So I've been playing Eve a lot and I've recently realized something that seems a lot of people nowadays don't realize (which I don't blame them for) - Eve has a second gadget.

Normally, this gadget sucks because it is only 3 or 4 fleas that you spawn each that heals 500hpx4 (2000), so a total of a whopping... 6,000 HP, or 8,000 HP. Which honestly? Is not really worth it.

HOWEVER! I think that this gadget now has a really good niche that could be exploited in competitive with her Hypercharge.

Eve's counters: Splash Brawlers

Eve has a very strong counter competitively that can easily eat through her HC/normal super: Splash brawlers. These are brawlers like Janet, Sandy, Poco, etc. Vs these brawlers, playing a brawler like Eve effectively makes no sense, because you'd have to rely on luck, map layout, and enemy team composition & positioning of them and your egg, hoping that the fleas will not aling in such a way that a splash brawler cannot be overwhelmed and can just easily hit as many as possible with just 1 ammo.

Because of this, it makes no sense to run Eve into these brawlers... Or does it? Cue Vsauce music

Eve secretly good vs Splash Brawlers?

See, here is where my hot take comes into play. Usually, brawlers of this caliber are not generally very good against tanks or pressure brawlers. Now Imagine this: What if, and just imagine for a second: What if a splash brawler had to deal with a tank that can heal TWO TIMES their health over time, or an assassin that can heal THREE TO FOUR TIMES their total health over time? How do you counter this as a brawler like Barley in a passive gamemode like Bounty or Knockout? How do you counter this in knockout when the smoke begins to close in? How do you counter this on a gamemode like Gem Grab when you have a Rosa coming in on your gem carrier? These are just examples of how this can give Eve different usages on her strong gamemodes when there are splash enemies on the match that can easily counter her. Let's run some quick simple math:

With her Hypercharge: - Eve heals a total of 500/tick, 4 different times each. Eve's HC spawns a total of 9 hatchlings, so this is a total of 18,000 health spread across THIRTY SIX (36) TICKS OF HEALING.

With her HC & Mythic Gear: - This one doesn't make much of a difference, but with this her total hatchling count goes up to 10, so this increases the total healing over time to 40 ticks of healing, so an increased of 2,000 health recovered equating to 20,000 healing.

Now, I know you're asking, "Wow, that's a lot of healing, too bad her gadget still sucks so why should I use it?". Let me put this into perspective: Byron who is arguably the best burst/quick healer can heal a total of 9,840 on a single ally/with a spread of maybe 5,280 if you account his star power and splash area of healing on multiple teammates. This alone requires Byron to use up his entire kit and a super and he doesn't even reach half of Eve's total healing (with mythic gear). Eve requires her to use a hypercharge yes, but ultimately, all she needs is to place down the hypercharge, hit the green button, and continue on about her business because she will still have her ammo to continue her duty as a mid or lane on the designated game mode/map.

How to use this

With this in mind, a good Eve player if counter picked on draft with splash players, can do stuff like this:

• Draft into splash with tanks/aggro/hybrid brawlers, place her HC egg near a designated teammate picked to counter into these brawlers, and teammate can begin aggro once healing begins
• Draft into splash still on passive gamemodes like Knockout and Heist, and when pressure is applied into your team/smoke begins to come in, Eve can place HC Egg near the back or where cover will protect the hatchlings, and the hatchlings will spread across your team healing allies approximately an average of 4,000-6,000 each (this is actually a lot for these gamemodes)

And just like that, Eve suddenly isn't as easy to counter into some of these team comps, because now she can still circumvent her major weakness into being a major support ability that is very difficult to outdamage unless you have multiple brawlers on the enemy team focusing this. Even if say one or two of your hatchlings got lost along the way or damaged/killed, Eve can still easily squeeze in 10,000 healing on her allies. On gamemodes where the healing might be spread, in my eyes this is still a very big deal because it can easily exhaust the enemy team's resources (ammo, gadgets, supers), which gives your own team a very strong opportunity to pinch and take down as many enemies as possible.

I will definitely be using this more, and I encourage others to try this out because it's kind of insane to me how a brawler has a tool that can effectively heal ground breaking amounts of HP but it still sees no play. Her other gadget is really good too, but c'mon.

EDIT

SO APPARENTLY I JUST FOUND OUT THAT YOU CAN ACTUALLY ACTIVATE HER GADGET HALFWAY INTO HER HC SUPER DOING IT'S THING ALLOWING EVE TO SPLIT HER HC SO IT HAS HALF AGGRO BABIES AND HALF HEALING BABIES HELLO??????

I THINK EVE MIGHT BE THE BEST BRAWLER IN THE GAME NOW WTF 😭