What you need to know
- Overwatch 2 players have discovered a trick that allows Kiriko players to make themselves near-immune to headshot damage from frontal angles.
- By simply looking straight up, players can make Kiriko's arm hitbox block her face, preventing critical damage.
- The only way to headshot a Kiriko using this technique is to hit her from side angles where she isn't facing, which is difficult for most sniper-style heroes to do.
In intense and fast-paced competitive shooters like Overwatch 2, understanding how to sustain and stay alive as long as possible when threatened by your opponents is crucial. Positioning well, timing abilities carefully, and winning duels outright with mechanical skill are all effective ways to do this, but hero-specific tricks are often quite useful for ensuring survival, too. For example, Moira can ramp off of inclines and objects by jumping while using her Fade escape ability to gain vertical momentum and reach defensive high ground, and Pharah can shoot a rocket at her feet while jumping to propel herself away from enemies if she's caught without her Jump Jet available.
Some techs even allow you to manipulate your character's model and hitbox in ways that make you harder to kill. One such trick has recently been discovered for the latest Overwatch 2 support hero, Kiriko. By simply looking straight up while playing as the versatile battle-healer, you can make yourself almost fully immune to headshots from frontal angles. This is because the hitbox of Kiriko's arm fully blocks her head, guaranteeing that she'll take regular, non-critical damage from bullets and projectiles. You can see this in the clip embedded below:
Fun fact of the day, if you look up with Kiriko you can completely block headshots from the front in Overwatch 2 pic.twitter.com/HGwscpsXZaNovember 15, 2022
The only way players can headshot a Kiriko using this technique is to attack her from a side angle while she's not facing them, which is exceptionally hard to pull off for long-range sniper heroes like Widowmaker, Ashe, and Hanzo. As a result, this trick can be used to make yourself incredibly difficult to pick off. Of course, you won't be able to contribute healing or damage to fights since your crosshair will be in the clouds, so this is hardly something you should be doing all the time. In situations where you know a sniper is lining up a shot and you're trying to get into cover, though, this tech will absolutely save your life.
It's very unlikely that Blizzard wants Kiriko to become near-immune to headshots just by simply looking up, so we anticipate that the developers will patch this out at some point by adjusting the character's hitbox. Take advantage of the trick while you can, because it probably won't work for long.
Overwatch 2 is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PS5, PS4, PC, and Nintendo Switch. It's arguably one of the best Xbox shooters available, and since it's free-to-play, it doesn't cost anything to check it out. Alternatively, players can purchase the Overwatch 2: Watchpoint Pack that provides access to Season 1's Premium Battle Pass, 2,000 Overwatch Coins, and a bundle of unique Legendary skins.
