Overwatch 2’s new support hero Lifeweaver isn’t even in the game for most people yet, and he’s already causing a stir within the community for his potential to be a troll character.
One of Lifeweaver’s abilities is called Life Grip. It allows the user to shield and pull a teammate to their position. Blizzard frames this as a heroic ability that can let you pull a friend out of danger when they’re surrounded or save them from being booped off the map. However, as early players using him on the game’s test server have realized, Life Grip can be used for evil, and Lifeweaver players are using it to pull their teammates into precarious situations, as seen in the TikTok embedded below.
Lifeweaver is supposed to be a support character, but sending your teammates plummeting to their death or positioning them right in front of a moving car seems like the opposite of being supportive. I can’t imagine Life Grip existing in this form for very long, as this is exactly the kind of thing that will result in a new character getting patched shortly after they’re introduced. Like Ramattra, a tank released back in December, whose ultimate ability was initially indefinite before Blizzard nerfed it with a 20-second time limit. What remains to be seen is just how Blizzard will handle Lifeweaver moving forward.
There have been plenty of characters in Overwatch that have been used to troll teammates, such as Mei’s Ice Wall ability being used to block entrances or Symettra’s Teleporter being positioned in unsafe places. But these were mild inconveniences compared to Life Grip, which can be used maliciously to kill a teammate as the targeted player has zero input on whether or not they’re pulled toward Lifeweaver.
You can walk around Mei’s annoying Ice Wall, or shoot it until it breaks, and you can avoid Symmetra’s Teleporter entirely if you feel that your squadmate is up to no good. But Lifeweaver offers no such escape from trolling behavior. Maybe there’s a version of the ability that requires both users to opt-in with a button prompt like Symmetra’s Teleporter? Or maybe the ability ends up being patched out of Lifeweaver’s kit entirely down the line. That would be a shame, because the move has so much potential when used as intended. But if this becomes a widespread issue when the character goes live for the public on April 11, I don’t see how Blizzard leaves it in without some tweaks.
We’ve reached out to Blizzard for comment and will update the story if we hear back.
Lifeweaver is Overwatch’s first Thai hero and an openly pansexual character. His banter also seems to have revealed there’s at least one more queer hero in the roster that wasn’t previously confirmed.