The Hatred against Ball Mains

Competitive Discussion
1

Ive noticed since the start of the recent seasons (before and after role que) that the opinions of many hero’s have changed with time, that hero’s like Doomfist and Moira are more tolerated in the competitive scene.

Yet Hammond (Wrecking Ball) seems to still be geting the short end of the stick.

I have heard players saying that “Ball is a Throw pick” many times, claiming that any person who mains the hero is a thrower, despite evidence contradicting that. I understand that to an outside looking in, Ball is an easy hero to feed on if not played correctly.

I have come to the conclusion that no mater how hard i try to convince people that ball can be viable, people are going to be stubborn; even when provided with evidence going against them.

At this point in the season, i’m unsure whats considered meta anymore. Is it Double Shield? Rein Zarya? I can’t tell anymore, but i know for a certain that the stigma against ball mains is rather harsh, and i would rather just mute everyone and play the hero i’m best at, then hear my team complain about a “throw pick” when its working just fine.

Am i in the right to think this? or should i just be the team player, even if the hero’s they want are the ones i cant play to the extent they need?

8 Likes
2

I have 15 hours on ball this season with a 58% win rate yet every one in three games I get grief before we have even started. One game in three I get grief the moment things stall. I’ll even get grief when we are winning and I have 4 gold medals. Only one in three do they leave me alone. I keep my profile open yet all these people hiding their stats give me a hard time simply because I am playing ball.

To all you people giving me a hard time for playing ball. Ball is not the problem. I have a high win rate playing ball. You need to accept that in high gold/low plat ball gives you just as much chance to win as any other tank. If you have a ball main with a high win rate you have a higher chance to win. If you don’t win then the other team was just better. It happens.

8 Likes
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no. the player base wants a rein zarya or double shield. they want shields because it makes them have to do little work and lets them play aim trainer more without having to think. ball is fine, and wins on defense by slowing the cart push speed and then winning 2-3 fights . But the community instantly goes into fear mode when they lose the first fight and will want you to swap, even if losing the fight is 100% the fault of players other than the ball.

and to be honest, swapping to rein/double shield on defense does in fact result in slower push times usually, at least up to diamond.

The optimal strat if you really wanted to use ball would be to stall with shields on first and second point defense when your teammates are feeding, then swap to ball after winning one fight with ult on 2nd point. and play ball fully on attack.

But there is nothing wrong with losing first point cause your team feeds, winning one fight on 2nd with ball using ult, watching team feed some more, win a fight on 3rd with ult, and then trying to stall the last point as long as possible.

on offense your teammates dying matters far less, so there are only two places to not use ball.

  1. you are getting personally blocked out of the game due to sombra (i think the rest are easy to work around).

  2. your teammates can’t make it through a choke (for example gibraltar doors going from A to B on attack

But the community will always want shields.

Shields are a way to stop the stupidity of the dumbest player on your team. Ball can’t do that.

if 3 of your players are stomping and could help you win, but the 2 others just decide to run forward into fire every time they see the enemy and explode instantly, then the other 3 players are going to tell you to swap because they want you to stop the 2 idiots from feeding.

and because it’s really hard to contest the cart once your team is down players, all non shield champions have gained a poor reputation on escort defense.

If you are at a slightly higher rank (diamond), and your healers are staying alive but your dps aren’t, then ball becomes much better at slowing the enemy push and you can avoid being told to swap as much.

4 Likes
4

Hammond mains have a natural gift for feeding the enemy team. Low Elo players are very bad at engaging and disengaging with Hammond.

Personally I don’t mind Hammond mains on certain maps. In masters a lot of main tank players are good enough to either hold the line or just go Winston.

As a Tracer player, Hammond can work very well with me if they’re in voice comms. But coordination isn’t something to expect below maybe 3200…

3 Likes
5

exactly why a lot of ppl who still play OW are straight bots

2 Likes
6

it can be extremely frustrating to play what appears to be a 5v6. it’s why you’ll get requests for the widow to swap. often times, in the lower-to-middle bracket, having a hammond seems crippling, especially since most i’ve played with never coordinate anything.

he also has little synergy with any tanks besides possibly sigma and winston; one which leaves your team with a piece of bubble wrap for a shield, and the other which is almost the worst tank in the game right now. hammond players also have a stigma for not swapping off, similar to roadhog, which adds even more fuel to the team flaming.

i feel the same towards a hammond as i do when a teammate chooses hog and leaves our sigma/reinhardt to solo frontline (orisa as a solo shield is a loss in 2020). it’s simply not consistent.

i don’t see my opinion on this hero changing without substantial changes to barriers or to the hero itself.

i’d like to see some gameplay of a game you thought you were doing just fine and you lost. sometimes you just don’t notice your mistakes. i hear this a lot from certain mercy mains who make glaringly obvious mistakes when on their end, they seem to be doing their job.

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Most random players in solo queue don’t coordinate at all, this is not exclusive to ball players.

Ever hear of Zarya? He has a lot more synergy with her than the 0 he has with Sigma, even Rein pairs better with him than Sigma.

Unless you’re saying almost because of D.va you’re way off here. D.va is in a horrible place right now.

Still applies to general solo queue players more than ball players. If you wanna say people that swap onto Hog or Ball because they got tilted and never swap off then sure but that does not apply to people who main him.

That’s on you. Barriers, though great, are not essential in solo queue or even group queues unless one team is coordinated with comms and the other is not.

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No matter how hard I try to convince ball players that he’s not viable against the enemy teams mccree, brig, Ana , sigma, orisa, Ashe (5 stuns and a boop, only really one being needed to stop and kill him) and that rolling into the enemy from behind loses its effectiveness if you get shut down for the 20th time in a row— Hammond players are going to be stubborn and say they’re not the problem, even with evidence going against them.

I’m only half joking.
Hammond can carry teams in the right hands, but he can also be shut down easily. But 99% of the hammonds in my games aren’t in VC and never swap even when it’s NOT working. So the stigma carries over to other hammonds in other games and people are immediately frustrated.

You may be a good Hammond player, but that won’t stop people getting salty from all the bad ones that had in their previous games.

I experience the same thing as a Mercy main.

2 Likes
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Your bias is showing, I’d give you maybe 50% but even then the not in VC or not swapping if it’s a bad pick problem applies to all other heroes in the game just as much as Ball. Yeah bad and stubborn players exist, but they exist on every hero on every role, if you’re going to just anyone who dares to pick a hero based on how someone else played it in a game with you then that’s on you.

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i typed an extensive reply but it somehow didn’t go through. in summary he’s just kinda not good to coordinate with in low-mid ranked solo queue, similar to sombra, bastion, or winston; and the ones who do synergise with him provide little damage negation for your team. you’re just at a disadvantage unless your team is substantially better than an enemy team using one or more shields. there are “meta” picks for a reason, and people will argue for them no matter what. as a mercy, zen, or any non-meta hero main you just have to deal with it unfortunately. i’ve honestly seen more hate for mercy than ball during 2020

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Look if you want to say that Ball players are inconsistent, that I’ll give you. (Though that still applies to other heroes just as much if not more, Genji/Widow, for example). But if your issue is at all to do with, not being in comms, not swapping, or not coordinating. That’s far from a Ball issue. That’s a bad teammate issue, don’t confuse the two, I could use the same type of argument to target Widow, Genji, Moira, Mercy, D.va players, or any hero I wanted to because of bad teammates who played them.

Also if you really want to judge any player who dares to pick a hero that they want to play based on your opinion of the hero then that’s still on you. Much healthier to have something similar to the approach I have when I see another inconsistent hero like Genji or Widow on my team, let them play it out and see how it goes, don’t automatically ask them to swap unless I swap first as if I’m not willing to adjust then it’s unfair to ask them to do so. If they are in comms then I’ll ask what other (insert role here) they play, see if we can coordinate together, if not then just focus on myself and those I can communicate with to do the best we can.

Edit: Yeah I saw the first reply briefly, no clue what happened to it.

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i’m not one to instantly judge, but i will call out a feeding ball as much as a pickless widow, like you said. i do believe people tend to vent their frustrations on ball, but it’s because it’s so much more noticeable when a hammond fails even the slightest at his job. it’s harder to notice for genji or widow because you have to notice what they’re not doing (not that it makes it anymore forgivable, they won’t get immediately called out).

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I’ll ask this. What does calling them out accomplish in any of those scenarios? It’s not like they’re going to suddenly realize “maybe I need to swap” if you come at them aggressively or rally your team to pester them. Just approach them like you’d want to be approached if someone on your team wanted a specific hero or to change up the comp, it’s always possible that ball is just the hero that they are best at/feel most comfortable on in the given situations and their other picks may perform worse.

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i think ball mains and mercy mains can relate in not fitting a specific role in the overwatch meta. i think a lot of times it’s easy to see what your team could accomplish if they had x hero instead of y, which can be damaging for certain hero mains.

i don’t play ball, but i used to main mercy. i love to play mercy sometimes these days, but it’s all too common for the enemies to reuse the same old team wipe ultimate which you have to sit and watch as a mercy. you could be doing everything in your power to play the perfect game, but just get destroyed again and again just because you’re that hero and not sound man or munk bot. i imagine this is how it’s like for hammond mains.

3 Likes
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my choice of wording was poor; i’m not one to be that aggressive. it’s more like asking if we could have more support for our reinhardt or the sort

1 Like
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What makes this even funnier is how everyone cries for a shield hero yet they praise every single shield nerf. I honestly can’t wait until all the shield tanks are gone so they can start crying every single match.

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Your bias is also equally showing. As a Hammond main, you have less chances of playing with Hammond players than non-Hammond players do. It may be different in other ranks, but having a Hammond in vc who actually swaps when shut down is more of a pleasant surprise to me than a common experience.

It’s the same when I play with Mercy mains, Hog mains, and often Genji mains too. Of course it happens with all heroes, but stereotypes/bias/stigmas don’t form without truth.

Like I said, I’m a Mercy main. I know how YOU feel. I get accused of not being in VC, and people groan and say ‘ugh don’t bother asking them to swap, they won’t. I hate mercy one tricks’. And cherry on top is that I’m consistently accused of being boosted simply because I main Mercy (solo queue or not).

But as a non-Hammond player, I can also see where the stigma against him forms and while I agree people SHOULDNT have those negative biases from the start, I can see why they DO from personal experiences. I have the same experience with Mercy mains, Hog mains, Genji mains, etc.

You can’t take these things to heart. Saying ‘don’t’ on the forums won’t change anything and you need to just focus on loving your hero. If you swap and speak in VC, good for you. You’ll likely change the minds of people you play with in game. But you have to work to change those minds and cooperate.

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And there’s where your entire post lost its point. Where did I say I’m a Hammond main? I’m not.

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Most balls I get on my team don’t know how to play him. And Ball is a hero, where it’s very easy to feed with him.

1 Like
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They can hate me while I wave on my way past them up the ladder. Hammond is the best thing ever created in the human history.