Long-speculated to be the next character coming to Overwatch, Doomfist brings the playable character count to 25 heroes. After being announced earlier in July with an anime short, Doomfist was active on the PC Public Test Realm server for several weeks but this is the first time that console players get to put on his powered-up gauntlet.
Doomfist has been a part of Overwatch lore since the beginning. In a recently released behind-the-scenes video, developers relate how Blizzard vice president Chris Metzen gave the name as an example for the sorts of villains they needed to come up with, and everyone found it so evocative that it stuck. His gauntlet appears in the game’s first cinematic trailer, in which heroes Winston and Tracer fend off Widowmaker and Reaper’s attempt to steal it from a museum for the then-disbanded Overwatch organization. Evidence of Doomfist also litters the Numbani map, which features posters of him in the starting area and his fist on the payload that has to be defended.
Players started seriously expecting Doomfist to join the roster earlier this year, leading to a fan campaign to cast football-player-turned-actor Terry Crews in the role, with which the actor himself (a professed PC gamer) was involved. Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan shut down speculation that Doomfist was imminent at the time, since the next hero then was Orisa. Doomfist finally followed as the 25th hero in the game’s roster and we are very excited to play with him.
We already fooled around with Doomfist in the PTR server and can confirm that he is a blast to play. As his name suggests, Doomfist is an offense hero that is all about punching with his huge, robotic fist. His secondary attack (and perhaps signature move) is the Rocket Punch, in which he charges up and blasts forward in a straight line, fist first, knocking anyone he hits back (and doing extra damage if they slam into a wall, which leaves a radius of gnarly cracks).
He can also uppercut enemies directly in front of him high up into the air, jumping up with them to follow up with a slam attack that throws Doomfist forward a bit, stunning and pulling enemies in front of him on the ground in toward him. Dealing damage with any of his special fist abilities also has an added benefit of giving him temporary armor. His primary weapon, perhaps his most underwhelming feature, is knuckle-mounted shotgun blasts on his smaller hand, which carry four charges and regenerate about one per second. Lastly, his ultimate ability sends Doomfist up into the air, giving him a targeting reticle to choose a place and slam down, damaging anyone beneath.
He is a lot of fun to play, and his punches are very viscerally satisfying to land. As a highly mobile, up-close fighter, he is sort of like a beefier Genji. The developer video talks about how he’s an ode to 2D fighting games, which feels apparent in the different ways you can combo his abilities together as the situation demands. His high mobility and up-close punishment make him a natural fit for the so-called “dive comp” wherein teams use heroes like Winston and Lucio to aggressively jump onto the enemy team and focus them down.
He is not a tank, so it can be risky to throw him around recklessly behind enemy lines without support. Wielded strategically, however, Doomfist will be exceptionally good at getting in the enemy team’s face and forcing them to deal with him.
Update: Added information regarding Doomfist’s availability on all platforms.
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