Hammond balance ideas

Personally, when playing as Hammond, the biggest thing is that when you swing into an engagement you tend to loose a lot of hp. granted when you piledrive you can get a ton of shielding. but even then if a fight is won you either were pocketed by healers or scraped by with almost no health left. maybe a way to help this issue is to give hammond a damage reduction while in ball form. similar to what they did with bastion. Because there are so many counters this will allow hammond to manage when making that initiation.

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Our intention was that Hammond would use Adaptive Shield in these situations.

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But then youā€™re forced out of ball to use the sheild, and it doesnā€™t flow well.

Maybe if hammond isnā€™t grappling, let him stay in ball form?

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yay u guys are in the forums

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The shields give him Roadhog health temporarily, while he has no damage reduction or shields and still is as fat as Roadhog :stuck_out_tongue:

Right now he feels more like a flank and runaway ā€œtankā€, which just feels odd with him :stuck_out_tongue:

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And it is my intention to believe that when everyone says ā€œlooseā€ in a video game forum they actually mean ā€œloseā€ in these situations.

Adaptive auto-correct for common gamer vocabulary would do wonders in the world we live in today.

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You do realise popping Shield pulls him out of Ball mode, right?

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ROASTED

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It still feels a bit ā€˜badā€™ to be forced out of ball mode to enable adaptive shields though, especially if you canā€™t afford to have your grapple go on cooldown just because you need adaptive shields.

The reload timer being restarted, instead of continued if you go into ball mode also feels really finicky. It can cause you to have zero ammo just because you didnā€™t time the arbitrary switch from 0 to 80 right during the reload when switching to ball mode. It feels really clunky.

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Itā€™s a good suggestion but we like to ensure that there are trade-offs for heroes. Wrecking Ball needs to prioritize mitigation vs. mobility.

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Were you guys like stuck in a basement for a few months or something? glad to see some dev comments after ages.

I kind of figured that would be the reasoning. It could potentially make it too easy to get in and out if you were able to shield while in ball form.

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Man you are beaing way more active than usually!
Thanks for that <3!
Have a good day.
I feel like hammond is a bit to weak right now, I think maybe making reload faster, and maybe the adaptive shield shouldnā€™t take you out of ball.
Or maybe increse the damage that the hook does at max speed?

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Oh flipping heck a dev response! Iā€™m over the lunar colony right now!

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You could literally just go right back into ball mode. It is not as though Hammond is lacking for mobility, it is relatively easy to escape even with the counter-intuitive design.

I was hoping he would get some more armor in place of base HP

I do like your idea Jeff of how shield is balanced in that manner.

I do think Hammond needs something a bit though more to feel a bit stronger, unless you specifically want him to be a high skill ceiling + communication within team to be most effective hero, then Iā€™d say heā€™s pretty good at that currently. You guys rated him 3 stars after all.

Nah, even the 2 seconds it takes to swing up, press Pile Driver, and then E was enough to get you killed. Youā€™d get 2-3 good plays a match, but 99% of the time youā€™re charging around trying not to get shot.

Hammond needs a damage buff. He hardly has impact at all. He is not a glass cannon, he is just glass.

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I disagree. I actually think he does quite a lot of damage.

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The general strategy is:

  • Swing in
  • [Optional] Activate ult
  • Piledriver
  • Adaptive shields
  • Use quad cannons to finish off some low HP targets

At this point your grapple should be off cooldown and you can use it again to escape. Iā€™ve been doing this very reliably for a while now.

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