In terms of hero design and balance, yes. But queue times are clearly their most pressing issue since role queue. That’s why their most immediate effort is going into getting Competitive Open Queue up, because it’s the easiest short-term solution for the most pressing problem.
It’s irrelevant. I saw one person upset about losing Ball/Zarya in the Reddit thread, and that’s it. The vast majority of the people talking about main tank Hammond are referring to when he was meta in 1-3-2 in OWL, or to the way he’s played as a main tank with Orisa or Winston. Ball/Zarya and Ball/D.va have never been very good comps.
I know you do, because I posted it, and then watched as you developed it. But you got some (good and) bad feedback on Reddit and now you’re dumping it.
Do you expect to eventually come upon an idea that you can post in r/Competitiveoverwatch that will be accepted by everyone? I think that regardless of what you post, there are going to be detractors.