Yeah this is honestly a huge problem for me when playing him. He becomes so vulnerable when he’s forced out of ball form that it honestly negates the advantages the shields were supposed to give him in the first place…
1 Like
He obvious does. the question is do YOU realize that it was intended?
The problem is the shield doesn’t protect you from CC so you become a sitting duck for mei, flashbang, brig, or whatever. The idea is using the shield to clash in and create some space and then pop out of ball mode at the right time.
Now that people are used to Hammond he gets focused down pretty hard and is countered by a large pool of heroes.
His counters used in any combination tend to shut him down pretty easily.
- Reaper
- Roadhog
- Mei
- Symmetra
- Pharah
- Junkrat
- Sombra
- Bastion
- Ana
- Brigitte
- Zenyatta
In my opinion Adaptive shield needs to be looked at the theoretical 1,300 health from his shield is rarely ever reached. Either the entire enemy team has to be bunched up like idiots or sitting in a Graviton Surge. I think the 7 meter radius needs to be bumped up to 10 or 12 meters so you don’t need to be point blank surrounded by the entire enemy team. Maybe even change more of his health into armor. He could also use either a larger ammo count or slightly increased damage.
Like others have said being forced out of ball mode to use the adapative shield doesn’t feel right. It really hurts the flow of movement and with his grappling claw being so buggy with attaching to surfaces it just kills his mobility that much more.
One only needs to point to Hanzo and Ana as two prime examples of this balance philosophy failing. I’m all for heroes having trade-offs but some heroes either have too many or not enough.
4 Likes
Ball form itself is damage reduction since I can’t shoot your head.
Perhaps you are overextending too far away from healers, I notice this a lot with people that play Hammond.
1: She does not need a rework. just number balancing and making Shield-bash have a hack-like effect (obviously for one second)
2: LFG is here and what you proposed is a terrible idea.
3: Not a suggestion. Either way people don’t play tanks because they are rag-dolls in this meta and feel unrewarding. People do play support.
4: Not a suggestion. It is QP and you should be able to pick what you want. It is meant to be fun. In comp you have LFG. Use it.
What is the trade-off for Hanzo?
3 Likes
Yep. I see it all the time. match starts. Hammond swings out way ahead of the rest of the team. piles drives into the entire enemy team and gets melted just as the rest of the team is catching up.
I don;t think people realize how fast Hammond can get around and end up in 1v6 situations way too often.
1 Like
I’m at the point of doing anything short of getting banned if it means Bastion is finally fixed
Great post!
It’s not just any combination but that these heroes counter him fairly hard too.
I agree. His adaptive shields is built around potential and not practicality. Maybe it needs a much shorter CD but for every target that buffs the shield the CD is increased slightly. This would allow him to fight 1v1s more efficiently without needing down time for the 15s to engage again.
Changing his adaptive shields might make him far less punishing. I don’t know why your forced out of ball form in the first place. It’s such an odd mechanic. The grapple does have some annoying bugs too. I hate how momentum seems to ramp too quickly or stop instantly sometimes but I’m not sure what Blizzard can do about it.
Trade-offs are important but it’s to what degree and context that matters. Wrecking ball gets punished pretty hard for any mistake. There are some changes that could help this as well. We’ll have to wait and hope Blizzard hear what we’re saying.
Didn’t read through the entire thread so sorry if this has already been said but, I don’t think Pile Drive+AS combo is very effective. Often you want to follow up with your guns to secure a kill and using AS allows them the time to escape.
I find bowling through a team popping out after I achieved the damage and knockback I wanted to AS is much better. It’s much more fluid and allows me much better placement for escape if needed.
I rarely initiate with Pile Drive but rather use it in the middle of fights to displace , disorient, or finish off key targets.
If you’re trying to grapple out of a bunch of enemy, then you’re doing it wrong.
Swing > pile drive > shields > roll out (of the dog pile) > grapple
That’s exactly what he is unless engaging with the team.
LRN2HAMMOND
No, you ult and then pile driver because the mines will be active by the time they come down from being tossed up in the air.
He has no crit box in roll mode.
fixed it for you
lol no… that would be insane
ammo count is fine. If you can aim you melt things. (I can’t anymore, I’m old, but when I’m “on” things just die in seconds)
No, because you have to have some risk-reward built in. Blizzard’s philosophy has always been about making meaningful choices. Do I just try and roll out, or do I pop out and shield and either fight or get out. Just be happy that ammo auto-reloads while in ball form.
That really depends on how many of them are around you, which specific heroes they are, etc. Like I said just above, it’s about making meaningful choices. Do I just try and roll out, or do I shield and then try and roll out, or shield and fight.
I will say that if you want to shield and get out then hit shields facing away from them. I’m almost 100% positing you can’t get headshot crits from the back.
This is going to happen sometimes no matter what. It’s very dependent on the enemy comp. If you get any combo of mei/mccree/brigitte your odds of survival even with shields is going to be 50/50. If you get a single Sombra your odds drop to approximately 20%
No, he becomes like every other hero in the game, except with a teeny-tiny crit box.
It’s not supposed to.
or…not ? It’s a calculated risk whether to do that or not depending on the comp you see. Yes, doing that blindly is asking for an insta-gib.
I generally have no problems with that as shown here:
Sombra is the only absolute hard counter to Hammond. The rest are annoyances unless backed up by 2+ other people.
You really, really should. Or rather, you should initiate with a swing and then piledrive > AS and roll out to a good position to quad cannon or just get the hell out.
Perhaps in a coordinated comp match it works better with proper support but so far my experience only spans QP where initiating a fight as Hammond with this Combo often ends in me being dead seconds after pile driving.
Hammond with a 12 second cooldown on his shield ability is not insane to me. As mentioned before. No matter what, that dude dies fast. Only way he has longer survival is if there is a Brigitte and a Torb being played. Getting more armor increases his survivability.
Sombra does hard counter Wrecking ball. She’s not the only one though. Take a closer look at Haze33E’s list:
Bastion is certainly a hard counter. Wrecking ball can’t knock him out of turret form and lacks the damage to kill him unless he stays in recon form. High damage really hurts Wrecking ball. Heroes like Reaper, Pharah, Junkrat and even Sym can all punish him with burst. That’s not hard to do considering how close range Wrecking ball plays in order to disrupt properly.
Look at Mei for another example. Wrecking ball has great mobility but his size make him a very easy target to freeze quickly. Denying him his movement is an easy way to kill him and almost all the remaining heroes on the list do that in some form: Hog’s hook, Sym’s turrets, Ana’s sleep dart, McCree’s flash bang and Brigitte’s shield bash.
Zen is the only hero on the list that counters him through a different means. The discord orb renders his aggressive movement and inability to take critical damage useless. Ana’s grenade can deny healing as well.
Wrecking ball is a powerful hero but chances are after a few weeks to a month he’ll be considered on the weak side. Once the majority of players catch on to his vulnerabilities he’ll be unable to be the disruptor he is now.
Haha, except he’s still twice the size of other heroes. The critbox doesn’t really matter against tanks.
4 Likes
Bastion is a generic passive counter to any heroes.
The rest of them cannot one-size-fits-all solo Hammond. Not even Mei. They need to have 2+ people with them to reliably kill him, else he will roll+grapple away after cc. Low health, but still alive.
- he’s not
- he has a massive healthpool with on-demand shielding.
maybe you could add a tradeoff for brig’s stun?
LOL NO
So what are Hanzo’s tradeoffs? Are you for real?
1 Like
That’s why this game is dying sry but it’s true I played about 700 hours of it and even the Discord community I’m in who used to play it a lot doesn’t care about this game anymore.
It’s just so pointless to have stupid teamcomps.
I won’t waste more time on this situation.