How can i play ball?

General Discussion
1

I WANT to play ball, but everytime i choose him people get toxic so i switch (pre-match).

I aware he doesnt sync with any tank, and yes - even with dva or winston he doesnt play well. Hes more of a loner, but hes still good tho.

So how do i play him? What if my co tank lock roadhog, should i pass on the ball for this round? Are there any co-tanks that i absolutly must pass on the ball? Any maps? Defence / offence makes a difference?

2

He plays fine with Winston? You just have to coordinate and preferably have an Ana. If you don’t want people to be toxic toward you then it could help to get a Rein buddy to play with. Ball’s best maps in my experience are control(Ilios, Busan, etc) and until you get decent with him he plays better on offense on the other maps than he does on defense.

If they have an insane McCree then you probably want to switch. Same goes for just about any Sombra insane or not unless your entire team is dive and you can coordinate properly. Other than that be really mindful of when you can boop people for environmentals and you might want to practice your aim on him in an aim map from the workshop if you’re on PC or if you have KBM on console.

He’s mostly about making space by disruption and pulling people off to deal with you on the backline. Just don’t go in expecting a ton kills and make extra extra sure your team is close enough to help support you when you do go in or you’ll end up feeding.

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Hog and Ball have great synergy. It is arguably the second best scenario for either of them outside of Rein because… well, obviously Rein is Rein.

Either you deal with the heat or you get out of the kitchen. I get the same exact nonsense when I play Hog, but I make it clear to my team that I do not care by ignoring their salty tears. You need to be able to do that if you want to play Hammy.

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4

Pick Zarya, wait for the Rein pick, then right after the doors open, go ball

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  1. Remember you’re a tank. So make space. Boop the rein and zar on the enemy team back so they gain no value. Boop the dive tanks when they come in. Basically use grapple on CD.
  2. Don’t play him with hog, unless the team is terrible.
  3. Ball synergizes well with more tanks than you think, if you can communicate effectively. Orisa (pull), monkey and dva (dives are easy if the squishies all take 100 dmg from your slam), sigma (boop enemy to keep them off sigma).
    4)Learn how to use mines. I like to use it in one of 2 ways
    On a payload
    In back of the enemy (my team walks up, enemy walks back and dies, or they’re pincered)
  4. SOMBRA IS YOUR ONLY HARD COUNTER. Everything else can be outplayed. Mei freeze doesn’t last long enough, brig bash and Cree stun can miss AND don’t last long enough, hog hook can miss… And if the enemy has 5 CC abilities to counter you, you’re doing good. But if they have sombra, switch unless you are really confident you can still gain value
  5. If you die before the fight starts, or early during the fight a lot, switch. One time is fine, two is iffy, any more is bad. Remember, you’re the fastest hero in the game. You should rarely die, even in fights your team loses.
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Oh, and as you get better and are more able to do things on autopilot you’ll probably want to start incorporating Ball techs.


The easiest one by far is piledrive off an edge to save a grapple. Next wall jump is pretty easy and there are a number of different ways to double boop.

Taking advantage of some rollouts can also win you games. Hamster is the Doomfist of tanks, so if you’re familiar with Doom then you know how important this stuff can be for securing kills and causing chaos unexpectedly.

Really though for the first couple dozen hours I’d just worry about getting ability rotation down, not flubbing grapples, learning the best times to dive in and who specifically to target. Also don’t be afraid to mute people if they won’t stop whining. You really do need thick skin to play Ball. Other than that it’ll mostly come to you with perseverance.

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7

LMAO :joy::joy::joy:

Thanks guys for all the tips!
Btw, i know how to play ball and im pretty good with him (except hard rollouts where i need to practice). My problem is getting to play him, because toxicity and unsynced co tanks.

Hows that? Its literally the only 2 tanks who cant protect their teamates from damage, making the rest of the team extreamly toxic and underperforming.

Because i dont use mic its very hard for me to coordinate dive attacks as winston/dva/hammond. Winston and dva are easier because they can instantly get where they want, but hammond got his delay to choose a grapple spot and performing the rollout. Beside, dva and winston protect each other, ball doesnt really help the 2nd dive tank, hes just there. I prefer playing him as a loner, getting in and out without commiting.

8

listen, if you aren’t playing meta or a considered stable pick overall, you kinda just have to find your own way instead of listening to the behest of others.

they won’t accept you until you make them accept you.

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9

Number one rule:
Get the hamster dance and the lunge emote. Use them in front of those lowlife that got toxic toward you asking you to switch.
Then, once in the field, make them regret that toxic behaviour.

Learn the techniques and all fancy spots and boops on the Internet and remember, playing ball can be hard but the principles are very easy.
You have to disrupt enemy formations, be annoying and your team will have easy kills. That’s your job.

Think like this: my enemy team should finish this game writing angry threads in the forum about nerfing Hammond, if they don’t you have not accomplished your mission.

Another way you know you’re doing good is when the dps switch into Sombra. In that case you have to kill Sombra and dance over her corpse. This is not so easy actually, if the Sombra is good you should just switch.

Another tip: is there a Widow on the enemy team? That guy should have nightmare about you tonight. Forget everything else, she just have to die. Sometimes I spawn camp Widows as Hammond.

Last tip: learn how not to die. You have high mobility and shields, it’s a very good kit for your survivability.

Oh another one: try always to get highground and piledrive the enemy and not hook-piledrive. In that case you can hook after piledrive and escape. Beware of stun heroes while you piledrive.

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You just press right click, go into the air, press crouch into enemy team, pew pew pew when you land and die.
Then come back from spawn and repeat. :hamster:

This is what Hammonds on my team do so I guess that’s the way :joy:

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11

I just played some games on quick play (i never play quick play) to practicr ball before comp.

After one of the games ended i suddenly heard “round one completed” and im like “oh crap its comp and i didnt knew!!” :rofl::rofl:

Now i understand why my team was toxic toward me and the other tank, we played road-ball. Anyway, that round as ball i got 3 gold medels for dmg and elims, and only 4 deaths. Is that mean i did well, or just my dps didnt got enough space? What stat should i except as ball?

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12

I love playing ball (hmm…that doesn’t sound right, lol), but you have to be careful because it is very easy to get gold dmg, elims as ball … but absolutely do nothing to help your team. Bear in mind I’m high gold-plat player, so different ranks will have different results (and ways to judge, IMO).

A low # of deaths is generally a sign that you did well, but you also need to have a feel for how often you are ‘feeding’ the enemy (optimally, most of the enemies damage should be on hitting your shield … giving them little ult charge). If you are constantly leaving a fight at 40-100 health, then you’re giving the enemy a LOT of ult charge and may be hurting more than you’re helping (if you go back to your healers, at least you are also giving THEM ult charge…but ball tends to get mega health packs a lot).

I generally look at how team fights are going … if we’re holding our own in most team fights and if I’m keeping their bullies from bullying our front line, then I feel I’m doing well as ball. If I’m getting gold dmg+elim and we’re still losing team fights (or our other tank is being bullied), then I’m not doing my job and either need to refocus priorities or switch.

13

Hammond is one of those heroes that can either be really good, or really bad. I’m trying to learn him as well, so take my advice with a grain of salt!

  • Roadhog generally won’t play well with Hammond, unless you’re a hamster god :hamster:
  • Communicate! As Hammond, you won’t really find much value out of your plays unless your team can capitalize on the chaos you cause. The best way to do that is by communicating with them!
  • Seriously. Piledrive often. It’s one of your key abilities for securing kills. You’ll lock enemies into a predictable trajectory for you to easily shoot 'em up.
  • Also, if you’re deploying your ult in midair above the enemy team, be sure to hit with the Piledrive afterwards, too! They’ll stay in the air just long enough for the mines to activate, leading to at least one guaranteed hit.
  • Swinging endlessly around an objective can be annoying, but in certain situations, it’s the most useful thing you can do. Just be sure not to do it for too long, as the enemy will quickly be able to take advantage of your predictable path.
  • Learn how to double boop! This is done by grappling at a low angle and speeding towards your target, then temporarily pressing S right after you hit them (so you lose the “fire” effect), then pressing W again to regain a bit of speed (regaining the “fire” effect and allowing you to boop the same target again). You can really mess with the enemy that way. Bonus points of you hit their main tank!
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14

How’s so? He’s fine with pretty much every tank as long as you can coordinate with your team (even without having coms but just with gamesense).

You distract the enemy team by going behind them constantly and rolling into them to push them around, don’t piledriver everytime but instead try to do it once your team pushes or when you have mines.
Try to identify openings where you can get an easy frag on a 200hp target, healers if possible.
Be aware of the abilities that can get you killed like sleep dart, freeze, shield bash, etc; if you get hit by one of them you grapple as far as possible and roll away back to your team or a health pack.
If you can do all that consitently you’re good, there’s a few techs you can learn on top to really master Hammond, watch KarQ’s video with Yeatle for that.

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15

The core thing you need to understand about Wrecking Ball, is that there are situations where Winston/D.va are objectively better than Wrecking Ball, and there are situations where Wrecking Ball is objectively better than Winston/D.va.

Winston and D.va are strong when you can lock your opponent out of a map advantage, and they are unable to slip to another strong map advantage. On the other hand, Wrecking Ball is strong when your opponent can easily choose to slip to other strong map advantages.

Another thing to understand about Wrecking Ball, is that you are supposed to play him like Zarya; you are supposed to do damage to your target, so that target can’t focus your team. This means tanks (and Reaper) are bad to target, as they can’t focus your team whenever they wish (short range), but hitscan heroes are excellent to target.

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16

You do what half the playerbase discovered makes the game more fun years ago, you turn voice and text chat off and play whoever the hell you want.

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17

Didnt understand that part.
I actually feel ball is the best at forcing people out of map advantage. He can boop off high ground, out of cover, out of position, etc. And he can get everyway incredibly easy, much easier then dva and winston.

18

buy lvl 25 account, place below your actual elo (as low as you can) and enjoy yourself and comms “smurf” “get back to your elo” from hardstucks. If someone thinks they belong to the elo it doesn’t mean this elo belongs to them :smirk:

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I know, that is exactly why I said that.

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Oh i guess i just didnt understand the sentenceđŸ˜