Overwatch Classic Has Players Once Again Killing Each Other With A Basketball

Image: Blizzard Entertainment / NBA / Kotaku

Overwatch 2 is running a limited-time event called Overwatch Classic that reverts the game to its original roster, rulesets, and hero kits. It’s miserable to go back to, especially if you have no nostalgia for Overwatch as it existed in 2016. However, it is bringing back some old meme-y strategies from back in the day, and those throwbacks are spreading through the Overwatch community. One that is extremely funny to see back in the game eight years later is the strategy that lets you kill enemies with a basketball. Literally. Symmetra’s basketball tech is undefeated.

Back in the day Symmetra, who was a support hero at launch and has since been retooled into a damage one, was able to attach her beam-firing turrets onto objects in the environment rather than surfaces like walls and the ground. Those objects include the basketballs you can toss around spawn points in Control matches which, these days, serve little purpose but letting you try to score a basket or two before the game starts. However, back when you could attach Symmetra’s turrets to them, you could then knock them out of the spawn area and into the battlefield. The turrets lock on to foes and fire high-damage beams at any nearby enemy, which means that if you have several of them attached to a basketball, you can knock the ball of death near enemies and watch it drain their health in seconds.

It’s fun seeing how much of Overwatch’s refinement over the years has sanded away some of the funny and chaotic strategies players once utilized. You can still find Reddit threads about Symmetra’s basketball of death that are nearly a decade old. But as silly and creative as the strat is, I’m glad that Overwatch 2 is in a much better state these days overall. Well, in terms of balance and polish, I mean. Don’t get me started on my feelings about its status as a sequel and product.