OW2 game-breaking Junker Queen bug gives her unlimited axe swings

The most recent Overwatch 2 patch’s Junker Queen buffs have helped her in some unintentional ways, with a game-breaking bug related to her axe swing allowing her to get rid of its cooldown entirely.

Junker Queen hasn’t exactly been a meta-defining pick. While some parts of her kit are, on paper, incredibly strong, she can be easily countered by most of the strongest picks in the Overwatch 2 meta.

As such, she’s received a hefty set of buffs to make her more relevant when stacked up against heroes like Roadhog and Orisa. While this patch has certainly helped, the Junker Queen buffs have helped a bit more than intended.

Her E is supposed to get cooldown reduction upon hitting enemies, but what counts as an “enemy” seems to be a bit loose. Shields, any deployable, and even destructible parts of the environment are taking 2 seconds off the cooldown, giving Junker Queen unlimited swings in the right scenario.

Overwatch 2 patch creates game-breaking Junker Queen bug

This bug is a strange one, and something players discovered mere hours after the latest balance patch dropped. And, while it’s a bit difficult to find a situation where she can get unlimited swings in a real match, there are a lot of implications in more realistic scenarios.

However, there’s one thing that allows Junker Queen to farm E cooldown consistently in games: destructible railings.

Most maps in Overwatch 2 have a railing up high that can be destroyed with little effort, and that railing gives Junker Queen much more power than intended.

As shown off by ml7, she can get her E to clip the railing’s hitbox without actually destroying it. And, even if she does destroy it, having those extra seconds of cooldown when chasing an enemy down can help secure a kill in a pinch.

However, if Junker Queen hits a Reinhardt while his shield is up, or hits someone who’s standing behind any shield in the game for that matter, she gets 4 seconds off the cooldown on her E instead of 2. With the overall cooldown on the ability being 8 seconds, this is a massive unintended buff.

Goofy in some circumstances, game-breaking in others. Fortunately, the Overwatch 2 devs have since fixed this bug. While the hotfix description says they only fixed the bug related to hitting map destructibles, her E also no longer gets reduced cooldown from deployables like Shields and Mei’s wall.