They literally ruined wrecking ball with this change. When I first noticed it in game I kept thinking there was a bug or something but when I saw the patch notes I couldn’t believe they did this. Wrecking ball is basically ruined for me now. What was one of my favorite characters to play now will never be played again by me. This should have never happened. His whole thing was the grappling hook and to dramatically change it like this is just ridiculous.
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They had to do something for DPS players, that can’t hit ball spinning around them.
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What they should do is only start the 6 second timer if ball is either attached to payload or on point; DATA THAT THE GAME ALREADY HAS (!) given that it will know whether ball is counted as one of the # of people on payload/point. It doesn’t have to be that he stays on point even … just ‘If ball = one of players considered on point, then begin cooldown on grapple’.
This may nerf a few additional spots (hanging from windmill, for example), but certainly LESS oppressive than a flat 6 sec cooldown. And it still fulfills the spin2win nerf that they apparently are going for.
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This is a game of resource management, you can’t be serious… and no it wasn’t just about low elo, but I do think the 6 seconds is just too low for the goal of the ability, maybe 10, or 12.
Now you know how an average non ball player feels.
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Literally, WB is the character when Overwatch “jumped the shark”. He was tone breaking, annoying to play against, and doesn’t synergize well with any other tank well unless they are also a diver. He’s also goofy looking quite honestly, a reject from Pinky and the Brain.
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Ball had way too much movement and can boop everyone else around with no warning. Being unable to get back on the map after you’ve made a mistake and been booped off is totally fair.
High rank players still seem to be playing him a lot. He’s still really strong in every other way, I don’t think this made such a difference to his power if you’re a good player.
Most players below diamond don’t know how to use him anyway so this just makes people stop picking him to waste time on the point etc, which is good for the game so I think overall it’s a good change.
Agree that the devs should have been clearer (or said anything) about why they did it, and perhaps a visual cue would help players to know the length of it, but there are other abilities in the game that are timed that have no visual cue to the player using them, you just get used to the timing with practice.
I’m not a massive ball player, he’s somewhere in the middle of the pack for my time played, but from my experience, most of the times you’d grapple you wouldn’t be holding on for that long anyway. Unless literally just spinning on the point which was irritating for everyone else.
This game has so much crowd control that it shouldn’t be a problem. Do DPS players struggle to find the stun cowboy now that his name changed or something?
Jokes aside, every character category (DPS, Tank, Support) has counters, so if there’s a Wrecking Ball, there’s a wide variety of characters that any player on the team can use.
As someone who’s mained Wrecking Ball since his release, there’s 2 types of things that I’m cautious of:
- Crowd control that disables or disrupts my movement
- Heavy DPS that makes me have to run away
In the first category of counters (disrupting crowd control), we have:
- Cassidy
- Sombra
- Junkrat
- Roadhog
- Brigitte
- Ana
Honorable mentions are Mei and Symmetra
It’s not hard to avoid getting frozen by Mei outside of her ultimate, but she will force me to leave, thus protecting nearby teammates.
Symmetra’s turrets, when well placed, will force me out of ball form because they slow you down to almost a complete stop when hit by all 3. Combined with help from her team, it can be annoying to deal with.
In the second category of counters (Heavy DPS), we have:
- Reaper
- Soldier 76
- Bastion
- Zenyatta
Character Details
Reaper should win a 1v1. Due to Hammond’s size, reaper will hit easily, dealing heavy damage and healing more than Hammond can damage him.
Bastion denies the entire are he’s covering.
You may be surprised to see soldier there, but ever since his aim/spread change, he can actually deal pretty heavy damage to Wrecking Ball. If he sticks to his team for protection, he can more than often force me to run away.
Zenyatta’s discord orb combined with either crowd control or heavy DPS can make survival much harder.
So, there’s not a lack of counters against Wrecking Ball. It’s mostly a matter of team work in my experience.
For example, if Cassidy runs off on his own he won’t do much. However, if he stays with his team and stuns Hammond as he piledrivers in, his team mates can help follow up with damage.
Sometimes the enemy team will just completely ignore a Hammond that jumps into literally the middle of all of them, so it’s no wonder he’ll survive then.
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Don’t worry, I am sure AndyB will make a random comment on this and the forums will do a complete 180 and rejoice. Conveniently forgetting the overall lack of communication and odd decisions by Blizzard.
You all forget 1 thing he can still be played with the 6 second duration
It’s just to stop perma stalling against low Elo… it doesn’t change him at all if you’re playing at an Elo that can easily punish spin to win because ball players don’t actually do that once you’re in a higher skill bracket
Agreed it just means you gotta try and be less predictable
People are blowing this so wildly out of proportion.
It’s like watching soccer “injuries”
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uninstalled, current devs are more DPS biased than ever and just want the same 5 heros “McCassidy, Ana, Hanzo, Genji, Reinhardt” to be meta forever and if you dont main those heros you can just go play a better balanced game ran by competant devs. Tank cooldowns become more and more restrictive, unfun, and unskilled while DPS cooldowns like flashbang, hack, and Storm arrow continue to be made more braindead or easy with already forgiving ranges, cooldown refunds, and additional richochet mechanics added in cause DPS is never easy enough.
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you mean Echo, Brig, Sombra, Junkrat, Mei, Hog and Rein, Sym, Torb? Those are the REAL “jumped the shark” heroes and most of them are OG vanilla OW. Rein for me takes the cake, one of the best and staple heroes of the game is a MELEE HERO, YES A MELEE HERO LOLOL.
all the successive tank nerfs over time frankly piss me off to the point where i am no longer queueing for tank or support on queued game modes… i am going DPS only just to take up queue time and stop helping lowering it like before when i mostly tanked…
Screw dps! i am joining them… out of bitterness and vengeance.
i am done tanking for you people! i am cashing all my tickets and divicing a strategy to maximize how much queue time i can occupy… frankly i think all other tanks should endevour to do the same… let the DPS mains wait for days or start tanking for us instead.
besides it helps round out my flexiness…
those bastards nagged away a whole tank slot because of their whining and moaning…
and they often they stay miles away from the payload so the tank feels lonely enough as is… i am sick and tired of payload averse dps cowards…
the wont get near with out 2 shields but they cant stand having two shields on the other team so the nag…
and more nerfs come and make tanking less fun… and you wonder why no one wants to tank…
they also got the majority of heros includin the last one before ow2… because the all important dps must allways be appeaced… so why should we bother tanking for them?
how about a general tank strike?
also if they nerfed spin to win because they think it low skill how about hanzos mini logs now having babies? buff hanzo spam… that is hardly skill based…
Unless tanks in ow2 are gonna have to be renamed Kaiju in ow2 and have thoughness to match then i cant see tanking being other then an intoleratble hell… like it was before 2/2/2
Also a major utility of spinning with hammon was the ability to take stock of what is going on and look around… while still giving value… only mercy really can afford that now… which is less then ideal…
Roadhog and Sigma go well with Wrecking Ball
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every hero that does area of effect ults will typically pair well with sigma and zarya and pile driver can serve a similar role for other area of effect heros…
like a pile driver + dragon…
No one but you thinks such a thing I assure you. You cannot “jump the shark” on original launch characters, do you even know what it means? Pros have no issue with a melee character, why do you?
Yeh have a timer bar, could have the cable glow red or even have a sound of a cable straining as it gets closer to snapping 
Also change it so that’s it’s not just time but dependent on whether you’re going max speed or getting shot or something.