I disagree with your perspective. I think forcing himself out of the ball with the adaptive shield is something that should stay as it helps with the flow of the hero, reinforces the flow of the hero, and that his ammo count is fine.
The shields are meant as a means to establish yourself in a fight, and to allow yourself a window to escape after going in. They are not meant to make you absurdly difficult to kill while outside of the fight.
Him using his shields to bring himself out of the ball to shoot at targets is very ideal. You are simultaneously bringing out your weaponry and defending yourself, instead of separately.
His shielding with fewer enemies nearby needs addressing. I legitimately see no issues with the rest of his kit. It’s all up to the player to make good use of them. If you can’t reliably track with him, of course his ammo count being only at 80 isn’t going to feel good enough. Ammo management is a big part of his kit.
If they took his adaptive shield and altered it to give 75 per enemy hero nearby and initially 250 (same max but more with less enemies near), I think it would be much better overall, much more applicable.
His exceptional mobility and crowd control options are very powerful in proper usage, but heavily countered by crowd control. This is a given, and is his primary weakness.
Overall, wrecking ball has a lot of potential with his kit. Unfortunately its just very difficult to justify the pick as his durability is unreliable.
Yeah, often I swing over the team to spread the bombs out, press ult near while near the bottom of the swing. But depending on the speed, I might often miscalculate how early I need to press and the start up delay to releasing the orbs causes me to miss the general area I was aiming for. Thus, most of the bombs would stick to the walls or ceiling on the up swing. So, if they can be released sooner (but could be slowed down to activate to compensate and allow opponents time to react), then placement of the bombs would be easier, and I wouldn’t get stunned out of it so much.
That’s actually a really good idea. If they were to rework his shield into a zarya like barrier that absorbs more dmg the more people around that would be perfect. Numbers might have to be adjusted but then people would have to burst down the shield before they can cc him into the ground.
That was honestly something I thought about. I just felt like if they made it so we could willingly consume our piledriver to break out of CC, at the cost of not being able to piledriver for a bit, I’d be okay with it. It just sucks knowing that there are specific heroes that just completely destroy the playability of Mr. Hamster.
Like, I believe counters should be a thing, but most heroes who have counters can still pop off despite their counters. If they pull out a Mei, and protect her, you may as well hero swap, because you’ll do nothing but die.
It’s not hard to burst down that much HP on such a gigantic target, especially when your entire team is shooting him, and ESPECIALLY when you can slow him, stun him, boop him, sleep him, hack him, etc. Especially with the Roadhog buffs, Hammond’s just going to be worthless. Speaking of Hack, it forces him out of ball mode and makes him even more worthless.
Hammond doesn’t need any buffs. He is a beast when played correctly.
He is just not the type of tank that anyone woudl need in their teams.
Adaptive shield may feel like it has long cooldown but will be a nightmare to deal with it is is shorter.
His ammo is also enough if you swing and then use it to fishing off targets.
Honestly,I just want to be able to use adaptive shields in ball form and to have some sort of visual indicator that lets me know if what I’m aiming at can be grappled unto.
And what exactly is contradicting there?
he is fine for what he does but his gameplay doesn’t revolve around defending his team. He is like sombra: just an annoyance for the enemies but doesn’t contribute directly for his team.
He preys on distracted enemies or distracts them. he can get in and out a fight very fast but he can’t really stay long for his team
He is supposed to be a disrupting brawler tank but instead is easily killed. He plays more like Sombra in tank form which isn’t what he is supposed to be.
How would you know you’ve barely played anything except D.Va. And before you criticize my playtime I only started playing this year and my zen hours are from trying to get Rapid Discord. Most of my hours on my heroes are from achievement hunting. Even still I’ve got like 4 more hours on Wrecking ball then you.