It’s unlikely that, before yesterday, anybody used the words “trapeze artist” to describe Overwatch’s turret hero Bastion. One hype play at the Overwatch League grand finals revealed the hero’s potential as an aerial circus act.
Early on in the San Francisco Shock’s 4-0 sweep of the Vancouver Titans, Bastion player Minho “Architect” Park was helping his team finish the final point at the Eichenwalde map. It’s usually a good call to position Bastion on high ground so it gets more angles on the enemy team. Some savvy players will push it up onto a ledge with an ice wall from the hero Mei; others might exploit little glitches in the maps. Park did something new altogether:
Propelling himself onto the chandelier with Bastion’s explosive tank-mode shells, Park achieves a perfect 360-degree vantage point for maximum kills. The live crowd watching went absolutely ballistic (pun intended) as he proceeded to mow down Titans’ stragglers racing onto the point. Caster Mitch “Uber” Leslie described him as a “trapeze artist.”
In a press conference after the game, Park was asked what inspired the move. “It wasn’t planned,” he said, with translation from Shock general manager Chris Chung. Chung paraphrased, “Originally, Rascal was supposed to use a Mei wall to lift [Park] up to get onto the chandelier. But out of nowhere, [Park] told himself he’d able to use Bastion’s ult to boost himself from the floor. It was an instant decision he made.”
Logic says it was, at best, improbable that a pro made this risky move for the first time when $1,100,000 was on the line. But regardless, I’m looking forward to my teammates copying trapeze Bastion in-game. To my enemies, though: Shh, you never saw this.
Clarification: Park’s quote on the Bastion strategy was altered slightly to read more clearly in context.