Wrecking Ball is a throw pick

General Discussion
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Regarding point 2, I think it gets overly complicated when you use specific examples; my understanding is that you try to maintain ultimate parity by responding to their ultimates with your ultimates by meeting value with value i.e. Super Charger gives added damage so Valkyrie gives added healing and the ultimates off set. The issue with Supercharger and Minefield tho’ is that it’s not a matter of an ultimate being off set but one ultimate erasing the other and getting value on top of it, for instance whenever you Supercharger with Orisa a good Moira will Coalesence, destroy the Supercharger and still have 5 seconds to damage her enemy or heal her team.

That is why I think Minefield is a poorly designed ultimate, it’s basically a trash ultimate they expect you to throw away at any time and the fact that it charges so quickly and charges while active is pretty telling of that design philosophy. I don’t really know what you do about that tho’, it kind of is what it is.

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Guys. Make a private custom game lobby with no cooldowns. Take the time to fully explore the potential of his grapple on different maps. Once you learn the best grapple points on a map you can pull off some insane dives and flanks. For example when attacking on Blizzard World you can leap from the gate to the point with one grapple.

You can do some great hit and run attacks. Just don’t try to 1v6 the enemy team. Grapple, piledriver, shield, RUN!!

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Gonna have to disagree with OP, I’ve been playing Hammond to great affect, Just gotta learn to use your cooldowns effectively and not be too cocky.

A lot of people don’t even realize the best part of his kit is his shift ability to turn into a ball, and being able to escape and distract the enemy without taking headshots.

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It’s super reliable though, sounds like maybe you need a bit more practice? The only issue I currently have with it is it’ll sometimes not stay connected to whatever you tether to… that, or the distance to whatever you attach to is so short that you cannot actually tell you’re attached to anything and prematurely release foricing you to sit through the cool down.

Other than that, you can grab the side of any wall, any object, and get at least enough height to pile drive and escape.

They’re a lot like Tracer’s guns, in that, if you’re not very accurate you’re gonna have a bad time. But if you are accurate? You’ll easily one clip zens, soldiers and mcree’s with. Just gotta get accurate with those bad boys and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

I, too, used to think the clip was too small to be effective, but with the high rate of fire, he’s a threat.

I’ll agree with you that the cool down on adaptive shields is down right oppressive, but at this point, I think it’s to discourage you from diving in just to get a huge shield bonus, which is something Jeff mentioned they didn’t want to incentivize. It’s there to help you escape, not to encourage you to go for the biggest bonus you can and then stick around fighting… think of it like winston’s bubble… it’s there to help you escape… not to help you sustain.

It’s one of the best zoning abilities in the game. Each mine does 130 damage and causes bounce back, facilitating more explosions and people are pushed into more surrounding mines. Also, the higher you are when you throw the mines, the more they spread out, giving you control over how wide an area you want to section off. The draw back is the farther apart they are, the less chance there is for them to push people into other mines, so it’s a trade off, and one that you have to be mindful of.

This I will agree with as far as Sombra, Mei, and to a smaller extent, Ana. Those three completely negate Wrecking Ball’s ability to escape after he dives in. And when you’re hacked? hahahah, forget about it, you can’t even roll into a ball at that point.

Even still though, if the enemy is running those heroes, I just switch off wrecking ball and go for the better choice… doesn’t mean wrecking ball is garbo.

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He should knock ppl out of the way once reaching maximum roll speed without grapple. If he did like 10 dmg and a SMALL amount of knockback while rolling into people just regularly without grapple then he’d be fine.

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When we say Grapple is unreliable, we mean it can’t be used to gain verticality from a position the way Boosters and Leap can or it can’t be used to escape when opponent’s are body blocking your exit and not that you can’t make ridiculous engagements with it - it’s a movement ability that trades speed and distance for dexterity and survivability.

Edit: It also sounds like you’re not using the toggle option for Grapple, it’s absolutely necessary for dealing with latency related “disconnects” because Grapple without toggle is buggy as hell and will get you killed.

I have a love and hate relationship with Quad Canons in the sense that they reward you with range and accuracy but punish you with damage and reload, I think the idea was to have the extra .5 seconds of reload be offset with the reload animation cancel into Roll for a covered head hitbox and added movement but it creates a lot of down time in a fight.

But Winston’s Bubble is there to help you to sustain in a fight and Piledriver and Adaptive Shields are designed to encourage you to go big, so if they intended to discourage people from diving just to get a huge shield bonus they did a pretty poor job of it.

Man, every ultimate is a “zoning ultimate,” I don’t think that’s ever a good argument for any ultimate. But whatever, I guess one of the tanks has to have the “Pulse Bomb” of the tank class.

I fully agree Roll is probably one of the best parts of his kit.

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his quad cannons definitely need a buff, his damage potential and burst damage potential is SO LOW a shot does 5 damage, and he only has 80 shots, but his reload time is ridiculous. you have to piledriver and hit all of your shots, and assuming they cant heal, that is when you can eliminate an opponent. and then wait 2 seconds to reload.

3 Likes
69

I really think they should increase the range and reduce the Cooldown of Adaptive Shield. It’s really annoying when you leap into the fray, then try and use your shield. And at that point everybody has taken their distance from you and…then you’re dead.

Maybe I’m just bad, but I’ve played Hammond quite a bit on live, and a ton on PTR.

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Your spot on mate. He’s meant to dive in and leave the enemy team splintered and messed.

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In fact, I’m thinking of maining him when he comes into comp this season.

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He is only capable of being a throw pick once he enters competitive play.

Get shutdown.

End of discussion.

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It took me 200 hrs to get any good at tracer, and ball seems like even more complicated hero, dudes just need to get used to it
He reminds me of pangolier in dota 2:also the hero which is not used in ranked, but used in pro play(he have same concept:he becoming a ball and toss ppl).

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This is hilarious as his ult is my least favorite part, as it doesn’t really fit his theme. Yet I totally understand that it’s the best part of the character.

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You just descibed sombra.

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WOW. It is clearly evident you need to spend more time playing with this character instead of flaming him after losing a game. There is ABSOLUTELY no need to lower the adaptive shield cooldown. It’s one of the best abilities in the game, giving you a guaranteed 100 health (usually more) and the cooldown is just the right time to reset during every engagement without giving him an extreme amount of health in a brawl. His weapon is also extremely good if you can aim. D.Va has an incredible dps at extremely close range. But getting and staying at that close range (50% movement speed when shooting so good luck) and hitting every single pellet before going in to falloff range (10-20 meters) is challenging. Wrecking ball can do 400 damage without headshots before having to reload, nevermind the fact that WB only has a 50% falloff at 25 meters compared to D.Va’s 30% at 20 meters. Plus, he doesn’t slow down when shooting, and has less than half the weapon spread, at about 2°. I know that probably doesn’t mean anything to you, so lets just be clear on this: After 4 shots, Soldier: 76 has a spread of 2.4°, which is 20% higher. So your argument about primary firing is completely untrue, as Wrecking Ball has the superior guns.

Nice Try. Its 126 with missles on one target and she does 146.74 dps with no falloff and hitting every single pellet. If your going to prove your argument, at least do the research.

Omg are you serious? Thats like saying McCree is more difficult than Doom because he has to time his flashbang. Wut

If you think Wrecking Ball is easy to play then you aren’t using his kit correctly. WB is Doom for tanks, meaning that he gets his value with a very high skill floor. Sure, you can try and compare D.Va, but they have such different jobs that comparisons dont mean much. Is Sombra like Tracer? In a way. But you can’t compare them just because they are both backline killers when they have different jobs. No two heroes are the same, so don’t treat them as such.

Again. R u kidding? If he takes a 1v1 or a 1v2 versus a Zen or Mercy or both, then who do you think is going to body block him? Body blocking doesn’t work that well on tanks, and even if you were body blocked, then you just go around them. Its not the job of WB to dive on a Reinhardt. You obviously have no idea what WB is supposed to do. Try playing him some more before jumping to conclusions that he is a “throw.”

Im also not expecting you to respond because there’s nothing left to argue with. Numbers don’t lie. So don’t reply if you don’t want to, I wont judge.

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Thats 400 damage a clip. More than most dps.

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I beg to differ, Wrecking Ball does need great comp, though hes amazing at Defense as esp. maps like Kings Row, Fought numerous team comps designed to work with him, where i couldn’t do anything as Brig, not even stun was enough.

You will need a good Hog player yes, but if Wrecking Ball has a Doomfist, and Mei he will be force to be reckoned with.

On very large open maps like first point of Junkertown, he will suffer due to avenues of attack, until near the end of first point, and also once attacking/defense teams are in 2nd/3rd point, he becomes useful.

Also map with Enviroment elims are possibly near point, he becomes even more of a threat, very much like Lijiang Tower maps, and Nepal.

He isn’t a throw pick, but the Tank has to have experience with him, mastering him will take time, and tank user will have to plan out attacks.

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He is pretty good.
Should have his place.

2 Likes
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Do you have any idea how stupid you sound when you tell some one to “do research” when you can’t even read? I said D.va’s ABILITIES do 136 damage, that S at the end of abilities is what’s known in English as the plural - meaning both Micro Missiles for 126 damage and Boosters for 10 damage are accounted for, which equals 136 damage. Since we’re on the subject of simple math, 144dps is what we call in mathematics an approximation - but if we’re going to get technical over fractions then D.va fires 2 damage pellets in an 11 round burst at 6.67 shots per second, so that’s 146.7 DPS which only supports my argument of D.va’s weapons being better than Wrecking Ball’s … so thanks?

As for the rest of your argument, you seem to have a real issue with taking things I’ve already said and repeating them as if I hadn’t already taken them into consideration; I stated in my post that his weapon has excellent range and accuracy and that its damage wasn’t necessarily the problem, so let’s assume the average damage of Quad Canons and Fusion Canons is equal when adjusted for spread and fall off at a given range. The issue is that Wrecking Ball’s damage and magazine do not justify his 2 second reload, and D.va doesn’t have to reload at all so she will do significantly more damage in a sustained fire fight. Considering Overwatch is an objective based game fought at midrange and D.va has one of the best movement abilities in the game, her weapon’s drawbacks aren’t nearly as bad as Wrecking Ball’s because they can generally be optimized when necessary. D.va has infinite ammo for a snare, but Wrecking Ball has a 2 second reload time for what exactly? Being able to reload while in Roll or contest with Grapple? I don’t think a .5+ second “self stun” is worth the added movement and protection of Roll, it just creates added downtime for the enemy to ignore you and target your team.

Regarding Adaptive Shields, if you believe that defensive ability is one of the best in the game then you’re deluded, on average it’s worse than a Zarya bubble and at best it’s worse than a Winston bubble with a higher cooldown than either of them. For a 15 second cooldown you can get Fortify at that rate, so between an under powered defensive ability and an unreliable movement ability he needs a buff somewhere. Winston is based on jumping in, placing down a bubble, jumping out when the bubble expires and then waiting for the jump and bubble to come off cooldown at the same time to repeat, but Wrecking Ball just has a gap where he has to wait 5 seconds after Piledriver comes online for his defensive cooldown to come back up. I think the idea here is that Wrecking Ball is supposed to use that gap to shoot off 2 clips at range and then dive back in, so all a scaled down shield does is give the option to Piledriver back in sooner than before without the second clip in between (given the travel time of Grapple and the start up animation of Piledriver, 12 seconds may better fit the rotation I am thinking of; empty clip, Grapple in, Piledriver down, Adaptive Shields, empty clip, Grapple out, empty clip and re-engage. Adaptive Shields simply doesn’t line up the way it should, and given it’s a weak ability I don’t understand why that is.

Straw manning my argument into a salt post about a single game loss is just dishonest of you, I’ve put 30 hours into the character over four weeks and these are the conclusions I’ve come to. I can’t justify playing Wrecking Ball over D.va, who is the gold standard for off tanks, and parts of his kit just aren’t working because they can be exploited and/or are underpowered - body blocking is incredibly effective against Grapple and Roll, it absolutely will happen to you in a team fight. Letting Roll displace enemies, tightening the rotation by reducing the cooldown on Adaptive Shields and cutting the reload time on his primary is what I would look at, the first being necessary, the second being quality of life and the third is arguable. But saying this character is perfect on release is just a joke of an argument with Blizzard’s track record for new characters, and I won’t judge you for not replying either since you’re clearly incapable of reading anything I write.

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Another problem also is that Mei counters him really badly, like almost rendering him useless. Just a whiff of her primary fire will slow down his momentum and then he can’t escape. Which means you can’t dive anymore and you’re better off playing any of the other off-tanks.

Sombra also counters him bad, but Mei completely ruins him.