As someone who’s played Overwatch from the very beginning and whose two favorite heroes are Reinhardt and D.Va, the new season four hero D.Mon feels like she was made for me.
Part melee hero with a shield, part mech pilot with maneuverability, D.Mon combines ideas from multiple heroes to create a new rush-down tank that’s also able to hold her own solo in five-vs-five, Overwatch devs told me in an interview earlier this week ahead of her full reveal.
Lead hero producer Kenny Hudson was among the Blizzard devs that spoke about the new tank for about an hour, detailing the hero’s kit, personality, and more after years of being teased in the lore. But the biggest takeaway so far, to me as a tank main, is that she seems like a hell of a lot of fun to play. And with the devs calling out Armored Core and Gundam as main inspirations behind her design and kit, it’s easy to see why I’m hyped for her launch as part of season four on Aug. 11.
Classic tank inspirations, but with some twists
Blizzard devs describe D.Mon as a “sword and board” hero, with a Plasma Sword on her mech’s right arm, a Fusion Repeater gun on her left arm that fires in a burst and then goes on a cooldown, and the ability to pull out a 650 HP shield similar (but smaller) to Reinhardt’s to defend herself and her team. While holding the shield, she can also use her Surging Strike ability to lunge and knock back foes.
She can get up close and personal to swing the sword (60 damage per hit at about a 5.5 meter range, so it’s a bit weaker than Reinhardt’s hammer swing, but slightly faster), while also using her movement ability to horizontally powerslide out of harm’s way and use the Fusion Repeater at a distance. Hudson showed the movement from a third-person perspective, and it’s wonderfully Armored Core-esque.
Just like her friend and MEKA teammate D.Va, D.Mon can de-mech to continue in pilot form (despite rumors to the contrary), keeping her in the fight after her mech is destroyed. But to set the two apart, she is able to use the Fusion Repeater broken off of the mech as a handheld gatling gun to try and farm her ultimate back up so she can re-mech in an utterly awesome animation that sees the mech’s limbs slam together around her as she suits up.
And when it’s time to turn the tide in a fight, her Limit Break ultimate has D.Mon charge up her Plasma Sword to slash it horizontally in front of her, dealing damage to enemies and de-buffing them similarly to Zenyatta’s Orb of Discord, increasing their damage taken. She also gets overhealth in the process.
A process and a balance
Hudson told me that D.Mon “can definitely hold her own in five-vs-five” as the solo tank, but there was a period in her development early on in play-testing where she was “kind of a nuisance,” but the key to balancing her came down to her fuel mechanic when using her powerslide-like movement.
“When she had too much fuel and stuff like that, she would hunt people down,” Hudson said. “She can take up space very well. Like, even though the sword does less damage than Rein, you still don’t want to get hit by it too often. Mechs have a unique crit region as well, so when players learn where that region is, it might be a little bit easier to hit her. But when she’s in your face, it’s really hard to focus where to shoot to take her down a little bit.”
I didn’t get to try D.Mon myself just yet, but Hudson showed off her kit on a video call, and the dash ability drains rather quickly and does have a short cooldown along with having to charge the meter back up in order to use it again, similar to D.Va’s Defense Matrix.
“I think you’ll find when you get your hands on her that you’re gonna have to pay attention to that fuel bar,” he said. “You may not have as much as it looks like.”
In the process of balancing and creating a hero that has some similar characteristics from other heroes in the game, Hudson said that striking the right chord was something that was at the forefront of the dev team’s minds throughout. And it’s an understandable concern as new heroes begin to “borrow” abilities from other existing ones in such a way.
“We ask ourselves, like, ‘how do we make this unique to this hero?'” Hudson said. “And it’s also the way they interact with each other. From how long they’re up, how you activate it, how it plays. So, if we look at Zenyatta’s Discord, it gives you a lot less extra damage than the ultimate for D.Mon would, and D.Mon only gets it on the ult.”
“The movement,” he continued, “how much movement you can use and when you can use it is very different than D.Va. Like, you press it on D.Va once, you can press again to cancel. With this, you have to press and hold. How the player interacts with it, how much fuel you have, even the Perks that give you more fuel when you do certain things that players will see later. It’s more from a place of, ‘how do we make this unique to the hero, without taking something away from the rest of the cast?'”
Hudson said D.Mon will work best in rush team compositions, combining with teamwork like Lucio’s speed boost to wreak havoc up close, and her Discord orb-like ultimate will be great to combo with other abilities, like Shion’s ultimate and “that will absolutely tear up a team.”
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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