Before I went to sleep last night, I was doing some map exploration as Haz. Figuring out good spots to jump from, good spots to jump to, and places where I can put his wall to climb on top of and enable even more jumps
And then it hit me: just how much potential skill expression he has. Particularly with the wall, but also sometimes the jump and wall climb
The wall can be used to block damage, set up combos with his slash, boop and displace people, block doorways, separate enemies from their team, and as a piece of terrain for Hazard himself to use for mobility purposes
You could use his wall to allow him to climb to a higher place than usual, saving his jump and slash for offense. Or use it to put yourself at a better angle to actually use the slash when jumping to a particular highground
I was on Antarctic Peninsula Icebreaker, jumping and sliding over the roof above the point. Sometimes, I would just jump from an existing wall that I had just climbed. But then I found a really good spot to place HIS wall as a jump-point. Jumped and slid from right beside the flanker door near the cliff alllllll the way to the main chokepoint door beside the raised area. And the thing about sliding is that it buys time for your jump cooldown to come back. When I landed after that jump, the timer was already at 2
Oh yeah. Definitely found my soul-tank
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The issue with using his wall as climbable terrain is that you are using a somewhat valuable cooldown for mobility that’s on a 12sec timer. A very poor usage of it in general.
The knockback he has is the sort that pushes people in specific directions. Wall is kind of like concussion blast from Pharah, but a LOT of janky stuff can happen with the wall effect when peopel start trying to bounce around it. Since its not as thin and instantaneous as Mei wall is very difficult to put the wall exactly where you want it without something going wrong.
Its also a very ackward width/height. Its just barely big enough to cover various positions and isn’t too difficult to walk around. I think he needs a few tweaks. Particularly to the knockback effects and say his vault being very slow feeling.
The dude has potential, but I think he needs some kind of fixes like Doomfist where they changd his wall punch angle from I think 44 to 55deg to bring up his consistency. The fact that wall can be blocked by tanks makes it hard to place it in the tank vs tank fights.
Using his wall to stall feels kind of wasteful as it puts you in a spot where you need to wait 8 seconds for it to come back up. Might be good while you’re setting up for the next team fight, but in combat it’s seems like a large waste of time.
You can also bunny hop btw, so add that to the complexity calculation. That and wall climb resets after leaping.
I’m already level 14 or so with him on the progression and he’s quickly become my new favorite tank. Feels a lot like Reaper, but as if he was a well designed character.
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That’s why you don’t use it that way in situations where you actually need it for survival. Definitely break it as soon as you’re done with it, too, so the cooldown comes back faster Actually I just realized now that the cooldown is the same no matter what, just HIDDEN until it breaks. Disregard that
Context: I’m a Lifeweaver main. I have lots of experience using THE TREE to block doorways. Hazard’s wall covers a wider area than the tree, and I can deploy it from some different angles thanks to it sticking to walls, so I’ve been having a fine time with that
This, though. I would definitely not mind the wall projectile being able to move through barriers. I don’t think that would be an OP change or anything
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You can also delay your slash after the leap by bhopping once you have landed (it also gives you a bit more distance as well)
If you angle the slash right you can knock people into your wall with the slash and then melee straight after doing 160+ damage.
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Everything he has is a mostly worse version of something an existing hero has, which forces you to utilize his entire kit rather than lean on one gimmick.
His wall is very situationally useful. Cutting off escape route is probably the most consistent value you can get out of it. It doesn’t slow down several enemies for long.