Overwatch’s newest hero has been revealed, and interestingly enough she’s a character that some players may already be familiar with.
Brigitte (which you pronounce Bree-gee-tuh, so I’ve been completely flubbing it until now) is the daughter to Overwatch’s own turret-building defence hero Torbjörn, and is likewise the ‘squire’ to the humongous tank/knight Reinhardt. While she hasn’t been super prominent in the game up until this point, she did have an important supporting role in Reinhardt’s comic and made an appearance in the pretty explosive animated short ‘Honour and Glory.’ Why she looked so different from one to the other is a mystery for the ages, but more importantly she has decided to stop sitting on the sidelines and to jump into the fray to help protect her mentor and her father.
Notably, she will do this from a support role as she has a number of abilities to provide both healing and extra armour onto her allies. However, in an interesting twist, she does actually have some capabilities that are reminiscent of a tank: Her attacks are melee-based, much like her mentor’s, and her ability to knock opponents around and stun them are similar to crowd-control abilities that other tanks in the game have. To that end, it’s not unreasonable to say Brigitte is something of tank-healer hybrid: Her healing won’t be able to outshine more dedicated healers, and her abilities to protect her team from damage won’t be as impressive as most of the other tanks, but she can do a little of both for when the occasion calls for it.
A full list of her abilities can be found here, along with details about her backstory (although, apparently, there’s been some kind mix up with the written lore since her current profile states she’s the “youngest” of Torbjörn’s kids, despite the majority of other sources claiming the opposite). She’s currently live on the game’s PTR and will likely be arriving in the main game somewhere between two to four weeks from now, if experiences with previous heroes are any indication.