Wrecking Ball is an extremely well designed and fun hero but when taking into account his mobility, survivability, CC, and damage, he does not seem to be inline with the rest of the characters, at least in a solo queue perspective. Where exactly is his weakness?
I’ve just played a few games where I either had a Wrecking Ball on my team or was playing against one. When on my team, I didn’t even need to support my Wrecking Ball as he was able to CC, pick off, and then escape the 5v1 (now 4v1) situations he dove into and quickly navigate to the nearest health pack.
Likewise, when dealing with a good Wrecking Ball tank, I consistently have to switch to Ana, Brig, or Lucio to throw some CC at him…not hoping to kill him but hoping to buy some time. Playing Zen is a toss up because, while discord orb is great, Zen is also so squishy.
Just taking a look at Wrecking Ball’s abilities, I think adaptive shield being 9 second duration is too generous. Watching a wrecking ball have 450 Health, 100 Armor, and 500-600 overhealth after diving a team 5v1 is kind of ridiculous.
Zen is actually the reason Ball is somewhat manageable in higher ranks. Without discord and Zen’s own damage output, you don’t really have a chance at killing him before he gets out, and also without discord, he can afford to stay in for longer and potential secure a kill that way. If you position well as Zen, and get at least some very basic form of peeling when he dives you, Ball won’t be able to kill you through you other support healing you.
That being said, Zen is definitely harder to play against ball in lower ranks because people won’t be as quick to help you, if they help you at all, though at the same time, the Ball player isn’t likely to be as good either, giving you more leeway to walk away from him towards your team.
He does need some nerfing tho, and I’ll be surprised if they don’t nerf his overhealth in the next patch. Ball meta isn’t very fun for anyone but the Ball players.
Wrecking ball’s weakness has always been low damage in favor of high mobility and disruption. The buffs they gave him beefed up Ball’s survivability which counter acts his low damage. It doesn’t matter that he can’t kill because he’s too busy constantly harassing the enemy team.
He was fine pre buff, could maybe have gotten very slight adjustments. But people are not accepting of niche/situational picks so they demanded buffs until we got them and now he’s a problem. Same thing happened when Doom fist was God fist for a whole week.
Blizzard sucks at balancing in general but it would be unfair to say that it’s entirely on them. They usually get a lot of the wrong feedback because the loudest people tend to be the worst people to listen to. DF didn’t need buffs to damage, he just needed a bit more survivability and more of his tech back to lean into what’s enjoyable about the character.
His damage isn’t even that low, though. Roll does 50 damage, pile driver can do up to 100. His mines are basically instant death for any squishy and deny huge areas for very long periods of time. High level players can pull off double boops or boops into pile driver combos that are 100-150 damage themselves. Coupled with even moderately decent aim he can finish off squishies that aren’t pocketed rather easily. Being hit with pile driver also has the same horrible feeling of doom’s uppercut where you lose a good chunk of control of your character and gives him time to shoot you.
It’s really not uncommon for him to be able to easily 1v1 someone in the backline in just a few seconds.
His burst damage is less than tanks that can burst and his sustain is on the lower end of most tanks. My statement wasn’t to say that he cannot output damage to kill people, but rather that it’s his weakest area.
That only happens in elos where people have no awareness or focus fire capability
Ball seems so immortal against bad players because he is built to have decent survivability against good ones. If you make ball have decent survivability against bad players, he will instantly cease to exist against players with good tracking and awareness
He is predictable and easy to hit, he has insanely high risk and requires to be constantly in the middle of the enemy fire
That´s how you deal with tanks, and even more how you deal with ball
YOURE. NOT. GONNA KILL HIM ALONE
even with your team he is supposed to survive with low health, he is supposed to constantly survive, pressure your team and draw attention
He doesn´t get enough value with 1 dive to justify him dying easily, he needs multiple dives to get value
If it´s too frustrating we can tune it down of course, but he will need really good compensation buffs since all his skills imply trading huge chunks of your health pool to be used
His downtime is insanely higher than other tanks, other tanks can constantly be in the fight and deliver much more damage than ball, ball has to come and go and he leaves a huge window for the enemy team to act
That is genuinely the problem, get him down to one, click a button and even with 5 people hitting him, he still gets away, and you dont even get ult for hitting the shield, so he’s gaining mitigation. Either get damage in line with being able to kill him or nerf that ability.
Not saying completely get rid of it, But his survivability in a 1v5 fight is much too high. He can feed all game, not play with his team at all, and not die. Then go on to blame everyone else for not being with him. Thats just bad design, make it so he has to play with his team.
So? Damage over long periods of time isn’t really that important. What’s important is how effective he is when he’s actually engaged. His level of disruption and burst damage makes him really effective. There’s a reason he’s literally everywhere in top500 right now. He’s extremely strong. If his absence for periods of time was a problem he wouldn’t be a very good pick right now.
the whole point of the character is to be alive to have time to do stuff, if he dies fast the rest of the kit has no purpose. Stop obessing with his death and just poke him and keep winning the game
It is, even more in high elo games. Damage over time and more presence in the fight is a constant pressure on the enemy team leaving the perfect window for someone to be finished off
Ball on the other way comes and dives once, is a huge impact but if the enemy endures he can´t do anything anymore for a long time
All other tanks but winston have better burst damage than ball, piledrive + grapple will not do more than 150dmg at the best condition possible and most of the time will do around 110dmg
sigma does 120dmg with his primary
he is good because of his survivability and ability to apply constant pressure, opening windows for picks, without his survivability he is nothing
Moria is a better pick i usually go zen or moria, because for most ball play the life cycle of ball is rollin ground pound, try to get kill if possible rinse and repeat till ult in a way that you cant escape even kiriko, i like heroes i can negate balls ult charge.
Wrecking ball is the 2nd worst designed tank. Never thought i’d fear him but after that buff giving him shields he’s obnoxious as hell. You can’t really punish him unless you’re Sombra. Bring back CC or nerf him
He’s great design IMO but as a DPS and Support he is a pain in the rear end to deal with unless I begrudgingly pick Zenyatta, or pick Brigitte, Bastion, Mei, or Sombra and even still he is a chore to deal with. I feel like a big problem with him as of right now is that he feels impossible to kill at points, he’s able to engage with a pile driver, use his adaptive shields, quickly get out with his mobility, recharge shields and pick up a mega then rinse and repeat.
I think the biggest issue with him lies in having that mobility along with the adaptive shields that can increase his health to 1300(85.7% increase in HP) and to top it off he has no critical hit box to speak of most of the time.
I feel like they simply need to decrease the overhealth he gains from adaptive shields.
I think it is the fact that his kit is most likely better away from his team, where his supports probably wouldn’t want to hang around. but yeah currently he def has the least weaknesses out of all heros, i agree