Educate me because I don’t actually play ball, but how are these changes bad?
I don’t see many high elo ball players grappling for more than 6 seconds anyways and I’m sure this removes frustration for the lower elo players so ball cant infinitely spin around a point while spamming adaptive shields and being healed. I’ve seen a couple threads saying that ball is dead or is getting “gutted”. Is there something I’m missing?
They arnt bad.
They just don’t allow him to have an over performing low skill spin at lower elos.
The spin to win doesn’t work as you climb so most ball players essentially remove this from their kit anyways
It really only nerfs one aspect of him at low elos.
Ball is my main when I tank and I rarely ever spin to win…. Although grappling the pillar on control points at the very top and spinning forever on the ceiling is funny to watch low Elo players not be able to put damage adaptive shields… I have a 3 min clip of doing this…
The grapple nerf means borderline nothing to every ball player above gold but the mcree buff is gonna feel horrible to play against as a ball and thats the thing what will actually nerf ball in this patch.
There are uses for long grapples outside of spinning around the point
Catering to low ranks just because they can’t deal with it is such a bad justification
In all honesty you shouldnt dive a cass that has stun anyways and it will be just like slamming a hanzo now…. Still an easy kill
Do you mind naming a few? I personally don’t know of enough uses to justify rage over it being removed.
Yes as a ball player you need to be avoiding all the cc enemy has, but because you are the maintank who needs to open up possibilities for dps so you dont get bullied you will have to take calculated risks and go near the insanely big CC range of cassidy. If you play every game outside of the effective range when hes holding flash you are giving him too much value. Source: 1 tricking ball into 4k on 2 accounts and over 1200 hours in comp playing ball.
So how does combat roll change what we already know about his cc?
The point being this doesn’t change how you play against Cree as ball
In higher ranks most of your slams arent for you personally, its more that your team gets a free kill when enemy is stuck in predictable movement. Now when cassidy gets to roll in the air that value gets diminished alot. If you play ball you are going to see cassidy in almost all games against you because there isnt significant downside to playing cassidy. Compared to something like sombra where its really rare because if the sombra doesent get big value against you or with dives then their team is just going to lose because the lack of damage in their team.
I only play non-ranked and Wrecking Ball’s spin-to-win usually works quite often, at least on certain 1CP maps and without enemy CC hero abilities (Booh for Sombra, Mei or Cowboy!!!). I like it. And I’m sure this will also work in top 500 if your team does some certain support moves. 
The limited hook time was actually the only thing I didn’t liked about the last experimental patch. Sadly, they now made it into the normal game.
But at least they also included some better changes like the damage increase of Earth Shatter on close range or Torbjörns alt fire.
I liked the spin to win bc it gave tank players a safe scenario where they could try out a hero with a high skill requirement and not be screamed at for throwing by their “teammates”.
Uses for long grapples that aren’t spinning around the point:
Scouting is the biggest one by far
Playing against comps hunkered down on high ground
Denying space against dive comps
In all honesty you shouldnt dive a cass that has stun anyways and it will be just like slamming a hanzo now…. Still an easy kill
If that is the case, ball will never be able to do anything as tank for as long as cree is with the team.
Ball needs to set up engages for his team. It is already a big risk slamming into a team with any amount of cc, but ball can’t wait forever because he is the main tank. Slamming the enemy gives his team a small window to do stuff against cass. Cass with a free escape allows him way more chances of survival and severely oppresses ball.
You get booped off the map and won’t be able to get back up to the map because sometimes you need more than 6s to build momentum.
Spin to win rarely works to win if there’s any focus fire (even mid gold players have become significantly better at the game now. What you consider mid gold would be low diamond when ball first came out.
Unfortunately Ball is a necessary evil as it’s the only dive tank that can counter double shield as he speeds up the game significantly (I think I got a replay code where we’re getting farmed against double shield in Blizzard World. Swapped to ball and it was 2-3x faster game and suddenly the other team couldn’t deal with it).
While anyone above low plat don’t use the spin to win method, it’ll make it difficult for lower ranked players get value out of as well. Also a lot of times you can grapple and engage from high ground. Not anymore.
It’d make more sense if they made so that ball can keep his maximum speed for 4-6s max and it’d still be a better nerf than the current one which will only end up making a lot of feeding ball players.
I hate the changes but…
You never need more than 6 seconds. Ever. If you do then you’re in a situation where you will never get up from a ledge due to movement being blocked or the grapple being too short.
Multi rebound tech, blender tech, some rollouts and engage positions need long continuous use of grapple.
For example, there is a very useful spot at the choke 1st point Hollywood, where ball can stay on top of the archway and dive enemy backline without being heard or seen.
I have to admit that the nerf changes extremely little, and ball is by no means unplayable or gutted.
I literally play ham for his high mobility, his combo is so fun in FFA. The only format along with bounty hunter I care to play. Unfortunately cutting his grapple time takes the most fun out of him. This will be my last time playing. It’s their game, and if killing it before Overwatch 2 is their priority… Diablo mobile announcements, the hearthstone stuff, the legal cases… I’m just gonna uninstall. I’m not mad, just extremely disappointed with blizzard. smh bitter tears
Anybody who has played ball for more than 20 matches knows for a fact that spin to win will only get you killed the second your second or third spin ends, rarely you will see that spin to win work… So why would you nerf it? Like, there are so many things in the game that could be fix, why would you nerf the only specific tank that requires some level of braincells to get value out of? Such a core basic mechanic of his stripped away just like that when it was definitely not needed.
in low elos, its a viable strat tho. people just go about their day being knocked around by the ball, while he is just there spinning and getting free stall value and ult charge. But high elo changes nothing because as you said, by his 3rd spin hes dead. It tackles the issue in low elo where people dont co-ordinate to focus him but changes nothing in high elo. So where’s the issue?
That’s why I don’t understand why people are against the change.
If cass/cree was a support, the anwser vs ball would probably be: is he supposed to just roll over and die? He needs to be able to defend himself and have a chance at fighting back.
It basically kills spin to win, which is fine imo.
What I’m not fine with is that it also gets rid of preemptive uses of grapple, like when you grapple, and wait for an enemy to peek.
It also means that if you fall of the map, and grapple, you’re basically screwed.
Also, you can’t grapple up on a high point, and then drop on the enemies when they walk through.
Yeah, it gets rid of spin2win, but it also gets rid of many other things that aren’t problems about ball.
Yes, it does the job, but it could’ve been done so much better.