Every new hero, perk, and/or change to the game in the past few seasons has indirectly nerfed ball. Ball’s rely’s on his speed and momentum, and there are so many things now that interupt it, it’s become almost impossible to play.
Let’s list the ezpz counters to ball:
Sombra - Hack
Ana - Sleep
Mizuki - Bind
Cassidy - Flashbang + Fan the hammer (you don’t even have to aim)
Mauga - Cage
Lucio - Boop
Brig - Whip shot + Shield bash
Junkrat - trap
Domina - Sonic repulsor
Make the shield major perk base kit, give a new major perk and go from there.
there’s also like a million small cc that can completely screw with his movement
things like random emre grenades
sierra grenades
bastion grenades
junk bombs
mauga overrun
hanzo frost arrows
mei cc perks
even shion’s bike has a small cc on it
the list on goes forever
and that’s not even counting the hard cc that just adds up nonstop as well. now that we have domina cat mizuki and now even dmon, there’s like no end to it
ball needs to just not be affected by a lot of this stuff or he needs his speed back before they nerfed it. he needs something to compensate for the never ending amount of nerfs he’s had
sorry pal no mobility for you
gotta give the “aim” hero a nuclear bomb that prevents you from moving because how else is he gonna deal damage unless the giant ball that takes up 30% of his screen is completely still
Yea, welcome to playing every other tank, the playing field is now fair.
Almost every other tank gets infinitely more value than WB whilst putting half the work
As my Gangsta Girlfriend always says, “ignore the Balls.” Seriously, it works miracles. Push into his team and they will flame him into giving up.
We throwing pity parties now that ball has more than 2 decent counters? Boo hoo.
Ball has a perk that allows him to mitigate CC, sometimes entirely.
It’s a major perk tho, takes too long to get. Easier to just push H in spawn
You’re reaching with these, holy.
Ball is an annoying menace and deserves to be countered before he reaches his major. His skill ceiling is insane.
He needs a rework and a reset to his fantasy. They HAVE to find a way to encourage players that don’t know any better to use his kit for his team. His disruption tools are excellent and in a sense act as his mitigation. I rarely see Wb use grapple to peel for the backline before charging back in or disrupt bruisers by slamming that try to inch in a bit too close to his team.
When someone plays him and just rolls around the map, never in forced team fights - that’s not a tank, that’s a dead weight. Not only this but it denies his healers ultcharge while practically giving them out to the enemy.
Some of the perks theyve given him have just taken him further and further away from being a tank too. His cool quick minilucio teamshield was such a good step but then they nerfed it and then made it worse once it returned as a perk. Also, the perks that give him even more reason to go on a health pack farm are just contributing to his single player mode fantasy.
THEN, what is the point of the double bomb? Like… can we stop just defaulting to making everything more damage when i know there are more creative options.
Unfortunately, I also think to do this he needs to be slowed down - not literally - but he has to have a resource that makes him lose some umph (like a prolonged diva boost or jetpack boost) to make him realize he NEEDS his team, while also adding more depth to his skill ceiling. This is when they can actually get creative with making him into a better, functioning tank.
Also, remember when they got rid of most of the cc when OW 2 started? Look where we are again. didn’t take long lol
Dont forget hook & rocket punch! Though doom is equally if not at worse place than ball atm.
I mean, the hard CC in the game is just severely overtuned.
The fact that we went from the already busted hard stuns in Overwatch 1, to now, where we have Mickey Mouse mechanics in the game, like hinder, where players can just take away your ability to play the game entirely (because they suck) is beyond me.
CC slop, like hindering, can never going to be healthy for the game. (The developers knew that, and they still went ahead and implemented it anyway.) Smh.
Ball makes the game miserable for non-CC heroes = ok.
CC heroes make the game miserable for Ball = not ok.
You can just swap like the other team did.
Ball is sitting at 6th overall by win-rate in comp. There are 9 tanks with a lower win-rate and ball sits above 50%.
He seems to be doing better than he should be. He should be in the same camp as Hog, Orisa and Mauga where he should never be strong. One of the most frustrating tanks to play against and finishes way too many games with 0 deaths. Even if he dies, he’s back in the time it takes most heroes to go get a health-pack.
If anything, they should remove his bubble perk. Why do doom and ball get such strong perks against their main counters and other tanks like Hog and Mauga are left at the mercy of sleep, nade and discord? Make it fair at least. And definitely not part of ball’s main kit.
Its more that still somehow playwrs have no idea how to play WITH a ball.
Although i agree he needs more team utility.
Or a twam has no W key and joins the ball in fights they set up?
Could we increase Hammonds guns falloff from 15-25 meters to 20-35 meters? I don’t see why we shouldn’t when Orisa has infinite range, Mauga can engage from much much farther, and even Rein’s Firestrikes hitting for 125 at any range is ridiculous.
makes the game miserable
Love this frivolous clique meme.
Putting Ball in the same category as Hog, Orisa and Mauga simply because he has a positive win rate is already a flawed argument. A win rate slightly above 50% doesn’t mean a hero is overpowered; it means the hero is, broadly speaking, performing reasonably well. If Ball is sitting around 6th among tanks while nine tanks are below him, that hardly paints a picture of a hero dominating the game.
And yes, Ball can be incredibly frustrating to play against. But frustration and balance are two completely different things. Ball is specifically designed to avoid playing like a Reinhardt and instead create disruption, force cooldowns, take attention away from his team and then get out. A good Ball finishing a game with zero deaths isn’t automatically evidence that he is too tanky. That is literally part of his design. His mobility is his engage, his escape and a major part of his survivability. If you take that away, you aren’t removing some unnecessary advantage — you’re fundamentally nerfing the hero’s identity.
The argument that Ball is “back in the fight before most heroes can even reach a health pack” is also pretty weak. Yes, Ball can return to the fight extremely quickly, but that mobility is what allows him to function in the first place. Other tanks have much stronger traditional frontline presence, while Ball creates space by constantly forcing the enemy to react to him. That’s a different form of tanking, not inherently an unfair one.
As for Adaptive Barrier, that’s actually something you can reasonably debate. The perk does give Ball additional survivability, and I can understand an argument that it might be too strong as a perk. But that is very different from saying Ball himself is fundamentally too strong. And comparing him to Doom and arguing that every tank should have equal access to counterplay is not really how Overwatch works. Different heroes are supposed to have different tools against their counters. The fact that Ana, Discord or Sleep can punish Hog or Mauga doesn’t mean Ball shouldn’t have defensive tools of his own.
If Ball were genuinely overpowered, you would expect him to consistently overperform across ranks, maps, matchups and skill levels. A win rate barely above 50% doesn’t demonstrate that. What it demonstrates is that Ball is viable — and that highly skilled Ball players can get a lot out of him.
And that’s probably the real issue here: Ball can be extremely frustrating when played well. I completely agree with that. But “this hero is frustrating to play against” is not the same argument as “this hero is overpowered.” A good Ball can completely disrupt a game without necessarily dealing the most damage or getting the most kills, and that can feel absolutely miserable for the opposing team. That doesn’t automatically make his kit unbalanced.
So sure, argue that Adaptive Barrier needs to be toned down or that certain aspects of Ball’s survivability could be adjusted. That’s a legitimate balance discussion. But taking a roughly 50% win rate, combining it with “he sometimes finishes games with zero deaths,” and concluding that Ball should be weak like Hog, Orisa or Mauga is not a particularly convincing balance argument.
I didn’t do that at all!! He is in the same category because he is at least as frustrating and annoying to play against as the other 3, and people use that to justify those 3 being the bottom tanks, so why would it not apply to ball as well? The only thing i said about his win-rate is that he is not a bad tank now and does not need the suggested buffs.
Pretty weak argument? It was not an argument. It was a statement. It is part of what makes him so annoying to play against - he almost never dies unless the entire enemy team build around countering him and, if he does die, he’s right back in no time at all. Unlike tanks like Mauga and Hog that only need an Ana to shut them down, a single counter, or even 2, is not enough to have much impact on ball.
I didn’t compare him to doom beyond the fact both ball and doom got a perk that is directly intended to help them against their counters. Other tanks also have hard counters (even harder than ball does) and they got nothing to help them against their hard counters. Why?
Has anyone said he is overpowered? Where? He is middle-of-the-pack (slightly above). He does not need buffs of any kind. He probably does not need nerfs either. But changing his kit to make him more effective while alive, but not so frustrating to kill, would be a QoL change for everyone that is not a ball player.
Again, who said he is overpowered? You seem to make stuff up then present it as if it was an argument that you need to respond to. Nobody said he is OP. Just that he is one of the most frustrating and annoying heroes to play against and should not be a top tank by win-rate, just like they keep other frustrating and annoying tanks down.
There was no balance argument beyond saying he is 6th by win-rate. The rest is just my opinion that the many people who apply the “tank X is so frustrating and annoying and should never be good” should also apply to ball as he is peak for being annoying a frustrating in the tank role.