Baptiste is one of Overwatch’s most versatile supports with a packed kit, including the very powerful Immortality Field. While this life-saving ability has the second-longest cooldown in the game at twenty-five seconds, an exploit can allow players to use it at will.
Former Overwatch League pro Ted ‘Silkthread’ Wang experienced this exploit during a ranked match on February 16 while playing on Hanamura.
The Genji player knew he needed to make a big play to secure Point B for his team as time was winding down. After securing a couple of frags and building his Dragon Blade ultimate, the streamer whipped out his sword to cut down a McCree standing near the enemy spawn.
However, just before he could cut the cowboy in two, an Immortality Field landed by the gunslinger, keeping him alive and preventing Silkthread from picking up another kill.
“Another field?!” he exclaimed, shocked by what he saw. “Did you just abuse hero swapping?” he asked in the match chat.
In Overwatch, players are free to swap to any hero at any time as long as the hero is part of their pre-selected role, and no other player on the team is already using them.
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One of the interesting and easily exploitable elements about hero swapping is how cool downs reset once a player changes heroes. For instance, while Immortality Field has a long cool down once its destroyed, Baptiste players can change heroes for a second and then back to Baptiste to get the ability available again instantly.
What’s worse is that on maps such as Hanamura B, the defenders spawn is so close to the point that it incentivizes using the exploit – especially one that is so strong defensively.
Silkthread went on to open up a replay of the match when it was over, and couldn’t believe what he saw. The Baptiste player on the enemy team was able to use the exploit to get a whopping ten Immortality Fields in a row.
“Holy sh*t, that’s so cringe!” the streamer disgustedly sighed. “Imagine actually doing this to win a ranked game.”
As it turns out, however, this trick doesn’t just apply to ladder matches. As Dexerto previously reported, South Korea’s Ho-jin ‘iDK’ Park used the same trick in his match against USA at the Overwatch World Cup, but only managed to toss out three fields before America overwhelmed the Koreans to cap the point.
Considering just how powerful the tech is, to the point where it’s possible to get infinite fields, one has to wonder just when Blizzard will address the issue or if they’re even working on a fix internally.