston using his [UNKNOWN], moving around at an even faster speed I think would be super dangerous as well. But yeah, you're right, it opens up a lot of Possibilities for, like those huge combos. And even if, and when they're charging you can still be shooting them. You're still taking damage but when you're shooting them then your healing them each time. You can hit them with your grenade to keep them healed. So, it feels like there's more of a, like a chaining effect possible. Which is kind of just unique from other heroes to the way they support. So definitely feel distinct, and- She's a very unique character. Yeah. I like her move set, so, and I think it'll take a while for people to actually figure out the best use case for her. But right now, I don't think I'd be using her. Though just because, I think she's still a fairly high skilled character. Definitely. In order to you to utilized properly. So I know you're a healer. She's still fairly new in the game and like you guys haven't had the chance to put together a real team because everybody just wants to try her out. Do you feel like her abilities might be a little overpowered? Like reading about it, it seems like whoa that's a lot. Everybody says that though. And like every time a new character is introduced to a game like this, people will automatically sort of chime off, "This character is so OP." And it takes the community a little while to actually figure out all the best strategies. All the combat. The counters. I mean, a reaper got up next to me. [LAUGH] I mean, it's over, it's not a problem. I do think the squishy support of her character will help counter balance that.>>Less mobility. Yeah, the mobility seems like it really keeps her in check. If you folks want to try Anna out for yourself, and you've got Overwatch on the PC all you gotta do is go change your region setting in battle met to PTR. You'll see it right there and then do what the install prompts you to do and you'll be able to get in there, try out the new hero for yourself and see what you think. Be sure to let us know on Twitter and in the comments what you think of Ana, new Overwatch hero.