Get able to unleash your interior demon when Overwatch Season 4 begins on Aug. 11. The Blizzard sport’s subsequent chapter brings new tank hero D.Mon, who comes from the identical robotic suit-piloting Meka Squad as launch hero D.Va however brings a special type of gameplay to the hero shooter’s tank roster.
Yuna “D.Mon” Lee enters the roster as the primary new tank hero since Domina back in February. The mech pilot has been within the lore since 2018, when she appeared in D.Va’s Shooting Star cinematic, and the group has been begging for extra mech heroes ever since.
And right here she is: the brand new chief of South Korea’s Meka Squad. D.Mon is an “untouchable, cool ice queen,” in response to Eleni Rivera, a story designer for Overwatch. That’s an attention-grabbing distinction to the Meka workforce’s former chief, as talked about within the lore, who was a lot louder and extra in your face. D.Va was a bit extra of an individualistic chief, doing her personal factor, Rivera stated, whereas D.Mon is far more about being a cool, collected workforce participant.
In a gaggle media interview, Lead Hero Producer Kenny Hudson stated, “The story of this hero has been nice consideration to element, and satisfaction within the craft.” Very like the remainder of the group, the Overwatch workforce has had excessive expectations for this hero for years.
Updates to maps, battle passes and in-combat UI
D.Mon is the headliner for season 4, however the roster isn’t the one factor altering. A handful of maps have been up to date, together with management map Busan, the house base of D.Mon and her Meka Squad. Hybrid maps Eichenwalde and Paraiso have additionally been refreshed for the brand new season.
Battle passes are getting a revamp, with a brand new interface and the power for premium cross homeowners to swap legendary rewards for different choices from a pool of seasonal replacements. At midseason, the sport may even deliver again some earlier battle passes that you could unlock in the event you missed them, or proceed your progress if the season ended earlier than you earned the rarest participant titles.
The standard kill feed, which exhibits when gamers are eradicated and by whom, is being reworked right into a system referred to as In Fight Suggestions. Adjustments embody a brand new workforce standing indicator, making it simpler to establish while you’re working in 1v5 and when allies will respawn.
The brand new system additionally provides a “shield” stat for tanks, exhibiting after they’ve mitigated in any other case deadly injury to an ally, and new visible results for therapeutic and well being bars to extra clearly establish all the things taking place together with your well being at any given time. The exercise feed may even present injury contributions to eliminations, making it clearer when somebody simply swooped in to safe the ultimate blow after you probably did 99% of the work.
Whereas numbers by no means inform the complete story in a sport as advanced as this, and I’m positive some folks will use the brand new stats to flame teammates, I like that the devs are looking for methods to raised seize the number of contributions that occur throughout a sport of Overwatch. I’m hopeful that the brand new workforce standing indicator will make fights really feel extra constant by serving to folks group as much as take teamfights.
D.Mon design and gameplay
The large story of season 4 is the brand new tank hero, D.Mon.
In distinction to D.Va’s design, which fulfilled a extra ballistics-based mech fantasy, D.Mon brings agile, sci-fi sword and defend gameplay to Overwatch. Referencing the recognition of the sport’s iconic, hammer-swinging tank, Reinhardt, Hudson stated the workforce needed to increase the melee tank roster, aiming to “give these gamers who prefer to play up-close and private with their tanks extra to select from.”
D.Mon’s main fireplace swings a plasma sword in an arc in entrance of her, whereas her secondary fireplace pulls up a defend. Whereas the defend is up, you possibly can activate main fireplace to lunge ahead with the sword, dealing injury and knocking again enemies. She additionally has a Fusion Repeater potential that offers her a number of seconds of ranged injury and a resource-based horizontal sprint potential that reinforces her rapidly alongside the bottom.
Hudson stated D.Mon’s design was partly impressed by the workforce desirous to see what occurs when you may have a melee tank with extra mobility. Because of this, she’s capable of sprint round whereas holding up her defend, giving her a definite really feel from different melee tanks, who typically lack motion skills.
Her final potential, referred to as Restrict Break, expenses up the plasma sword earlier than swinging by means of a large arc. The maneuver grants D.Mon overhealth, and any enemies hit take injury from the swipe whereas additionally receiving elevated injury from different assaults for a quick length.
Like D.Va, D.Mon switches to pilot kind if her mech is destroyed and might construct up final cost to name down a brand new mech. When she does, close by enemies take injury and are knocked again.
Hudson stated that, primarily based on inner playtests, D.Mon may be very efficient at taking house and works nicely in rush compositions that function pace boosts from helps like Lúcio or Juno. Her final potential additionally pairs nicely with different injury hero ultimates, because of the injury amplification aspect, Hudson stated, whereas noting that D.Mon needed to play closely round cooldowns — particularly the gasoline for her sprint.
Brainstorming D.Mon workforce compositions
I’m to see the place D.Mon suits into the general roster. Whereas her design has echoes of Reinhardt, D.Mon seems to be considerably extra maneuverable, although she lacks Reinhardt’s uncooked melee injury and bigger team-friendly defend. And in contrast to her Meka Squad teammate, D.Mon can’t increase into the air to rapidly declare excessive floor or circumvent shields. As a substitute, she’ll need to depend on the short bursts of horizontal motion to circle round (or perhaps plow straight by means of) enemy groups.
Her sprint potential and melee weapon must be a troublesome matchup for tanks like Domina and Sigma, who depend on boundaries and distance to remain protected. I additionally think about her being efficient in opposition to low-mobility heroes like Cassidy, Ana and Illari, who may not be capable to escape a D.Mon dashing in with shields up.
A workforce of D.Mon together with flankers, like Shion, Tracer or Genji, and a backline of healers, with Juno, Ana or Kiriko, sounds good to me on paper. The flankers can match D.Mon’s engagement, particularly with the assistance of a speed-boosting Hyper Ring, and will help the tank burst down key targets. The same workforce with one flanker subbed out in favor of somebody like Cassidy or Sojourn might also work, with D.Mon and the flanker inflicting havoc and creating house for the ranged injury participant to do their factor.
On the similar time, I think about D.Mon having bother in opposition to an enemy workforce stuffed with ranged injury heroes that may keep their distance, particularly on maps with excessive floor, or in opposition to extremely cellular groups which are arduous to pin down. D.Mon looks as if she would wrestle in opposition to a Winston or Wrecking Ball with Tracer, Echo or Pharah dealing injury from afar and intensely cellular helps like Kiriko, Lúcio and Jetpack Cat, all of whom could be arduous to pin down with a plasma sword.
D.Mon would possibly pull me again into enjoying tank
Thrilling new tank heroes are the most effective factor Overwatch can add to the sport. The tank position is the least fashionable as a result of it’s the one that the majority challenges your map data, macro technique and — primarily based on private expertise — general psychological fortitude. Most gamers, me included, typically discover it extra enjoyable to only run round taking pictures issues or therapeutic teammates.
With a great workforce, although, enjoying tank can really feel electrifying. The glory of being the workforce chief, drawing enemy consideration and clearing house on your teammates is a novel kind of thrill in Overwatch. Sadly, it’s too typically undermined by any mixture of uncoordinated teammates, enemy counter-swapping or simply typically having each single useful resource and crowd-control potential thrown in your course.
Junker Queen has develop into my go-to tank as a result of she’s somewhat extra self-sufficient, because of her injury skills’ bonus self-healing — and since she is determined by good use of these skills. A Junker Queen who lands each knife and axe swing will dominate a foyer; one who misses most of them will instantly crumple.
I’m hoping that D.Mon affords an analogous expertise. Her Fusion Repeater can get bonus injury on a head shot, rewarding exact purpose, and I’m hoping that her sprint potential helps sufficient ability expression to reward practiced and inventive makes use of. I can already envision the fun of turning a shedding combat with a well-timed Restrict Break, maintaining D.Mon alive with sudden overhealth whereas serving to your workforce reduce by means of the remaining enemies.
I’ve been enjoying extra tank for the previous week simply in anticipation of D.Mon’s launch, and seeing her package intimately has solely made me extra enthusiastic about yeeting myself into the frontlines. That will or could not final over the course of the season, nevertheless it’s the primary time since Junker Queen launched in 2022 that I’ve been enthusiastic about enjoying tank, and that itself is an achievement.
See you on the battlefield.
