Since the early day of Overwatch some of the most satisfying kills were environmental kills. The feeling of satisfaction for the player is massive and in some cases they become impressive. But sometime strange things happen with knockbacks in particular. Sometimes the enemy flies further than you thought it should or that time you got juggled by some lucky knockbacks. Both are cases of accidental synergy that i’m gonna explain in this article so that you can make the accidental deliberate!

Basics of booping: what is a boop?

First things first, if you already know the basics of boops and other displacement abilities you can jump ahead to the section “Knockback stacking”

A boop is an Overwatch specific term for a knockback. The name comes from the sound that lucio’s alternative fire makes when knocking back enemies. Boops have been a very advantageous way to kill, both for the satisfaction and because it makes the enemy unrezable which can be very important in a fight.

Not every hero can boop, but these heroes are Lucio, Pharah, D.va, Junkrat, Winston, Doomfist and Roadhog. Some better than others, for example all doomfists abilities has some sort of knockback, except that seismic slam knocks them towards you. Lucio’s boop is very versatile as he can boop both vertically and horizontally. Pharah’s knockback is the most versatile as it can be used both as a displacement tool but also as a movement tool.

Other abilities with displacement properties

Some abilities have displacement properties which differs from boops. Abilities like Orisa’s halt which is a projectile which when activated pulls enemies next to the projectile position or roadhogs hook which drags enemies towards hogs deadly embrace. These abilities can sometimes be part of the chainboops, but only as a setup or finisher.

Knockback Stacking

Now we come to the first of the two advanced concepts, knockback stacking. Knockback Stacking is performing 2 or more knockbacks at the same time or during a very small timescale. Stacking 2 boops ontop of eachother give the product a multiplicative effect. The product is larger than the sum of the knockbacks.

Examples of distance booped by stacking vs the separate parts distance.

DF stands for Doomfist

Lucio + Pharah 30m Lucio 10-12m Pharah 10m Lucio + Winston 30m

Lucio + Dva 25m Lucio 10-12m

Lucio 10-12m Winston 15m

Dva 8m Lucio + DF 30 Lucio 10-12m DF 10m Lucio + Junkrat 33m Lucio 10-12m Junkrat upto 15-18m Pharah + Winston 30m Pharah 10m Winston 15m Pharah + Dva 21-22m Pharah 10m Dva 8m Pharah + DF 33m Pharah 10m DF 10m Pharah + Junkrat 33m Pharah 10m Junkrat 15-18m Winston + Dva 25m Winston 15m Dva 8m Winston + DF 33m Winston 15m DF 10m Winston + Junkrat 40m Winston 15m Junkrat 15-18m Dva + DF 20m Dva 8m DF 10m Dva + Junkrat 30m Dva 8m Junkrat 15-18m DF + Junkrat 35m DF 10m Junkrat 15-18m

It is uncertain why knockback stacking gives these values but my best guess must be that it’s momentum based which would result in a longer distance because the decay time would be longer. The main point of the table is not to be exact but to show you an estimation to give you an image of distance.

Do note that the stacks with doomfist does not extend the killing range of his punch, the killing range is still 10m.

These are not the only heroes with knockback. Others heroes are roadhogs wholehog which is a knockback with a duration which makes it hard to utilise. Another one would be Reinhardt’s hammer swing or near hit charge, they are either too hard to stack or too insignificant of a knockback.

Some knockbacks have a lot of verticality which makes airstraffing possible. Junkrats mine and doomfists uppercut stacks should cause this verticality and the stacking of the two should cause extreme verticality.

Solo-knockback stacks

There are two heroes that can stack on their very own. That might sound strange but it is logical and in many cases easier to perform than other knockback stacks.

Winston landing + Winston punch (while using ult) 20m Pharah conc + Pharah rocket (at enemy feets) 25m

Solo-knockback stacks are good in that way that they are a lot easier to perform when you yourself is the only real factor to success. I usually call the pharah solo-knockback stack a superconc.

Chainboops

Do you ever feel like you’re being juggled by your enemies into a hole or of the map? Then you most likely fell prey to a chainboop, which is a series of 2 or more boops following each other. These chainboops are in the majority of the cases a coincidence. But to perform one with intention can be really advanced. Timing and positioning is of utmost importance in combination of you having to exploit enemy position if possible. All that makes chainboops hard to pull off but if practiced with a teammate or a buddy you play with a lot, it’s very much a possibility.

Chainboops are naturally exploiting one of two things. First it exploits map design, especially holes and cliffs. Secondly it exploit player habits like a Winston that wants to jump the backline or camping on Nepal Sanctum.

Example chains:

The conc-punch combo: the first combo is a pharah’s concussive blast into a doomfist punch. So the premise of this combo is for the pharah to set an easy kill for doomfist. First you locate an enemy that you can easily boop of their position. That would be followed up by a doomfist that can predict the landing of the enemy and therefore punches them into a wall. For this chain the pharah should callout to the doomfist who she will boop so that the doomfist is ready to perform the chain. Dva-lucio combo on Ilios well: this combo is probably the simplest combo to perform. On this map team usually run dive where the winston buys space by jumping the backline. What you do is when jumps in the dva intercept with a flying boop which will land him close to the well where lucio is ready to boop. This combo would not work everytime as it might be hard sometimes to intercept the winston but when it happens you have great advantage for the rest of the fight. Concussive halt chain: this chain is not a true chainboop as it includes a displacement ability other than a knockback but this is a really versatile combo that can be use on a multiple of different maps. Can be used on all illios maps, nepal sanctum and third point of blizzard world. What this combo entails is a use of conc to set up a halt environmental kill. For this chain the orisa need to be the one to initiate the chain. Conc-boop on sanctum: This chain is used for a very specific scenario. In that scenario the enemy is nesting at the doorways on the sanctum point. What you do is having a pharah sneakily drop down behind them using a conc to knock them onto the point where lucio is ready to boop them off. This combo has the potential to get you more than one kill as it boops people to the same place on point for the lucio boop. For this combo the pharah should initiate a countdown until action.

Summary

So in summary a knockback stack is when you stack two different knockback abilities which is hard to pull off, instead solo-knockback stacks performed by winston or pharah is easier to pull off. Chainboops is a series of two or more knockbacks which chains the knockbacks together. These chains exploit map design and player habits and is not the hardest to learn.

Closing words

Chainboops and knockback stacking is a concept I have been thinking about for a while now. The first time was over a year ago but recently I decided to write some Overwatch content and I needed something to be the first topic. So I thought why not pick the strat that noone uses nor talk about. What i hope people takes away from this article is that there are still tactics and strategies that could be easily performed that noone has yet to use. I also hope that you can make knockback stacking and chainbooping into another tool to use in your play. What kind of chains will you create?

I would like to thank Silence, Mörkenbörken, Phallin, Slowlymore and RoyallegendD for helping me test these and measure values. I would also like to thank you, the reader for taking your time to read this article. I wish you all well on your gaming journey!

~Awo