Not at all…
Once out of ammo, you don’t usually want to manually reload but transform into a sphere and grapple a wall (or similar) trying to get in extra 50 damage while waiting for your guns to automatically reload. It takes about the same time.
This also helps should your target try to flee since the ball form is fast enough to keep up. If you tried to kill a Lucio, Mercy, Genji etc. you already lost the kill if trying to chase after them in crab form at 5.5m/s while reloading.
Sombra’s gun is pretty much the same with less rounds than Wrecking Ball, but with no other damage capabilities and she’s DPS?
His goal is not to go totally head on with an enemy. It’s to be like “surprise, m-” and be annoying to shoot at while he deals damage.
I appreciate the thoughtful response.
Let me ask you a question. Why does a main tank NEED a shield?
But mostly I think he’s a main tank because he fits all the criteria everyone keeps listing that a main tank requires.
Hammond -
Able to protect his teammates from damage by attracting fire
Technically does not take damage while Adaptive Shields are up.
Able to create space and initiate a fight BETTER THAN ANY OTHER TANK.
Capable of doing large amounts of damage.
And on to your point about protecting your teammates from a shatter or a D.Va bomb - The comps that Hammond enables best (yes, that requires teamwork) should not get caught by those ultimates. There’s no excuse for pretty much anyone to die to most D.Va bombs and Rein my hit 1 person with his shatter but Hammond enables mobile comps that should not stay still long enough for a Rein to line up a nice shatter. But hey the enemy could make plays too.
Hope this clears things up.
OH and @TripleU
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His guns are almost exactly like tracer’s… you can easily one-clip squishies, but only if you’re accurate. That’s the trade off.
Because hammond can dive in so close (and do a lot of damage to a lot of people at the same time with piledrive) it makes sense that they’d make you have to -work- for the rest of the damage you output by being accurate.
I don’t think a main tank necessarily needs one persay. But shields provide obvious benefits that the other tanks cannot bring (easy protection for their team). There’s the not as obvious interaction between barriers and other ults, which I think is the major thing Hammond lacks. If there’s a McCree ult, or Reinshatter, or self destruct, or any number of things that are blocked by bariers but you lack one on your team, there’s little the team can do to stop the ults from killing them all.
I will note that Hammond has the unique benefit unlike other off tanks of not giving the enemy ult charge while his shields are active. This is actually a really cool interaction with him and let’s him get away with doing more without necessarily feeding ults.
This is also dependant on the enemy team composition. If I’m running Hammond, I’m going to hope that my other tank is another dive tank with preference to winston (though I won’t be incredibly picky haha) and my DPS will hopefully be running dive / a widow with supports who can follow up with us.
In thie scenario, I could reasonably expect the enemy team comp to run a brig, or maybe even a McCree or some other variation of characters that bring slows and CC.
Without a barrier, targets who do get caught in a slow or a stun will end up easily dying to these ults. Even without CCs, sometimes you simply don’t have a mobility CD ready or you’re not in a good position to avoid the ult. It’s a reasonable thing to expect from people, we make mistakes. Without a barrier, there isn’t much of a way to easily correct that mistake.
Additionally, barriers add clear cover for your team. While it’s true that Hammond usually draws fire, that isn’t always a guarantee. Being able to provide a barier to hide behind or weave in and out from to avoid damage is something that, as good as Hammond is, he’ll never bring to a team.
I think blizz could come up with a character that fits the role of a maintank better without barriers, but I am not convinced Hammond specifically fits that mold so to speak.
Edit: either way, I play him a lot and he’s probably been my favorite addition to the game.
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Totes agree my friend.
I think Reinhardt and Orisa are significantly more friendly as main tanks for most of us because they require less coordination with your team. They’re accessible, easy to pick up, and functional with most heroes.
Where as Hammond is difficult to learn, feeds if you’re bad (and obviously one bad Hammond on my team means he’s a bad character), and requires much more teamwork. Plus he’s extremely counterable like you mentioned.
Your teammates also need to be more independent with Hammond than with a Rein. All you have to do if a bomb goes off is stand by the Reinhardt. Whereas with a Hammond, or even Winston if his shield is on CD, you have to be much more aware of your surroundings.
TLDR: Standing behind a Rein and shooting things while you walk onto point is nice when it works, but it’s not the only way to play the game.
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what does that have anything do with hammond?
Ive played Hammond almost exclusively since his release (almost one tricking him) and he feels pretty strong. I’ve been caught out reloading a few times, but I think that’s more of an issue with me personally.
He’s pretty good at what he does - disrupting the enemy and getting cheeky kills. In fact, I’ve been so disruptive I’ve had entire teams switch heroes to counter me specifically (Mei, Hog, Ana, Brig, McCree, Sombra was a rough one, and I had to swap)
So yeah, I think he’s in a good place. Maybe giving him a larger clip might make him too deadly, you don’t really want the fastest and most mobile character in the game to also be a glorified dps- you have to have some counterplay.
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Hammond is a main tank and not an off tank, the barrier argument doesnt fit Winston either considering he uses the barrier to protect himself after a dive and it provides limited protection to the rest of his team. A main tank’s purpose is to engage the enemy team while an off tank’s role is to support the main tank - Hammond clearly engages on the enemy, sets up the rest of his team and has no support function for other main tanks so his designation is obviously a main tank.
Um because a DPS character IMO should do more damage than a tank. Yet, Sombra is DPS, but does less damage overall than Wrecking Ball the tank.
I don’t think Wrecking Ball needs any buff to his guns.
Aim for the brain.
I think they are good. I wouldn’t mind an increase from 80 to 100 round clip though.
yeah whether sombra needs buffs or not have nothing to do with my post though
Yea but my problem with his guns is that it is super hard to charge his ult as his primary fire doesn’t deal alot of damage, and none of his abilities really deal a lot of damage except pile driver which is fairly hard to land correctly to make the enemy get the full 100 damage. And his ult is really ineffective, you can place all the mines on the point, but then someone like D.VA can just shoot at all the mines and destroy them all in a few seconds making the ult completely worthless. Also rein can just put his shield up and walk straight through the mines destroying all of them. I get that his guns weren’t supposed to be his primary source of damage, but he doesn’t really have any “primary” source of damage as all of his abilities either deal too little damage, are very hard to land or both.
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They are weak but not because of their power, it’s because they don’t carry enough ammunition. He needs at least 100 ammo.
I do agree with you that his guns could be buffed with more ammo or more damage but it shouldn’t be much of a buff. His abilities as a main tank suck but his abilities when used together make him great at disrupting the enemy line
Honestly, Hammond ain’t really too strong right now…
He could use a bit of a damage boost… all the tankiness and mobility in the world doesn’t mean squat if you don’t have somewhat threatening damage output to back it up. The way I see it, increasing his clip size would be pretty nice to finish off targets more consistently.
Yea thats what I was thinking, I really think that he only needs a slight buff to his damage (maybe make it his guns deal like 1 or 2 more damage per shot) and I REALLY think that they need to buff his ammo giving him a max ammo capacity of 100 or 120.
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at the very least I would like to see his max ammo boosted to 100
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