Baptiste returns in Overwatch 2, and some welcome changes make him a much more interesting support character in this new iteration of Blizzard’s FPS game. Baptiste is the healing version of Soldier 76, capable of doing a little bit of everything, including keeping himself alive, but what makes him most useful is his biotic rifle. In addition to its potential to deal damage, choke healing grenades at long range.
Overview Baptiste
Baptiste is a hybrid attacker and support healer who wields a biotic rifle that also happens to fire healing grenades. Blizzard has greatly reduced his damage output compared to the original Overwatch, to the point where you can play Baptiste as a DPS character while waiting for his healing abilities to recharge. The launcher suffers from strong recoil, but benefits from fast reload times.
His basic healing ability creates a small regenerative field that heals a decent amount of health initially and then smaller amounts in the following seconds. An ally only needs to touch the field once to have the long-lasting effect, and as it boosts Baptiste’s speed for a while, you can quickly touch your entire team to help heal everyone. Equally valuable is his field immortality ability, which spawns a field that prevents anyone inside from dying. Enemies can target and damage the field, but it can help your allies get through a difficult encounter or at least distract them while they escape.
Baptiste Abilities
- Biotic Launcher: Fires a triple blast of biotic energy
- Biotic Launcher (alt): Fires a healing grenade
- Regenerative blast: Activates a healing field that heals Baptiste and nearby allies
- Field of Immortality: Creates a field that prevents the HP of all internals, including Baptiste, from dropping below 10 percent. It can be damaged
- Reinforcement matrix: Deploys a screen that increases the power of all non-melee projectiles, including healing rounds
Who wants to live forever?
As tempting as it is to start field of immortality as soon as you see allies engaging in a firefight, you should wait until they actually need it. First, the scope has a long 25 second cooldown timer, so using it in the wrong spot will likely mean you won’t have the ability available when your allies really need it. Skilled Overwatch players will immediately target the field as soon as it appears anyway, so the best use for this is to save your team at the last minute, giving them a few extra seconds to hang around and fight back.
Another strategic use is deploying it when you see an enemy getting ready to unleash their ultimate, especially if your allies are concentrated.
Treatment delivery service
Baptiste is one of the most versatile support characters thanks to his biotic launcher. The weapon’s alternate fire option fires healing grenades that cover a significant area and heal twice, once on impact and again after detonating. Like a normal shot from the biotic weapon, grenades have no cooldown timer, and even have a small area of effect. If Baptiste can’t reach an ally with his Regenerative Burst, he can keep them alive with grenades.
Note that these won’t heal Baptiste himself – only Regenerative Burst does that – so even with his DPS potential, you’ll need to adopt a cautious playstyle for Baptiste, especially if the team’s other healer your does not have so much treatment potential.
Fly high and touch the sky
Another useful feature new to Baptiste in Overwatch 2 is his spring jump. If you crouch for a little more than half a second and then jump, Baptiste is launched high into the air. Crouching jump is a great escape method if you find yourself in corners or pinches, but it has other uses as well. Tracking Baptiste after his high jump is somewhat difficult, so you could just land behind an enemy to finish them off before they realize where you disappeared to.
Baptiste’s jump also helps extend the range of his biotic grenade. Let’s say you respawn after dying, but your team is in critical condition on the other side of the map. Open it, throw some biotic grenades and presto. You saved the day.
- Sombra can hack and instantly dispel the Immortality Field. If you notice she’s close, try to take her out before deploying the scope.
- Practice aiming the biotic rifle’s damage-dealing bullets in training mode so you can get used to its recoil before you hit the field
- Activate Regenerative Burst when you see enemies approaching to give your allies an extra edge once the battle begins
- Coordinating Baptiste’s ultimate with your team’s main DPS heroes can help deal extended damage and potentially wipe out the opposing team
- You can use both functions of Baptiste’s rifle at the same time
If you want to experiment with other Overwatch 2 roles, check out the tank hero tier and support hero tier to see how they all fit together.
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