I’m sorry, but this rework was a total flop. It feels like it was designed by people who have never played Ball in their lives.
-The grapple retract change is functionally useless. It is super slow and there’s almost no situations where I can see it being remotely important.
-The overhealth shield change is bizzarre, since Ball has to dive into the enemy team, then run back to his own team to give them overhealth… so he hast to stop putting out any pressure in the process, and all of this on his 15 second cooldown. Ball’s whole schtick is pulling pressure and disruption, so this change just runs counter to his kit. He NEEDS his overhealth to survive his engages because his goal is to pull a lot of fire. It’s almost never useful, and whenever it is useful it’s only marginally so.
-The grapple cd change is nice if you whiff a grapple and that’s about it. Functionally useless.
-Mine HP basically ends up… barely ever mattering under any circumstances. There’s not a lot of things that do more than 25 damage but less than 35 damage.
Like, this rework accomplishes literally nothing. Ball still feels like the worst tank in the game. He is still HARD countered by such a huge chunk of the roster that you basically just can’t play him for more than a single round. Removing his kill power in season 9 by upping HP without upping his damage (even though Doom and Winston who have similar types of damage both got buffs to theirs…) was kind of a death nail to an already struggling hero.
There’s a reason literally no one is talking about the Ball rework. Because it wasn’t a rework, and it did pretty much nothing.
You can fly as Ball super fast now when you retract mid-swing that will definitely make him viable, overpowered even!! just you WAIT for those World Series Ball comps!! Sombra will be no more!! Positive win rates!!! TTK at an all time low!!! Like, you can FLY AND HANG FROM THE CEILING IT’S GONNA BE SO BROKEN!!!1!1!1!1
The ball changes give him more options and make him more versatile. However, ball was already a high skill hero and most people honestly are terrible at OW and can’t possibly learn to make use of these changes in fast order.
One of the biggest buffs is not losing grapple cooldown for being interrupted mid dash before reaching top speed.
As Brigitte, I can shield bash or boop Ball before he gets up to max speed screw up his roll out timer because he’s now forced to have to rack up speed or be stuck with a 5sec cooldown on roll out.
NOW. He can drop grapple to move around max speed on the ground for a second, then reapply grapple. Without having to suffer a massive slow down trying to come up to max speed.
The ball shield transfer is useful to say dash into a bunch of enemies from behind the. Knock them towards your allies, then transfer shields to them to engage in closer combat with extra health. Instead of say you throw a reaper into your team point blank and they hvae no extra health.
The mine changes to extra health means many of the 50dmg moves no longer destroy mines.
“Overall, does this solve the problems wrecking ball has? I don’t think so. It doesn’t solve the problem of the enemy team plays a specific comp and all of the sudden your hero’s not good… I don’t know if it generally makes wrecking ball more flexible.”
Direct quote from the video.
Also: “Let’s say you go in, you slam, you get the shields, you do the fight thing… It’s a little awkward to roll back to your team to give them the shields. A bit predictable.”
Are the changes some good QoL? yes
Do they make him feel more fun? yes
Do they really make him any better in the game? no
Do they address any problems ball had? no
Between the retractable grapple, wall jumps, rolling backward off high ground, and jumping off something like a payload, they might as well just let him piledriver from the ground at this point.
Grapple retract helps you not kill yourself on accident and allows you to take sharp corners easier. It also allows for different launch angles from high up walls, but all that is advanced stuff you’d need to figure out a piece at a time.
Overhealth redistribution allows Hammond to better assist teammates being pounced on. It’s not something you’ll use all the time, but if you’re actually trying to intentionally protect your team, this change can be a game changer.
Grapple cooldown refund doesn’t exist if you never mess up a grapple. Do you never mess up grapples? It’s a pretty great change.
Mine hp buff means Doomfist’s seismic slam no longer one-shots the whole minefield. I’d say that’s a pretty good buff.
The changes didn’t affect his matchups into anybody but Doomfist, but they do make Hammond a straight up better and easier to play character without making him significantly stronger or easier. The “rework” (if you can call it that) was a massive success in my book, I was hoping they wouldn’t change his playstyle and they didn’t.
You can use the retractable grapple to get to high ground without incurring the longer cooldown. That’s something. The infinite duration also means you could retract up to a ceiling or wall and wait for enemies to pass underneath, though I don’t know how useful that’ll really be.
Have you even watched Yeatle trying to play Hammond? It’s mixed results at the best of times. Pretty much where Hammond already was - situational and heavily team dependent.
I’m a ball main and love the changes. If you can’t make retract work for you it’s just a skill issue, I retracted under a lifeweavers flower swooped up and killed him. I just wish Sombra didn’t ruin my fun
Sure, I’ve been dropping by his channel every night since the patch to see how and what he’s doing. The things he does with the help of the new changes can be mind boggling sometimes and it’ll take time for this type of tech to trickle down to the rank and file players. Is it enough for him to keep onetricking Ball, like in the past? Don’t know, possibly not. However, the assertion that the patch did nothing for Ball is a priori false.
