I do not know what to do with this, and I hear this so often. But I cannot figure out exactly what it is. I cannot tell if people feel like I am not skilled enough to play Ball, or if they just have no confidence in anyone playing Ball at all.
It usually seems like in competitive the very first moment we start to struggle as a team, especially early in a match, I am instantly asked to switch from Ball by someone with a mic.
I also am at a point where I can consistently win in Quick Plays with my teams as Ball, and that is another thing. It feels like it is often not too challenging to play Quick Play, and I want to get as good as I can at Ball. But when I switch to competitive, it feels impossible to actually try my skill and get better because I am always asked so often to switch from Ball or to play a certain way by someone else.
I also am only about 3 weeks into playing, which is not much time. And I want to play competitive because it seems like I can learn a lot there. What is your advice? I feel like I cannot win without the confidence of my teams and them being their to support my plays. And I feel conflicted about whether I am even good or not at Ball because I have no way of gaging it with Quick Play being usually easy, but Competitive being hard. I am not sure if competitive is hard for the reason that I don’t have a team that trusts me, or if it is because I am just really that bad.
People want the infinitely easier and more simple tanking style of “hide behind shield or bullet sponge” rather than WB’s style of creating openings and distractions.
This is just going to happen.
I say accept the situation, mute and continue because you DEFINITELY won’t ever get better without any time logged.
EDIT: As a side note… if your team is being absolutely destroyed for several minutes it’s probably obvious they cannot deal with what ball offers. In the interest of NOT losing… maybe learn another tank to swap to since one tricking and demanding others to adjust to you is also quite inconsiderate and the entire game is based on learning other heroes.
YOu do need to log time… but forcing the entire team to deal with you the entire map is also selfish.
Yes, this is a very good point, and something I think I need to hear! I hate making people suffer through my “training” but I also feel like I could use a little more support sometimes too! I think for this reason I am going to try to learn Orisa… Which is in many ways opposite to Ball… And Rein too for good measure just to have in my back pocket.
First don’t play qp unless for casual fun, cause in comp people will actually counter pick to deal with you, you kill the ana twice she will swap to brig.
Kill the ashe it becomes cree, in qp people won’t care.
…
Here’s a few stuff to improve on ball
Know your roll outs grapple points.
Know your tech you don’t need to do advanced stuff like 180 double boop, but being able to wall jump pile drive will save your grapple for escape or follow up.
Then develop a game sense for ball, while players like ball gdh may be exciting to watch it requires high level of tech.
Yeattle does a great job of explaining gamese nse as ball when to engage when to wait and how to position, even though he is a tech master in this play through he doesn’t use them much and mostly wins purely on normal engages.
One of the most important things to learn is to know when to soft engage and whento hard engage.
He is just one of those scapegoat characters. You could have 4 gold medals with decent stats and be the only one actually taking space, and they will still blame you for the loss because they genuinely believe the Rein shield they weren’t going to use would have made all the difference.
Using Quickplay to gauge your skill doesn’t really tell you anything. I recommend getting a skilled ball player to take a look at your gameplay and give some advice.
I am not sure if competitive is hard for the reason that I don’t have a team that trusts me, or if it is because I am just really that bad.
I’m gonna be honest chief, you have 16 hours on Hammond (the most difficult tank in the game to master), the fault isn’t entirely on your team.
Even just good ol’ Dva + Monkey works perfectly enough as is. While Ball takes some very serious skill utilizing him compared to the other 2 Dive Tanks.
There are 2 “problems” with ball, usually people who play it aren’t good at it and 2ndly people don’t know how to play with a ball or are incapable to play fast enough to take advantage of the space a ball creates.
DVA and monkey are generally dive and engage tanks while Ball just creates openings and leaves.
This is the problem is if you keep making those openings and nobody takes advantage of them or nobody SEES them then not only does your team lose, they think it’s your fault because you apparently aren’t doing anything and next to none of that shows up in medals or cards.
such is the life though.
Well, you are a new player, pick Ball and go into competitive mode. That’s like the worst decisions you could make all lined up.
You are just not ready for one of the hardest chars…and neither are you ready for competitive. Yes, you got to start somewhere and nothing really prepares you for competitive(as players actually CARE there and will often do counter picks)…but maybe really first try some other char and play a bit more(and watch some videos) than 16 hours with it. I mean, you go into a mode where your whole team loses points(not just you) if YOU fall off too much. Understandable that they do not celebrate you for that.
And about Ball: He is one of the strongest chars in the hand of a player that really knows how to play him…especially in lower tiers(as most people do not know how to counter him there). But if you are not good with him he is like the worst char you can pick as he will do almost no damage and get killed quickly(and then your team always faces a 5vs6 and nobody is to blame for that but YOU).
As a result people just don’t want to see a Ball in lower tiers cause they do not expect a bronze player or noob to be good with it. Same counts on DD for a Widow(all or nothing char. If you miss your few skill shots you are not helping the team AT ALL) and Sombra(need to do the right things in the right moment) or on Healers for Zen(healing not high enough, you move slowly and predictable and the Ult is a self silence that needs really good timing. So you got to do some good offensive kills with it or you turn into an almost zero help problem for your own team).
If you are blamed all the time then it is likely cause you are not there and do not distract enough when you should be(either cause you got bad situational awareness or cause you are dead already). A good Ball usually doesn’t get blamed cause your team will notice it if you constantly keep two players busy and they always have a 5vs4 in their favor…unless they are really crap(and then you can and should ignore them).
Well, and then there are some bad players that can only play if they got a shield or some big bullet sponge to distract the enemy and give them time to finally manage to kill something(I’m looking at you, no skill Widow players that believe they are great if they manage to pick off targets when the rest of the team actually has to do the real work and you just play a rather slow point and click game). Players, that are usually incapable of using hard cover and think it’s their god given right to STAND in the middle of the street and survive due to shields/healing.
If it helps, there are plenty of communities which offer PUGs (pick-up games), which while still competitive in nature don’t affect your official SR. They’re great for learning in competitive environments while not having to worry about losing SR or frustrating others due to not playing heroes you aren’t as proficient in.
Another minor tip that goes miles is to try and swing in from somewhere the enemy can’t see. If you start your grapple in the open and roll straight down the frontline, that’s just asking for you to get stun chained. Sometimes there’s no other option than to roll down mid, but the least you can do is begin your grapple from behind cover so when the enemy sees you, you’re already at max speed.
And of course, as others have said, keep a hero or two as backup in case you do get countered. Ball really does just have some rancid matchups, and while you can certainly play around them to an extent, some playstyles get absolutely neutered (particularly those that rely mainly on hard engages - yeatle said it the best, if the enemy team has some counters/stuns, focus more on booping than slamming).
Well, firs thing first, I would highly recommand you to first learn the game more in qp.
As an old player with more than 3 years of experience I can tell you the game has ton of things to learn in it: countering,synergies, maps, positioning, awareness, aim ,abilities, values, heroes etc… I did do the same thing as you when I started playing and I must say, learning the game first is an important key.
As for Ball, the thing with the hero is that while you might be good with him, the hero doesn’t really provide any protection for any composition but dive… So while you might provide some value, by doing so you might completely deny the value of your whole team which otherwise could have won with a bit more protection.
If you don’t want to hear your team members, you can always mute chat and voice chat which can be good.
But again I would highly recommend you to learn when is ball useful and when not. Against a sniper or anyone peeking from off angles Hammond can be amazing but if enemies run dive (a composition revolves around mobility, heroes like Tracer,Winston,Lucio etc…) or brawl (a slow composition revolving around defenses, heroes like Rein,Brig, Mccree etc…) then your value isn’t gonna be too high most of the times…
Hammond’s job in a team is simply repositioning enemies and interrupting heroes like Wodow or Hanzo from aiming at your team. If enemies don’t need a lot of aim, do consider changing to other heroes depending on the mobility and need of you team.
That one is the most, plus, since they have worst experience with balls, they will not learn how to play around the ball in their team, so they instantly refuse even trying. This game is just like this. So, if you think that you are doing decent with ball, try to shotcall your PD and engagements consistently, if you don’t let them know what is your game plan is, it feels like having no tank at all, cause other tanks are more straight forward and have comprehend gameplay, unlike ball. But the good advice for you as a ball player, never play it on 3rd point of any escort/hybrid map, also on 2nd point of 2cp it is not a good option, unless you’re smurfing hard with it.
