If you have run into Junkrat in Overwatch 2 and moved on without quite understanding it, this is the explanation.

Short answer

It matters more than its screen time suggests, which is why it keeps coming up.

The game introduces it quickly and assumes you picked it up, which is where the confusion starts. It appears in supplementary material in more detail than it does in the game. There is usually a fast way and a reliable way, and it is worth knowing which one you are choosing.

Why people keep asking about it

Community shorthand around it has drifted far enough from the original meaning to cause arguments. Knowing this does not make you better at Overwatch 2, but it does make the rest of it legible. The short version is near the top on purpose; the reasoning is there if you want to know why. Its role has changed across updates, so older discussion describes something slightly different.

It is more consequential in the late game than the early one, which is why first impressions mislead. Screenshots age faster than text, which is why this describes rather than shows. Two similarly named things exist, and mixing them up explains a lot of contradictory advice.

What it is

The wiki entry is thorough and buries the actually useful part six paragraphs down. The awkward part is rarely the step itself, it is knowing which step comes first. There is a persistent myth attached to it that has never been true in any version.

  • Ignore the myth attached to it; it has never held up.
  • Treat wiki trivia sections as trivia rather than mechanics.
  • Prefer the in-game option over an external tool when both exist.
  • Do not confuse it with the similarly named thing — that mix-up drives most bad advice.

Where you encounter it

Whether it is worth going out of your way for depends entirely on how you are playing. Where something depends on your platform or region, that is called out rather than glossed over. Do the cheap check before the expensive one — that ordering alone saves most of the frustration. What follows assumes you are on a current install and have not modified it.

If your result differs from what is described here, note what is different first rather than starting over. Most of the disagreement you will find online is two people describing different builds. Everything below is framed around the current state of Overwatch 2 rather than a launch-week impression.

How it connects to the rest of Overwatch 2

The community wisdom on this is roughly half right, and the half that is wrong costs the most time. The developers have changed their mind about this at least once, which explains the older advice. Where two approaches both work, the one with fewer moving parts is the one to keep.

A single check up front replaces a lot of guessing later. If a step reads as obvious, do it anyway — the obvious ones are the ones people skip and then wonder about. Overwatch 2 is not shy about hiding useful information two menus deep, so some of this is simply knowing where to look.

Common misunderstandings

Anything that behaves differently on console than on PC is flagged where it matters. Treat anything stated without a version number as provisional. Patch notes move numbers around constantly; the shape of the answer holds even when a specific value shifts.

Where people go wrong

  • Changing five things at once and then not knowing which one helped.
  • Rushing the last step, which is usually the one with the actual requirement in it.
  • Grinding a method that was patched months ago because a thread still ranks well.

Overwatch 2 FAQ

Where can I read more?

The official material covers it in more depth than the game does, and considerably more reliably than aggregated fan pages.

Why do other guides describe this differently?

Most were written for an earlier version and never revisited. Compare the steps against what your build actually shows.

Is this still accurate after the latest Overwatch 2 update?

The method is; individual numbers may not be. If a value on your screen differs, trust the screen and keep the sequence.

Can I miss it?

Where it is missable, that is noted above. Most players encounter it without going looking for it.

That is the whole of it — if something here stops matching Overwatch 2, the game changed, not the method.