9 hrs of Ball here, ~%80 winrate, yes ofc my opinion here will be biased but here’s my attempt to defend him:
There are ways to deny ball. You all just love to highlight all his strenghs, and rather than try to understand possible counters that already exist in the game, you rather come and complain about it here screaming he’s op (don’t take it personally, but it’s because his counters are so much more complex then the simple mathetimatical change to an ability) Here are many ways to deny ball that aren’t as cut and dry as a simple “buff/nerf” because so much of it has to do with positioning:
-Body blocking his exit paths Ball always depends on an exit. He’s also big. Body blocking small hallways, doorways, is so detrimental to ball -Deterring him from his proposed path when ball is in full speed, yes he’s a wrecking ball (lol) But a simple boop, or again body block, can have ball accidentally running into an unexpected edge, thus causing his speed to either slow or stop completely, hence making his exit that much harder -Ball’s slam should be rather easily expectable ffs he literally has to go up in the air TWICE before coming down. Once to literally get himself off the ground, then the 2nd being that little sonic spin before doing a direct line towards the floor. -Ball has numerous counters for the reasons I explained above Sombra’s hack,
Ana’s sleep,
Zenyattas discord,
Mei’s wall,
Lucio’s boop,
Ashe’s knockback,
Rein’s charge (requires little bit of timing but is dual purposeful for both when he just swings in circles around payload/point or when he does his groundslam
I’m sure there’s more but these are just the ones that came to mind immediately
Also you could practice ball yourself and familiarize yourself of his own disadvantages.
Tight corners, small spaces, etc. These all play towards the advtange of those playing against ball.
Also, ball does have the capability of being headshot when out of ball form. Almost nobody does it. But understand ball can’t shoot when he’s in ball form. Everything is a trade off.
A good ball is scary because they know where all the healthpacks are, know when to disengage, and are generally a pain in everyone’s [insert word here].
I don’t think he is overpowered, just really annoying in the right hands.
If you catch ball on shield cooldown, they burn down really quickly, even as a support. Kind of a bummer to see. He’s a really cooly designed character, like a Lucio but a tank. Just full of disruption and distraction so the dps can do their stuff.
Idk if you’re new and think 9 hours is a lot (it’s not at all) but after reading the rest of your post, you’re already far more intelligent than 95% of forum users that think ball is some op monster impossible to counter or kill.
I mained ball in masters in OW1, diamond in OW2 since he was bad for two seasons… but the way this game is played now is just everyone trying to counter the tank. Ball is good yeah but like you understand, it’s not at all hard to counter him, he’s one of the easiest tanks in the game to counter. I can’t one trick ball like I used to, cause playing tank now is just constantly switching to avoid everyone trying to hard counter you.
One sombra or one Mei is all it takes for me to switch. It’s possible to play around those counters but it’s just not worth it when other tanks exist that have far less hard counters.
You make a list of counterplay which is cool and all but that is a static list and if he was the weakest hero in the game or the most OP hero in the game. NOTHING that you said would change.
Meaning it all has zero to do with his power level.
You think people have time to predict his trajectory and interfere with it while being constantly shot at by his team? Besides, cable’s CD is so low and hes so fast he’ll just roll away and try again in 5 seconds.
Its a constant chore. Just like Sombra hacking, appearing, shooting, being dealt with, and disappearing. A constant, unfun, mentally exhausting, demoralizing chore that puts way more burden on the victim to deal with it than it does on such characters to simply attempt it over and over and over again.
Oh, and give piledriver a ground indicator because the +/- 20ys is annoying. Clarification on where it will affect goes a long way towards punishing it, not that you really can all that much anymore.
the lower the ranks the slower that section of the community learns how to deal with different heroes. since ball hasnt been meta since almost ever, the majority of the OW player base is just not familiar and will probably take 3 months to learn. that said im quite sure that ball is op only in a top ball players hands. if you havent mastered ball, he is just good, not op.
So when I’m playing DPS, go Mei to force them off Ball, got it. Now, I am primarily tank so what do you do then to kick the hamster out of his car? I try Orisa and seems to be somewhat decent with Fortify which stops him in his tracks, and pelting him with a Javelin sometimes when you can hit it, but Ball always seems to get away no matter what I do. I’ve found the best way is to go Sigma and solo ulting him is an almost guaranteed death. So what am I doing wrong?
the real problem is people will complain about ball being unkillable while focusing him with something dumb like genji + ashe. if you want to focus him, pick heroes suited for the job or you would be better off doing almost anything else
Also you could practice ball yourself and familiarize yourself of his own disadvantages.
I have a lot more than nine hours on Ball, and the recent shield health change was utterly tone-deaf. The last thing Ball needed was more independant self-sustain.
Like what do you think would happen if you gave any other hyper-mobile hero shields? Tracer? Genji? Sombra? They would be broken. You vastly reduce their reliance on support and massively enhance their up-time. Go on and try to justify giving it to a hero who already has hyper-mobility on no CD to abuse healthpacks, armour, one of the largest health pools in the game, and one of the the best damage-soaking CDs in the game.
Oh, and go ahead and buff their ultimate and best damage CD while you’re at it.
Yeah Mei and sombra are the best picks for dps but I should also mention I also only switch if they’re good at playing the heroes. Sometimes it’s obvious they’re actually not good with sombra or Mei so I consider it an advantage to have one of their dps wasting space trying to counter me lol. If a sombra is not good she will not get many hacks on me or get value out or the ones she lands. But a good sombra or Mei, I’m switching. The good news is they aren’t too hard to learn to play well.
As for tank counters, the match ups are a lot more fair. Hog is balls hardest counter but after the nerfs, it’s questionable. A good hog can still make me switch but hogs good enough to do that after the nerfs are pretty rare. Orisa and Sigma are good picks into ball but I would consider them soft counters, not hard.