Sometimes the most absurd situations arise in Overwatch. For most participants, such situations are entertaining, while for some they can be quite frustrating. Like for this Zarya, who will probably hate basketball from now on.
This is what happened: In a match on Nepal Village, one team tried to capture the point. A Zarya from the defending team wanted to stop the team with the help of her ultimate Graviton Surge.
However, the ultimate was blocked by a basketball. A user posted a video on Reddit about it.
Physics Saves Lives
This could happen: In Overwatch, items like basketballs are often spread across the maps. They serve as decoration but also have physics. When attacked, they react and move, get destroyed, or bounce around.
On all maps where teams start in a landing ship, basketballs can be found in the ship. During the preparation phase, they can be hit around the ship or thrown into the available basket.
The balls can also be hit out of the ship by players as soon as the doors open and the round begins. They then become objects on the map that still react to shots and hits.
This is how the Graviton Surge works: The Graviton Surge is Zarya’s ultimate ability. It fires a projectile that works like a black hole, pulling all enemies within the area of effect towards it and holding them in place.
When Zarya fires the Graviton Surge, she shoots a projectile similar to her alternate fire mode. The projectile then sticks to the first surface it hits.
In this instance, the first surface was the basketball, which then happily flew across the map without dealing damage or having any effect on the opposing team.
Is this a bug? Not really. It’s intended for abilities to interact with objects. Basketballs were even previously exploited to create “death balls” by attaching Junkrat’s traps or Symmetra’s turrets to them.
Such situations, as seen in the clip, are rare and almost impossible to intentionally replicate. Therefore, we cannot recommend carrying around a “tactical basketball” from now on.
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A bug leads to a completely different but equally absurd situation. This glitch breaks the spines of frozen heroes.
