An Overwatch player got an incredibly detailed explanation for a very strange-looking bug involving Reinhardt’s Fire Strike after they posted the clip on Reddit.
Reinhardt’s Fire Strike ability deals 100 damage, and can pass through shields no problem, but you usually have to see the enemy you want to hit with it
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The move isn’t normally able to go through solid walls, though, which is why a new clip of a Fire Strike that seems to glitch and ‘teleport’ is getting so much attention.
Video of the phantom strike was posted by Reddit user Gleis7, who said, “Died to a teleporting firestrike please explain.”
The clip shows the defending Reinhardt’s Fire Strike disappearing shortly after being thrown, only to show up on the other side of the wall and take out the attacking Genji.
But Gleis7 didn’t share the clip on Reddit just for laughs, they were searching for answers, and one very knowledgeable Overwatch fan would come in clutch.
A Reddit user by the name of Jasmineworm44 said what had gone on in the clip was Gleis getting “the short end of the stick of a combined coding-saver collision check and a rare bug.”
Jasmineworm44 explained that the ‘coding-saver collision check’ is a programming technique used to build Overwatch’s environments.
“If you were on the inside of any wall/table/etc you can shoot out, but nobody can shoot in,” they said. “Coding this way saves time/money/space/memory.”
The bug can cause some of Reinhardt’s abilities to ‘relocate’, as the user called it.
“Rein is always buggy, but there is a unique bug that as the shield is “opening” certain things relocate themselves,” they wrote. “The bug is that the attack will disappear > change direction > then continue trajectory in a straight line behind Rein’s model.”
The good news is that this seems to be a fairly rare bug, so you probably don’t have to worry too much about teleporting Fire Strikes appearing out of nowhere very regularly.