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Overwatch: Junkrat Abilities And Strategy Tips

Overwatch character guides

Do you like the idea of spamming grenades all over the map and making everyone on the other team hate you? Meet Overwatch's Junkrat—a defensive hero who can either be a great ally or the most frustrating enemy. Using his grenade launcher, he can suppress enemy positions while remaining safely behind cover. He's not the hero to play if you want to rack up a disturbing amount of kills, but his ability to constantly harass and upset enemy formations will have the other side pulling their hair out.

Junkrat Abilities

Frag Launcher [LMB] - The wonderful source of Junkrat's awful power, these grenades will bounce around before detonating and causing pretty considerable damage to anyone caught in their small blast. What it lacks in precision it makes up for in suppression. Junkrat is surprisingly adept at shutting down narrow passageways and spots where enemies could flank your team, just don't try and hit flying targets like Pharah with the grenades—that way leads madness.

Steel Trap [E] - Junkrat's Steel Trap is going to live on as an ability that many will not understand how to use properly. When used, Junkrat tosses a set of steel jaws that will temporarily hold any enemy that walks over it. Used in wide open spaces, the Steel Trap will likely sit unsprung, but those with a clever understanding of where heroes like to tread can snag themselves a real treat.

Concussion Mine [LSHIFT] - Junkrat tosses a Concussion Mine that can be used to push enemies out of formation or, if you're lucky, off a cliff and to their deaths. But a far better use for the Concussion Mine is to time it with a jump to launch Junkrat high into the air to land on platforms usually only accessible to the likes of Widowmaker. From here, you can rain down misery until the enemy decides you need to die. When that happens, drop another mine and blast off to somewhere new!

Rip-Tire [Q] - Junkrat lets it rip with a motorized tire stuffed full of explosives that you can steer and detonate at will. While this ultimate is active, Junkrat is vulnerable to attack (he'll be standing still) and even the tire can be destroyed if someone is able to shoot it. Great at singling out annoying enemies like Bastion or punishing a group of heroes that have bunched together.

Total Mayhem [Passive] - As a final "fuck you" to everyone he just pissed off, when Junkrat dies he goes out with a bang as a small cache of explosives will drop from his body and detonate a split second later. The radius is small, but when that Genji who just spent half the round dying to your grenades finally thinks he got the drop on you only to die in turn, you'll appreciate this skill. Rumor is if you listen really carefully, you can even hear the sound of a keyboard breaking in the distance.

Junkrat Strategy Tips

Junkrat, plain and simple, is a giant troll meant to cover the battlefield with explosives that will have every enemy rethinking their decision to push forward. Without any self-heals or team utility, you're only mission should be to unleash a steady barrage of death from safety until you draw the ire of the enemy team and have to relocate. That said, being effective as Junkrat requires shifting your thinking from trying to do damage to individual heroes to trying to spread out as much damage across an area as possible.

Positioning for Junkrat is just as important as maintaining that position because the moment his grenades start bursting on the enemy position, you can bet someone is coming to put you down. That's why Concussive Mine is so much better utilized as a method for getting Junkrat to hard to reach locations while Steel Trap can also be used to protect your flanks from a sneak attack. If you hear the trap spring, it's time to leave.

Rip-Tire will also be an ultimate that many will come to hate because using it requires a great deal of timing and cleverness. For one, it has one of the most distinct audio cues in all of Overwatch, so everyone will know when it's coming. Because the tire can be destroyed before you have a chance to detonate it, you're also going to need to be smart about when and where to use it. Steering it across open spaces will definitely get it destroyed. Fortunately, the tire can scale walls, giving you a great deal of mobility for getting it where you need to go.

Another trick is to trigger the ability and run the tire against a wall that it can't scale (anything that doesn't have a platform above it). The enemy team will expect the tire to arrive instantly and let their guard down when it doesn't, which is when you can surprise them with it. Of course, using it during the chaos of an intense firefight or during a hard push can also catch most players off guard.

Step back up to our complete Overwatch character guide. Or find out how to counter Junkrat with our Overwatch counter guide.

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Steven Messner

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