Wrecking Ball is a throw pick

General Discussion
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As much as I wanted to like and play Wrecking Ball, I think it’s clear at this point (over 20 hours on PTR and QP) that he’s the throw pick of the tanks.
Here is why you shouldn’t play Hammond,

Grapple is the most unreliable movement ability of all of the dive tanks, while Grapple allows for long distance flanks and fast reinforces from spawn the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages of the ability. Grapple’s momentum mechanic allows enemies to exploit Wrecking Ball’s character model by body blocking him when he tries to escape, so Hammond has to either commit to a dive or die while trying to retreat from one. Furthermore Grapple has poor vertical movement from static positions, so Wrecking Ball is unreliable at contesting high ground and vulnerable to environmental kills that Winston and D.va would be immune to i.e. Lucio Sound Waves or Roadhog Hooks on Ilios Well.

Quad Canons are significantly underpowered, while Quad Canons have great accuracy and fall off damage their 5 damage per shot, 80 ammo per clip and 2 second reload speed makes them the worst tank on tank weapon after Winston’s Tesla canon and completely unreliable in a sustained fire fight. At 125 dps and a 3 second clip, the accuracy requirement in order to one clip targets is extremely high and you’ll spend most of your time either reloading or trying to finish them off with Grapple and escape with Roll.

Adaptive Shields is the worst defensive cooldown in the game, I don’t have anything good to say about this ability because it’s complete garbage - at 15 seconds it has the longest cooldown of any defensive ability in the game, and if you try to maximize your shields then you position yourself into the middle of the enemy team and feed them 600 health worth of ult charge. On average you’ll get a maximum of 300 shields on a clean engagement into the backline, shields in a duel or 100 shields while escaping. Compare that to Winston’s Bubble, which gives him 600 shields and protection from CC on a 13 second cooldown, and Zarya’s Bubble, which gives her 200+ shields and protection from CC on a 10 second cooldown, and you’ll find yourself to be the least survivable of all the tanks.

While Wrecking Ball has a small head hitbox that he’s able to cover with Roll, he also has the largest character model in the game. Character’s like Roadhog, Reaper, Soldier 76, Sombra and Torbjorn can’t miss a bullet on Hammond, so he’s really specific towards having high survivability vs Widowmaker and McCree and that’s about it.

Proximity Mines is a pretty worthless ultimate, while they can be useful for claiming space on the objective generally what happens is the enemy team will use one of their ultimates in order to clear your mines and kill one of your team mates - they end up ahead on ultimate economy in a 6v5. I think this ultimate may actually be worse than Orisa’s ultimate as far as the tank roster is concerned, because while both ultimates are vunerable to counter ultimates Proximity Mines rarely provide any value in a team fight.

Wrecking Ball is easily hard countered, be it Roadhog, Reaper, Mei, Sombra, Doomfist, McCree, Ana or Brigitte it takes very little to shut down Hammond, what should be a character who goes straight into the enemy team in order to maximize his disruption and shields is a character who has to very carefully avoid any potential counter because even a stun is as good as ringing the dinner bell. And normally that would be fine if he were any other dive tank, but the dexterity of movement on Grapple simply isn’t there compared to Leap and Boosters in order to get clean engagements on isolated enemies and it feels very counter intuitive to play him that way when Adaptive Shields and Piledriver are begging for you to go big.

Roll and Piledriver are really what makes Wrecking Ball what he is, being able to quickly maneuver around the battlefield and disrupt the enemy are great abilities but they simply aren’t enough to justify him over D.va and Defense Matrix or Roadhog and Hook as either the off tank or the third tank on the roster most of the time. And while the prospects of triple tank dive are rather exciting, I feel that if triple tank dive is the only composition you can justify him in then you’ve basically failed to add anything of value to the roster.

I don’t know how you should go about addressing his problems, but you seriously need to look at his kit because it’s not doing whatever it’s you designed it do - he’s basically at release Orisa levels of bad right now.

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Well, he actually throws himself in the enemy face…

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I mean the only good thing about him is his ultimate and potential to disrupt other than that he’s pretty much useless. Anyone can move in front of him while he is rolling stopping his momentum and making him a fat juicy ult battery. Half the roster counters him so he’s going to have a difficult time finding a place into the META. There is no reason to pick him over the other Dive tanks D.va and Winston because they’re blatantly superior in every way. Honestly wish they took the time to make a useful off tank rather than a useless meme hero.

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I don’t know how you should go about addressing his problems, but you seriously need to look at his kit because it’s not doing whatever it’s you designed it do - he’s basically at release Orisa levels of bad right now.

While he sometimes does manage some amazing play, just about every hero can do that. Even the likes of Torbjörn can occasionally completely turn a game around. I agree that Hammond is far too fragile and easily punished for diving in to be a reliable asset at his role. For the record, his shields do not award ult charge when damaged.

I would suggest the following:

  • A 100 clip magazine
  • Make Piledriver disable the affected enemies’ guns for 1 second. That way you have an actual tool to protect teammates and you won’t immediately get obliterated unless your enemies actively try to avoid getting hit (moving out of the way, barriers, counter-abilities to prevent hammond from hitting the ground with it, etc)

I think he should keep his vulnerabilities to CC, because it’s honestly the only way to deal with mobile characters like him.

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He is kinda one barrier less useful than Winston. That barrier is his shield but still his weapon isnt unblockable or easy aim. That is what I see

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He is fine if you use him to get past chokes, on attack, and distract the defense away from the choke.
But that seems to be his main use. Not much else.
He is the flank tank~

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Untrue. Tether is possible the best movement ability in the game with a short cooldown and the longest travel distance.

Again, untrue. Grapple can be used vertically, you just need to learn how to do it.

As they should be. Any more powerful and he would be a dps. Hammond isnt a brawling tank, he is meant to dive squishies, and they do enough damage for that when combined with a piledriver.

Adaptive shields actually does not give the enemy ult charge, and in my opinion it is a great get of of jail card when you kill a support and have to roll through the rest of the team. It may have a long cooldown but if you kill a healer your going to get it back by the time they respawn.

Again, not a brawling tank, so you shouldnt be brawling, you should be diving. Also I believe D.Va has a larger hitbox, but I may be wrong.

Proximity mines is an amazing ultimate capable of denying space to the enemy wherever you are. A certain piece of highground? Bam, gone. And if the other dps trades their ult for yours, as long as you didnt throw it into a blizzard, thats a win for you, not a loss. Thats like trading transcendence for a dragon blade.

And remember, Wrecking Ball is not a main tank, I could easily see Winston, Ball, Tracer, and Genji/Doom/Sombra in a dive comp and it would work just fine. If its a dive, then it isn’t Hammond vs Widow, its a team fight, and thats where his CC, adaptive shielding, and his ultimate accel.

I guess we will just have to see when he comes to comp this week. Maybe it will work, maybe it wont, maybe it will dominate. But I do not believe that this is a throw pick.

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I wholeheartedly agree with everything stated in this, and not as a counterargument but as a suggestion to those who still want to play WB myself included, Quick Melee a lot. It creates ammo effeciency, helps in close quarters fights, and doesnt require too much aim to land.

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And technically, a troll pick. I mean, he’s got a emote where he chuckles and makes the mech laugh in a deadpan expression while Hammond has his arms crossed smirking.

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Ok? What is this supposed to mean? Emotes are about the character’s lore and personality, not how they fit into the meta

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It’s a joke/observation. Calm down.

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Yeah, I’m getting these random Sportsmanship and Shotcaller votes when i lose as Hammond. I feel like they are sarcastic

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it’s true, he really is useless

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i can do that easily. but why you down there?

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  1. You are not allowed to imply that I have a disability because I have a differnet opinion than you. That makes you look like a child. If you can’t handle other people, then don’t post on a forum.

  2. WB is better on offense than defense. I will admit it. But the tether becomes powerful when you know how to use it. Do whatever you have to do, watch a tutorial, use the practice range, whatever you have to do to use tether correctly. And yes, I have gotten out of the Illios well. Multiple times.

  3. The weapon does just fine at doing its job. As long as you can aim, which by your writing, idk if you can. Heres a tip: instead of reloading, go into ball form and automatically reload. It makes you harder to hit in a 1v1 (which you should never be in)

  4. D.Va has 600hp, so does WB. What’s the difference? Sombra can feed on both of them, and WB is harder to kill than D.Va because he can hide his head.

  5. Tether onto a payload, spin around it, instant point presence. D.Va doesn’t have much point presence but thats not a problem either. (Also his ultimate is DESIGNED for point presence.)

What?

Heres a quote from the PlayOverwatch webpage:

“Minefield can prevent enemies from reaching a preferred location or can be dropped on top of them to cause an explosive burst of damage on all foes in a single location”

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There is no hero category called dive tank. The term and playstyle was defined by players. The game is not telling you to play in that style.
I have seen wrecking ball played on front line and it’s very tough to kill him with the amount of hp the shield gives. A tank’s primary role is creating space and he does the well by creating chaos in the other team formation and allowing your team to push.

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I agree, Hammond/Wrecking Ball is buggy. But I think the devs need to tweak his kit slightly, not completely overhaul it.

It’s important to note that Wrecking Ball is a 3-star character (in terms of difficulty). The community shouldn’t reasonably expect anyone to pick him up and immediately be effective with him.

I see him as a hero with a high skill-floor, meaning players will need experience playing Hammond to become useful with him. Players also need experience facing Hammond on an enemy team to develop strategies for countering. I think as time passes (and play-guides are released), tactics and strategy for playing him will become clearer, and we will start seeing more effective Hammond players in matches.

I mean, remember how long it took players to figure out Sombra after her release?

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That’s because no one cares what you did. They just want the xp.

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Obviously, this weapon wasn’t designed for 1-clipping foes. It’s more supplementary damage than anything.

Why would you stand in the middle of a team? C’mon, make smart choices. Don’t go for the 6 man shield – Go for the shield when there’s 6 men around you.

Counterplay involving Ultimate usage in response to enemy Ultimate usage is pretty intuitive counterplay. Of course this will happen.

Obviously the optimal playstyle involves heavy support and/or focus heals on the hamster to make up for his pathetic base Armor HP, not runnning into the enemy first. Swoop in as your team is engaging and don’t be the first one in if you want to live.

I think grapple is more for area denial or bowling over Tanks/multiple enemies. I don’t think it’s suited so well for engaging on a single small target unless that target is very close to a wall and there’s favorable grapple terrain. Hamster should always engage with a friendly.

Agreed. Grapple sucks even on Controller, where you have superior movement and velocity control.

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I didn’t say you have a disability, I said you have poor reading comprehension - I expressly stated the problem the ability had, you ignored it and then you stated something that I had already addressed in the post. If you can’t be bothered to even read 600 HEALTH, admit when you’re wrong and play the victim card then I can’t really take your points that seriously.

  1. I know how to use a tether, which is why I know how you can’t use it as well. It doesn’t matter how good you are with it, you’re reliant on the geometry of the map to be able to make quick, vertical movements to high ground. Grapple may have speed and distance over Boosters and Leap, but it’s not really worth it when you have to quickly react to stop threat on high ground.

  2. Sure, you can get out of the well if you managed to Grapple close enough to ground level and swung left to right to build momentum, meanwhile you’re out of the fight significantly longer than a Winston or D.va would be and you’ve probably lost the team fight by then. There are just some points where Grapple can’t get the verticality it needs after you’ve been pushed over the side, for instance if Roadhog Hooks you over the water on Riatlo you are dead where a Winston or D.va would easily fly away.

Grapple is a terribly problematic movement ability, because it over focuses on speed/distance instead of more practical applications like protecting yourself from environmental kills, disengaging from a fight or getting to high ground ASAP. They’re going to have to address one or more of those problems fwiw.

  1. The weapon is actually pretty awful in sustained fire fights compared to any of the other tank weapons, and spinning on point doesn’t really give Wrecking Ball any reliable presence because the enemy team is just going to CC you out of it or farm you while you pose little threat. D.va has plenty of presence in comparison, she has a higher damaging weapon, no reload time and the best defensive ability in the game. I don’t think a character should have to rely on a gimic to have presence, it’s too easy to play around.

  2. The difference is D.va rarely dives thru’ or into the middle of the enemy team, Wrecking Ball doesn’t have the survivability to do what he is presumably designed to do.

  3. Who cares about the PlayOverwatch webpage? I care about actual gameplay and not online marketing, and when Minefield just gets wiped by another ultimate it doesn’t really do anything to deny space compared to a Self Destruct or a Primal Rage.

1 Like