I keep seeing all these videos and posts about how ball is supposedly the next big meta tank. I’ve been trying to learn him and I’m just not understanding.
Mei exists and is on nearly every team in plat/diamond. A single burst of her primary fire is enough to slow you down to a crawl, stop your fireball momentum and make it impossible to escape. Oh, not to mention her wall. If the enemy team has a mei, playing ball is absolutely miserable.
Then there’s the billions of other CC’s in the game. Sleep dart. Orisa pull. Flashbang. Junk trap. Any doomfist ability. Brig bash. Roadhog hook. I can keep going.
I just… don’t understand. Maybe I’m playing him wrong. But I can never find a time where I can SAFELY land a good piledriver. Or just bash through the team. Every comp will have multiple CC’s to stop me in my tracks and there is nearly never a time when all of them are on CD.
Then there’s the damage output. MAYBE I’m able to dive a hanzo. I get a good piledriver on him, but unless EVERY SINGLE BULLET that I shoot connects with him, he manages to sneak away with 10 hp. I’m aware that this is lack of mechanical skill on my end, but I just feel his damage, even upclose, is a little lackluster especially with his relatively small clip.
I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. Can someone clear this up for me? I know it’s a misunderstanding on my end. I just… don’t get it. I want to play ball but EVERY team has multiple CC’s for him. How is he “meta”?
Hammond is my favorite Tank to play, I actually feel like I have a big impact in my games unlike when playing other tanks. Just yesterday I had around a 10 win streak and went from 2500 to 2800. I will explain the different things below:
I completely agree that his clip is small and slow to reload. I have had many moments where someone was barely 1 HP but was able to escape before I got closer or was able to reload. Usually ANY healing done to a target you are attacking means most of the time they they will live =[
Aim
Aim is not as important on a hero like Hammond compared to Widow, Soldier, Ashe since you will most of the time be rolling around in your ball form.
Though It has helped me TREMENDOUSLY to train my aim using Kovaaks Aim Trainer and therefor have a much easier time quickly eliminating a target I have piledrived.
I definitely suggest to train your aim to kill an injured target faster. (Mechanical skill as in aim does carry over to other heroes and games, so that is a great extra!)
Roll outs
I highly suggest that you learn the roll outs for each map so you can get to point fast or get behind the enemy to either boop them out of their shields or remove them from high ground and displace them. I will give a couple of examples:
When playing on Lijang Tower: Night Market, a fast and great roll out is to quickly grapple around the big building at the spawn (where the void is) to immediately get to the point in a matter of seconds compared to going straight ahead from spawn. I go through the objective and then flank the enemy and boop them towards my team when they all meet in the middle.
Another example is on temple of Anubis (Attack), I like to quickly grapple through the first choke on A and hide underneath the bridge which is connected to the high ground the enemies usually stand on. I wait for my grapple cooldown to be ready and then grapple up and push the enemy team towards my team off the high ground and piledrive them. That alone can result in a won team fight.
To get a better idea of how Hammond should be played I suggest watching pro players such as Yeatle and Harbleu play him =]
Idk what your sources are, but he doesn’t seem that meta, for basically the reasons you listed yourself.
Mei is basically the strongest DPS rn. Along with Hanzo. Both beat Ball pretty squarely.
If you’re looking for pointers, my advice is to avoid the enemy DPS, unless there’s something you obviously counter, such as a Widowmaker. Even damage heroes that don’t necessarily counter you are probably not worth your time.
Ball’s main focus should usually be the tanks, from my knowledge. Boop them around, get ez damage from your guns into their thick hides, that sort of thing. Your goal should be to force them out of position so your team can collapse on them.
Stay away from Mei and other clumps of enemies unless you’re looking for fat shield
Go for displacement, take the attention of 2-3 people to alleviate the stress at the choke.
If you see an isolated enemy who you beat in a 1v1, take that 1v1.
Sure, ball is technically countered by Mei. Thing is, in solo queue, there’s plenty of room to outplay your opponents to the point where counters are not as big a deal as you think.
My bad
Sorry for the late answer.
A little update: I continued to play Hammond today and my win streak increased from 10 to 14! I am now Diamond in Tank at 3070 SR. (I climbed 500 SR in 2 days xD )
Anyways to answer your questions:
When playing Hammond you want to appear at certain times and disrupt the enemy from behind and knocking them everywhere. You need to make a small notice in your brain of which of the enemy heroes either has a stun (McCree, Ana, Roadhog, etc) or counter you completely (Mei or Sombra).
If they have a Mei for example then you need to play much more cautiously and only go in if you can get away fast again.
Sombra is much harder match up as it takes only one hack to make you completely useless. Though you can still play relatively fine against her. Just make shoot in small bursts when she starts hacking so you both cancel her hack and save some ammo if she insists on hacking you.
If the enemy team has got BOTH Mei and Sombra then I highly suggest that you switch off Hammond to something like Roadhog or Zarya to counter them.
You don’t let the enemy see you coming and don’t overstay your welcome. Mei is a hard counter but you can usually avoid her since her range is pretty short but if there are other counters too, I’d just switch. That’s basically how I avoid getting stun locked all the time. As for how to be effective, I think Abdullah explained it pretty well.
It’s clickbait. There is so little news in the Overwatch community that most YouTubers will just scrounge whatever bull**** they can and shovel it into one pointless video. Such as saying Hammond is meta.
Hammond is a dive tank…probably the best dive tank…high mobility and zoning. You’re right, you stay away from mei’s point if view…but nobody can cc you if you got them when they can’t see you…you can displace a whole enemy hiding behind a shield and make it easy for team to dive enemy. You can zone them out with mines…putting enemy between a wall and another ult essentially. He’s a durable tank that doesn’t require a lot of resources…he goes around taking up packs… preferably in the enemy zone…negating their use of it. His job is to cuase chaos in the back line…if Anna is wasting sleeps, nades on him…she can’t use them against team.
this. Hammond is strong. If you need evidence of that, look at top 500 for the tank role. Almost every player plays sigma, orisa, hammond. Now, you cant always play him in place of those other two, but thats clear data that hes the next strongest tank after them atleast at the highest levels of play. Watch some pro ball player streams where they play against mei and sombra and youll see how they play around them.
Watch Harblu. Also, from what I’ve heard you should almost never be pulling out your guns. You’ll get most of your ult charge from running through the enemy and just pile drives.
What may be a good rule of thumb (I dont know, I have like 2 hours on ball) is the only transform while pile driving if you are diving a single target
