Hall-of-famer Mercy player wins competitive Overwatch 2 match by lying in a bush
The thorn is mightier than the sword.
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In a perfect example of tried-and-true FPS ingenuity, please observe as this Overwatch 2 player wins a match by hiding in a bush. In a moment of brilliant improv, Mercy player Gladowl used an emote to lie down in a bush near next to the payload, obscuring them just well enough to hoodwink five enemy players and buy time for their team to return.
What is possibly the peak of this particular highlight clip genre was posted by SponsorTomix onRedditwith the title “I just lost a comp game because enemy Mercy was contesting the payload from a bush.”
Though gaming veterans have seen the ol' “hunker and hide” trick and its variations a thousand times, at least going back to laying inside the huts on Guadalcanal in Battlefield 1942, this particular spin includes one of my favorite modern twists. And by “favorite” I mean “the cause of infinite rage while playing Hell Let Loose.”
That twist? It doesn’t actually work if you’re not playing on max graphics.
PC players who turn down model detail to low are rewarded with bushes that are much less… bushy. Indeed, they’re not nearly leafy enough to hide Mercy’s model while she’s laying down in that spot or anywhere else—and you can see through them better, too, as many Widowmaker players will tell you. Console players are, naturally, totally screwed and should just shoot bushes for funsies, sometimes.
The reddit comments are rich with further anecdotes, including a wide variety of pro tips as to how to avoid this trick being used on you… as well as a bunch of bushes on other maps you can hide in. Here are a few, so you can hide in them to be a jerk/be on the lookout for crafty jerks: Eichenwalde second point, Rialto first point, all those ones on Circuit Royale, and Havana, near the spawn doors.
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Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he’s not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.
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