Overwatch 2 players baffled that Brigitte’s flail goes through some heroes

Overwatch 2 players have discovered that Brigette’s flair can be got through certain parts of other heroes’ hitboxes.

Brigitte has long been one of the most controversial heroes in Overwatch. When she was released back in 2018, she notoriously became one of the most powerful heroes the game has ever seen. It took months for Blizzard to nerf her to a reasonable state, but many bear the battle scars from that time.

She was even instrumental in the creation of GOATS, a style of play with three supports and three tanks that took over high level play for nearly a year.

These days, she’s in a much more reasonable state as a relative niche Support pick. She’s either chosen by specialists or if there is a flanking hero terrorizing your backline. Even a recent buff to her, bringing a stun back to her ultimate, hasn’t changed too much for her. She now enjoys a place in the middle of the pack of the meta. 

However, it seems an essential aspect of her kit might be unfairly punishing players due to some hijinks with hitboxes. 

Brigitte’s Flail can go through parts of transformed heroes

Over on Reddit, user TylerOfTrades took a video showing that Brigitte’s flail can go right through certain heroes, especially those who transform. 

The video shows her Rocket Flail going through the hitboxes of Bastion’s turret when he is transformed, as well as the arms of Ramatra when he is in his Nemesis Form. This means that even if a player clearly hits a character with the flail to boop them back, it won’t work if it hits those areas. 

One user in the replies claims to know what’s going on. They say: “My guess is that Melee, similar to tf2, utilizes the bounding boxes and not the hitboxes.”

Bounding boxes are rectangles around a character that account for collision. This is different than the strict hitboxes of the characters. It appears that Rocket Flail in particular uses those boxes rather than the visual border of the hero.

Usually, this is fine as the hitbox and bounding box are relatively similar. However, for characters who transform like Bastion and Ramattra, that appears to be where the issue lies. In the grand scheme of things, this probably isn’t going to lose players any games. That said, missed flails can add up to be an annoyance. We will have to see if Blizzard has any plans to rectify how this interaction works.