Overwatch March 20 PTR update patch notes: Echo nerfed already & more

Bill Cooney

Echo was fully introduced to Overwatch players on March 19 and already developers have rolled out an update for the new hero on the PTR. Here are the full patch notes for the March 20 update.

It didn’t take more than a few hours for players to figure out some of the tricks to use with Echo and her kit, particularly her Flight ability.

Echo’s Flight is basically like Mercy’s Guardian Angel and Pharah’s Boost put together, but players discovered a way to maintain the ability’s original speed boost the entire time the hero’s in the air, greatly increasing her movement speed.

As you can see in the video above, the tech is super easy to pull off, basically all you had to do was cancel her Flight ability while the speed boost was active and jump at the same time.

This allowed Echo to cruise across the map quicker than anyone else and basically made her the most mobile hero in all of Overwatch overnight.

Echo already comes equipped with a powerful DPS kit, so combine that with a movement ability that was basically OP as all hell at release, and you can see why developers didn’t waste any time getting an update out to fix it.

https://twitter.com/Liberot99/status/1240835294062161922?s=20

So while you’ll still have to keep an eye out for Echo along with Pharah floating around in the air now, we won’t have to worry about her diving our team’s backline right out of the gate.

Developers have also added an option called “hold to fly” that will let players hold down Echo’s flight ability to keep it firing, similar to Pharah’s Boost.

Some players had also reported that Echo was able to target heroes and copy them using her Duplicate ultimate through shields, but devs have removed it according to the patch notes.

Echo can no longer strafe your team flying at full speed through the air after the update.

Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan did say Echo would be on the PTR longer than most heroes, but at least developers don’t seem to be wasting any time rolling out updates for her.

The full Overwatch PTR patch notes for March 20 are listed below:


Overwatch PTR Patch Notes – March 20, 2020

Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.

HERO UPDATES

Echo

Flight

  • Flight speed will now return to regular movement speed if canceled during the initial speed burst
  • Added the option for Hold for Flight within Echo’s hero options

BUG FIXES

General

  • Fixed a variety of crashes

Heroes

Tracer

  • Fixed a bug where Blink would sometimes not move at all

Echo

  • Fixed a bug where Duplicate could target enemies through barriers