I do pretty well with him in quick play, and considering he’s a tank I can only imagine how much better I would be if I had a coordinated team (AKA comp)
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As a tank I agree that Wrecking Ball should have lower damage output than a DPS, but I think more of that damage output should come from his weapon than from his abilities.
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Sombra is a unique case, when I think of ultimate economy I don’t think of one ultimate deleting another ultimate but one ultimate being met with another ultimate i.e. you Earth Shatter and I Graviton Surge or you Supercharger and I Valkyrie and the ultimates off set each other. In the case of EMP vs Beat Drop or Self Destruct vs Minefield the EMP or Self Destruct pull ahead on value because not only do they wipe the previous ultimate by removing the shield or destroying the mines but you still silence the enemy team or get a kill along with it. This is why Supercharger and Minefield especially suck as ultimates, when the enemy counters them with ultimates they actually pull ahead of the ultimate parity.
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I think his ult is good with comboing. I’ve killed people with it. by pulling people into the bombs with grav.
- I think armor piercing rounds would work great for Hamster so he can tank v tank effectively?
- Interesting mindset. I don’t usually call for ults or use my own ult in response to mirror what the enemy has already tried or invested into a fight. (I’ll commit Nano Visor or Frost Punch to a fight because that was my plan for this engagement, not because the enemy used a dps+support ult of their own for example) If I see a blizzard, I’ll dump coalescence +heal ball and pre spray into the fight to mitigate headshot risk, but I’ll call to save ults until everyone’s unfrozen and we can assess the situation in case there’s a RIP-Tire coming as followup. Instead of offsetting or “trading” ults I try to use ults to negate others or negate damage or stop a push before it starts or even to lure out other ults. It’s amazing how quickly a team will reflexively ult in response to 1 support ult used as an engagement tool. That being said, I’ll throw my nuke to bomb the other D.Va before she puts her suit back on so it’s variable. I’d rather RIP-Tire the minefield or use junkrat’s entire kit against it or EMP the field instead of D.VA bomb it. D.VA should not touch mines without a bubble because it’s not her role to diffuse mines unless she’s using primary fire. Turrets counter mines well.
Things I’ve found work with him.
If you have a lot of DPS on your team who can hit things he works well: YOu swing through and up, pile drive on the team and pop shield. If you get the opportunity maybe do a little damage to a healer you’ve popped up otherwise it’s time to roll OUT of the crush and to somewhere you have an escape avenue. Do some damage from that position (ideally BEHIND the enemy) and then swing back out before that last blue bar is stripped from your lifebar. What this does: everyone immediately focuses on you, people just turn because they need to see what just made them jump up and possibly what’s now hammering them from below as they drop back down. This gives your team maybe 2 seconds to hit them from the front. One player turning a whole team is pretty big, and having 5 people on your team able to just do damage (probably 3 since your supports will hopefully be trying to keep you alive) , is a huge advantage. At the end of this exchange you may have some damage but it should be quickly recoverable and you should be ready to do it all over again. If you can keep this up in a pretty regular cycle no enemy team will be able to get that “setup” feeling and they will start to only be looking for you, at which time you can switch it up with some poke “tetherballing” : attach to a wall near the choke point and just swing into them without letting go and let the bounceback carry you out of damage.
All in all you SHOULD NOT STOP MOVING. WB disrupts and he disrupts well, but making him sustain or do more damage would push him into OP territory.
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personally i agree with the clip size increase, but he also needs reduced reload time, and cooldown decreases to grapple and shields
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He’s such a massive hitbox that I barely miss Hammond, even at full speed when I’m playing Cree or Widow. He’s an ult battery, a lot like a faster Roadhog.
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Is he Bastion level of bad ?
i had no idea he automatically reloaded while in ball form after a few seconds, that’s a super good tip that should be in his weapon description
at least hes not reaper levels of bad
He’s not bad. For anyone who plays HoTS I see his release a lot like when Hanzo was released in that game.
Everyone thought he sucked for two weeks before pros started using him and then they wanted nothing but nerfs.
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I just feel like Reaper DESTROYS him in like TWO shots, It’s actually insane
welp reapers f tier trash and Hammond has the mobility to stay away from him the 5% of the time hes picked
One thing i want you people to do is shut up. Im sorry if im rude, but when a high skill hero comes up, everyone wants buffs because you dont get the value of the hero immediatally.
You could say this about any hero that requires skill.
Zen. Doomfist. For example.
But you dont go askin for buffs because you know the hero doesn’t need those.
WE have yet to see what he can do.
Just wait. Wait for the pros.
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Please, the skill argument is laughable, Wrecking Ball isn’t that difficult to play and is less difficult to play than D.va by virtue of having less responsibility to defend a team - the only thing that can really define his skill cap is him having a higher mechanical requirement for aim and movement compared to the other tanks. You claim that I’m asking for buffs when I know he doesn’t need them, but then you say we have yet to see what he can do and should wait for the pros? What a wonderfully contradictory statement to be able to claim what other people know for a certainty but then claim that no one actually knows anything …
So here is what I know,
Blizzard is going to have to address some of the problems I mentioned, the most critical problem is that he doesn’t have the ability to exit combat vs players who exploit his character model by body blocking. In order to solve this, all you have to do is give Roll the ability to displace enemies so that he can force his way thru’ the enemy and Grapple out - this has no effect on his power level and Roll already destroys railings anyway. Having higher speed and distance in exchange for less dexterity is a fair trade off, but Wrecking Ball has to be able to disengage just as well as the other dive tanks or he’s not a viable character.
The second most critical problem is that his survivability is overly reliant on Adaptive Shields and the ability is on too long of a cooldown, this can be addressed by scaling the cooldown and the duration to 10 seconds and 5 seconds respectively so that his engagements are completely aligned with when Piledriver comes off cooldown.
The third most critical problem is that he’s too reliant on his abilities to do damage in a sustained fire fight, on the PTR he had a bugged reload that allowed him to reload faster and given the magazine has both low damage and low ammunition I see no reason for it to have a 2 second reload instead of a 1.5 second reload. Having less overall DPS because of having higher average accuracy/range is a fair trade off, but when D.va’s cooldowns do 136 damage and her weapons do 144 DPS with no reload why do Wrecking Ball’s cooldowns do 150 damage and his weapons do 125 DPS with a 2 second reload?
None of those changes allow the character to do any more of what he can already do, they just make his gameplay more congruent by aligning his defensive cooldown with his engagement abilities (just like the Winston bubble buff) and giving him less down time in the middle of fights (just like the Doomfist reload buff) so that animation cancelling your reload into Roll actually increases your survivability by covering your hitbox instead of having to durdle for .5 seconds more than anyone else.
Sure, time will tell, but what I’m saying is that to anyone who plans to start playing Wrecking Ball in competitive on Tuesday you’re likely to be throwing the game by picking him over any of the other tanks. He’s got fundamental problems and doesn’t offer anything more than the other tanks do, so par usual Blizzard can’t design or balance a tank actually worth taking over Reinhardt or D.va’s slots and we’re left with a tank/flanker hybrid that’s likely worse than either a tank or flanker dedicated to their actual role.
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and yet…i can play him and be the most annoying hero to go against, moving in and out quickly and generally being a nuisance, which in overwatch, at least at ly skill level, opens enough time for my team mates to get something done
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And I can play Tracer? It’s not that people can’t get value from him, its that the value he gives in relation to other choices needs to be seriously questioned because he’s not performing a particularly unique function. There is such a thing as soft throwing in Overwatch, you don’t have to be awful in order to be bad - see playing Soldier 76 instead of McCree right now.
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Dang it you beat me to it.
He’s great on Control points.
The fact alone that grappling gets you nowhere without momentum and can fail due to human error already makes it the most unreliable movement ability. D.va can’t fail to move with Boosters, Genji can’t fail to move with Dash, just press a button and move you shall, hence they are reliable. Not so with grapple. Also he indeed can’t contest high ground from a static position (no momentum). It’s just false to say he can.
I get that this is his gimmick and not a bad thing to exist, but it also is less reliable than other mobility skills.
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