blizzard should honestly do this
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The current ball change they did is perfect though
The problem of that is, ball will still be able to infinitely stall on the objective against teams who cannot hit him.
The only fair and balanced ball is a stationary ball.
Down. Yes plz. Do this.
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Here are my thoughts on this, since they there are SO many topics on this they get buried.
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What if instead of grapple being a one use ability, it functioned more like pharahs flight (with the fuel being like gas on ODS gear.)
So you have a “fuel” gauge and you can always launch and retract the grapple with no cooldown, but the longer it is out it runs out of fuel and disengages. That way you can use it for mobility, but if you try to hold, it will run out and release. Once its not being used up it fills up with fuel again, just like Pharah. -
Remove the grapple cooldown time so that you are limited to 6 seconds but can regrapple right away again. This makes spin to win much harder to accomplish since you would have to aim and regrapple while dealing with the other team.
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Treat ball like his mortal enemies Mei or Sombra. Put him exactly as he was before months ago… no nerfs at all. but make him like Mei in Ice Block or Sombra in invisible mode where they cannot cap the point until they come out spinning fireball mode.
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Make the grapple time 15 seconds so that you can spin some (and for crying out loud, provide a timer), but not stay permanently.
I’ll shamelessly plug my own solution because I think it’s even less impactful on his gameplay (this one still could ruin some of the more complicated swinging rollouts)
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This would make it even more broke on experienced Ball players, allowing them to quickly do huge damage by restarting their speed (even with single grapple use they can do a double, sometimes triple boop)
Since there’s a “cooldown” after you restart capping, it would be possible to get out of fireball and restart it to keep the stall.
Point 1:
This would better align ball for what everyone wanted him to be and require a decent level of needed experience to master. Not saying it is the ideal solution, it could be altered in decreasing firewall damage somewhat. Honestly how much more or less damaging is a speeding hamster than a bullet.
Point 2:
Honestly if you are spinning on a point and not capping it, you will die pretty quick. But if you must have something you could have a cooloff before starting fireball mode again.
I think one thing that all of the options need to remember is that Ball still needs to be fun to play but not OP. If he does no damage or everything is overly restrictive. People just wont play him… That may be what some people want, but I doubt that is what everyone wants.
There are equally annoying aspects in Overwatch that still exist… Camping bastions, Pharmercy, etc.
I think that this:
Would be a way better option and easier to implement in the current state. “In combat” can be considered just like it happens with Torb’s turret, where you can’t redeploy it if it attacked/was attacked in a few seconds.
I think that could work depending on a few things, that I can already see people screaming about.
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I think the grapple breaks 6 seconds in combat is good, but NO time limit outside of compat, or it could be 6 seconds in combat on a point idk. If the other nerfs are reverted like the spawn grapple cooldown.
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Some have mentioned have it be a destructible object. It DEFINTELY depends on the size of the hitbox of the grapple. If it is too small people will complain. If it is the size of Hammond, it will be a easy target. It should require a fair amount of hitscan or damage to break
People will always complain about stuff. The change affects spin2win which is a problem mostly in the lower ranks, that are the ones that also would miss the infinite time for some tricks and getting back (I’m pretty sure in high ranks instead of hanging around you’d be scouting the enemy and if you grapple out of the map and won’t likely get back in 6 seconds you’d just reset).
Although spawn cooldown annoys me too, I think overall it’s healthier.
Now having the hook be a destructible object… Arguably if you can quick shoot the hook to stop the movement you could just directly shoot him down so he will have less chance to escape.
Shouldn’t all heroes have spawn cooldown resets when leaving spawn. If that is the case for Wrecking Ball. Then shouldn’t if affect all heroes manuverability… No more Lucio Speed, No Soldier Run, No Pharah flight, No Sombra invisibility, etc. Not that I want that to happen, but it is a imbalanced mechanic.
Not that much since Ball rolling without grapple is as fast (maybe faster?) than Soldier running, stealth Sombra. Pharah doesn’t have enough mobility for a stall maneuver. Lúcio’s amp it up maybe for sake of being fair could be put in a smaller cooldown (since I don’t think anyone would be using amped heal in the first 3 seconds of leaving spawn or so). Smaller cooldown mostly because it does require a lot more of technique for a proper stall rollout with Lúcio than with Ball.
Balls rolling isn’t any faster really since his first rollout even pre nerf was directly followed by a 5 second cooldown for his grapple, where you would have to go a much slower speed for 5 seconds before hopefully getting a second good grab…and then having another 5 second cooldown. All the rest of them do not have a limit on their speed that they have to cooldown and re-engage (with the exception of Pharah, but hers has much more endurance.
That’s precisely the reason for it. Ball now takes just a little bit less time than other fast heroes to reach point and stall now, while before he’d be able to do it way, way faster than them.
Considering how defense have a good advantage on 2cp and how a few % extra makes a lot of difference on KoTH maps, it’s reasonable to do that.
Now, maybe this could be changed so the cooldown is smaller/removed depending on the objective conditions (less if you’re defending point B, where you would need the grapple for a proper entrance, plus the objective is already super close, and if objective was already capped by the enemy in KoTH, allowing to regroup faster), but letting him have the speed for the only sake of being able to stall sounds unhealthy IMO. (And I do love the hamster, both as character and playing him)
The spawn cooldown does more than stopping stalls, its stops them from getting back into any battle. It forces you to spawn and then start moving while watching your counter to then start moving again. Also if you remove the other ways to stall, then it makes it kind of moot. If he moves fast to a point, he gets there alone… and dies. All in all I think a good change should tweak a hero, not change a characters gameplay. I agree stall to win is something that people want to see go away, but not at the expense of having to relearn a character, because honestly, people will just abandon the character, and go for another tank. Likely Roadhog, and it will just start the circle over again. I have to get to bed now, but this has been a good conversation. If I see anything new I will try to reply tomorrow.
One of the best ideas I’ve seen on the forums tbh, lets hope by some miracle the developers read this and agree, though I feel like winning the lottery is more likely
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This will likely be a massive buff to ball in higher ranks.
While I’m kinda happy seeing stalling in general suppressed a bit I do think at the very least Hammond players are owed some visual and auditory cues so they can plan the next step once the grapple disconnects. I also think they can revert the spawn nerf and work on a solution to letting them “hang around” without dropping.