Overwatch Team Saved From Enemy Ult By Basketball

Every time Overwatch players hear Zarya shout her trademark Russian ult line — “Ogon’ po gotovnosti!” — a sinking feeling of inevitability sets in. It means that you and your team are going to be dragged together by a tiny black hole and then lasered down, or obliterated by a ghost dragon or something. There is, however, a hard counter to Zarya’s ult: a basketball.

Overwatch player SeykaMoonlight demonstrated this iron (or I guess regulation leather) clad strat in a clip they recently posted to the Overwatch subreddit. In it, the Zarya on Seyka’s team launches her Graviton Surge, only for it to be intercepted by a roving basketball. The ult — fused with the basketball — then bounced around harmlessly, away from its intended targets.

But where did the basketball come from? On this particular level, Nepal, each team’s starting area contains basketballs players can shoot into hoops if they’re blessed with the luck of the gods or the geometry skills of an above-average high school maths teacher.

These basketballs are not meant to leave the starter ships, but sometimes players punch them all the way to the point for fun. They don’t usually get involved in the ensuing chaos, but as this particular example proves, it wouldn’t be called “chaos” if it was predictable.