Playing against ball feels terrible. You get booped all around, all game. You get piledrived, then shot, then he leaves. You know he’s coming back soon. You know he is coming back at 130 mph in 4 seconds, and that he’s going to boop you again. He might just boop you while fleeing. Or he might use his forever mines, then boop you into it.
His mines last forever. He got insane movement. If you are a healer (besides Brig, I guess), there is nothing you can do without peel. You can sleep in, sure, but do he really care if the team is not peeling? No, he doesn’t.
More generally, I guess my point is that there is too much booping around in the games I play these days. It made the game feel less tactical, imo. And — while I know it is a very personal opinion — less enjoyable.
My problem with Ball is in general he’s a high mobility hero. This means that even if you kill him, and it generally takes team work between two or more people to kill One Hammond…
He will be back in no time at all. Much like Doomfist it’s nearly worthless to try and kill Ball. Just do your best to spread out and ignore him. Half his value is disruption and trying to chase him down.
it is very annoying on attack though to have a near endless stall due to how hard it is to kill Ball now most CC hero’s were nerfed.
Unfortunately Ball is one of those heroes that requires you to pick a hard counter if you want to actually adequately deal with him. That, or massively outplay him or actually have a team that focuses him.
Even then, his speed combined with help from his team can mitigate this approach.
I think Ball is very clearly over-tuned, but I’m not sure what we could do to make him bearable, but not ruin the fun from his perspective.
I greatly appreciate that you make it known and remind readers that this is indeed a personal opinion.
I’d like you to consider an opposing view. I have been a tank main exclusively for a long time, about 4ish seasons b4 2-2-2 drop to be more exact. For the longest time I had major issues, as a tank player, getting to snipers or very long range projectiles users when playing tank.
D.Va/Winston were always meh at it and got worse as they received nerfs and the game was hit with the global boop change that severally limited their ability to dive targets.
WB was released and It felt like a breath of fresh air to me as a tank player. I had a reliable way to reach backline targets my team can’t or wont deal with, I was given a tank with a hit scan weapon with actual range, and he has the ability to be self sufficient.
WB’s addition was the reason I stayed as a tank player. I was pretty much fed up with Rein/Orisa’s limited design and how broken the other half of the tanks were.
Also as a WB, I can tell you that proper WB play is by far the most tactical play style a tank player can use. The feeder ball thing became a thing because if you don’t know how, when, and why you boop and slam you are going to likely just be feeding. If not the dps/tanks with your death then the supports who are easily healing the minimal cleave damage you do without proper team support/coordination.
As a WB I also love messing up other WB’s when I see one. He has very clear counters you can use. Trying to force a losing playstyle against designed to trump you is just doing yourself a disservices.
No, his design is perfect in a environment where tanks can be easily dove and melted.
That combined with that fact that the years+ of nerfs to all other tanks have left them in the state so bad, they can’t reliably counter WB.
Blizz nerfed tanks so bad they have no proper way to deal with him. It’s normal that the tank who receives no nerfs becomes meta (Orisa+Hog after Goats for example). WB is the last tank standing. They need to fix tanks, not nerf more.
This is the first time WB has essentially officially been considered Meta (and he still isn’t THE meta)
I don’t see how a hero who has historically been consistently a middle tier tank at best, can all of a sudden be called broken. Especially when his rise is tracable to the steady and continues nerfing of tanks.
I didn’t say “buff” tanks. I said balance them. To be honest, to balance tanks, your going to need slight reworks on older tanks. And absolutely need to revert that horrible global boop change that neutered Winston and D.Va.
Where is this opinion based from? Where is it formulated?
There are opinion and there are also facts. When people say tanks are dead a great deal of them are expressing feeling and emotions on how poorly it feels to play them. Hence the tone.
Tanks are still the most impactful but that is by design. This brings up the problem of the 2-2-2 system that a supporter such as myself did not think or even fathom. When you lock in roles, roles are no longer balanced against each other but against their own role. This is being seen in the tank role. They can nerf tanks into nothingness but as long as tanks are balanced against other tanks then it doesn’t matter to the game and team as a whole. You will always have 4 tanks in a game.
The result is that tanks feel horrible for the individual while not effecting the feeling of balance for the other 2 roles.
Edit: So in the current state of the game WB is meta due to tanks weakness. So even when they nerf him hard, he will still be meta because the other tanks have been nerfed beyond what they were designed to do. Once WB doesn’t fall out of the meta people will ask for more nerfs completely “killing” the hero for tank players.
They severally nerf Hog not very long ago but because of the state of tank balance it didn’t impact his spot in the meta. Why? Because Hog, a tank who has been considered one of the worst since the release of the game, is not OP or the problem. It’s their balancing of tanks.
To you. Ask forum goers what the meta is and you’ll have wildly different responses depending on rank and opinion.
Over-tuned doesn’t mean they are automatically meta. They can be over-tuned but just slept on. There are other options.
Where is it formulated?
Ball is able to do so much so easily so quickly. He can disrupt, CC, kill, set up kills, draw incoming fire, and distract the enemy all at once in just a single instance of his “combo” (Swing in, pile drive, shoot, roll away), and he doesn’t even give the enemy much if any ult charge for their troubles.
It really seems like you are obligated to run CC to even punish him for this, and that, to me, is over-tuned.
How is this any different then when dps run Snipers? Tanks are obligated to run barriers or their team gets murdered.
Or how supports are obligated to run a support with enough healing burst to keep tanks alive in certain comps?
Although the easiest way to counter WB is CC, it’s not the only way. As a 400hr WB main I know how to counter WBs. Having your team take multiple angles on a WB is torture. Try diving a Zen when he has you discorded as you engage and then your getting hit by a Baptist and McCee set up away from the Zen but have LOS on him.
IT.IS.IMPOSSIBLE! (or just reallllly hard).
The tactic is simply to rotate around your most vulnerable team members and melt the ball when he peeks. No chasing needed (not far anyway)
WB wasn’t “slept on”. What has happened is since 2-2-2 WB’s counters have been getting gutted.
Brig was gutted- Lucio isn’t meta due high TTK
Mei-Reaper-Sombra-Doom-and a few others- Lost a lot of power making snipers stronger (the heros WB is best at dealing with)
Pre WB but global boop changes made it more difficult and less reliable for Winston/D.Va to compete against WB as a viable dive tank alterative. WB can recover after being booped away on engagement, Winston/D.Va really cant. D.Va would hard counter ball if she had that revert+ DM back.
Barrier Reduction-Less value on barriers means WB lack of barrier hurts less. Plus the longer CD’s+Less HP means WB’s mines find more value in barrier shattering and WB can dance around tanks barrier CD’s to gun then down (Sigma is so bad agaisnt WB now, 3 full seconds of free pew pew)
Halt, Rock, Shatter, Grav nerfs allow WB more freedom (you actually cannot Halt a moving WB his speed is faster then the tethers, he can get tagged on one end of halt and speed through the entire sphere without getting pulled)
Hog’s nerfs were the final piece. His ammo and damage nerf means even on good hooks there is far less follow up then before. Also the distance change to make up for the dmg and pattern change of Hog’s gun places WB in weird places a lot.
Do you get what I am saying? I’m not saying WB isn’t statistically OP atm. I’m saying that nerfing him isn’t the answer to the problem. You are simply treating a symptom of the problem that will only create a worse symptom or possibly create an unintended effect like reducing the tanking population.
much as i hate ball myself he does deserve to be in the game lol. yea hes annoying but there are ways to counter him. he did recieve a nerf recently so blizzard is taking steps to balance him. just wait and see if he dominates as top pick tank for a couple of more seasons maybe he might get a slap on the wrist again. no one escapes the nerf hammer
just have to get use to countering him if you dont like him that much. give sombra a try
Yeah, and what happened to the philosophy of: if the character makes people switch to hard counters, they must be nerfed, for example:
-Pharah
-Sombra
-Symmetra
-Mercy
-Moira
-Tracer
-Genji
-D.Va
etc.
Widow doesn’t knock around the team, CC them into the air, have shields, or have insane movement.
She also has a pretty heavy aim requirement to get any value.
We aren’t obligated to do that. I’ve won many games without burst heal.
This is exactly my point. Either stack CC or literally coordinate your entire team to deal with a single enemy.
That doesn’t strike you as over-tuned?
We can agree to disagree there.
I read the points, I just disagree honestly.
I see what you’re trying to saw and where you are coming from. I just have a disagreement, and that’s fine.
Do you think your bias for Ball is causing you to think nerfing him isn’t the right decision?
I’m not saying dumpster him, but I think stuns not being as strong is good, but only if Ball is changed accordingly.
I like the direction the game is going, as controversial as that may sound, and I think Ball is next.
Again, I’m not saying he’s OP. Just over-tuned. I think just changing some numbers slightly could make a world of difference and keep him fun and effective.
Know that my goal is not to delete Ball or make him “un-fun” to play.
Brig actually made this game terrible. Ball is just the cherry. While I think he is fun to play he has speed, an ult that covers a huge area for a long period of time.
They just need to re think their hero design philosophy.