Overwatch players have highlighted a major bug that can prevent Brigitte’s ‘Rally’ ultimate ability from affecting teammates properly.
Rally can be a very powerful defensive ability, granting up to 100 armor to both Brigitte and her allies. That extra armor both functions as effective healing for low-health teammates, which enemies must burn through to take them down, but also stacks on top for allies with full health, making it valuable to use preemptively as well.
Unfortunately, however, it seems that there’s a bug which can prevent the ability from affecting Brigitte’s teammates as it should, even if they are clearly visible to the Brigitte player and well within the ability’s effective radius, as u/MightyyDan demonstrates.
Although u/MightyyDan has publicized this issue recently, it’s actually been in the game for quite some time. In fact, Overwatch player Andy GMB actually identified it over a year ago in May 2018, revealing that objects such as the payload can block the ability.
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The issue appears to be that Brigitte’s Rally requires a direct line-of-sight to allies in order to affect them, but the sightline is calculated from her feet, rather than from the point of view that the player sees. As a result, small edges like stairs can block line-of-sight despite the player clearly seeing their teammate.
This isn’t the only ability that can be neutralized by small changes in elevation, such as stairs. Abilities that deal splash damage or healing – most notably Baptiste’s grenades – can also be neutralized if they land on stairs in such a way that their “line of sight” to nearby targets is blocked.
Given how long this bug seems to have been in the game, there’s no indication that Blizzard are going to fix it any time soon. In the meantime, Brigitte players will simply have to keep it in mind and try to make sure there aren’t any obstacles such as stairs between them and their teammates when they use their ultimate.