Wrecking Ball is now Wrecked. Patch problems and OW2 future

General Discussion
1

I know that I need to choose my words carefully, since a lot of people are very polarizing against Wrecking Ball, but this newest patch causes more problems then it fixes and creates bigger questions about the future of the character.

The nerfs lately have been very questionable towards this character for so many reasons.

  1. The coming out of spawn time out. What other character automatically has a timeout applied to them? Should Soldiers run be disabled for a timeout from spawn, or Lucio’s Speed, or Pharah’s flight, Dva’s flight… The list goes on, why would this be the only here that would have that. It’s not balanced.

  2. The 6 second grappling hook in the newest patch. I know a lot of people are upset with the playstyle of spin to win, but this is not the answer. It is horribly implemented.

First, there is no timer anywhere to know when your grapple will disconnect. Are you supposed to use it and count to 6… while also playing the game?

Second, it still has the 5 second timeout before you can even reuse it again. It essentially drops you like a rock in whatever direction you were going or straight down with no movement capabilities to die… It is nearly as damaging as a Sombra hack (for arguments sake, not as damaging since you still have “shield” and are still in ball form, but similar)

I was annoyed but ambivalent with the spawn cooldown, but the grapple is unnecessarily cruel.

I was able to accept the changes pre this patch, but his character is almost useless with it.

I could see one of the other possible scenarios being a better mitigator for this in preferred order.

  1. Make the grapple time 15 seconds so that you can spin some (and for crying out loud, provide a timer), but not stay permanently.
  2. Remove the grapple cooldown time so that you are limited to 6 seconds but can regrapple right away again. This makes spin to win much harder to accomplish since you would have to aim and regrapple while dealing with the other team.

My last point is what does the future hold for Wrecking Ball, especially if OW2 is single tank. There would be no effective use for him. He can’t hold (with grapple nerfed), he can’t shield since it only protects him (with not that much effect). If OW2 is all about getting rid of CC and Wrecking Balls main purpose is CC, why would anyone pick him?

Maybe wrecking ball needs to be able to drop a shield like Winston or something, I don’t know but wanted to put this somewhere.

Sorry this is so long, and I already dread the WB hate, but at least I said it.

9 Likes
2

No, not long… it makes all the logical points that show how ridiculous this new nerf to the character is. All anyone can counter with is iTs AnNoYiNg, while ignoring everyone else’s available-at-spawn speed abilities and everyone else’s point stall ability.

Plus the implementation of just dropping you out of the spin at some point with no other ability to do anything in your main kit is just nuts. Spinning, which is literally parts of your kit’s abilities, is now suicide… and that’s if you DON’T already get punished by the like 18 other ways to punish you out of your spin if the enemy team has half a brain between all of them!

3 Likes
3

You have been conversing with the wrong people if that’s the only counter argument you’ve received.

Needless to say, the stalling play style Hammond is enables so well is not healthy for the game. And that’s not because “people don’t know how to stun him”, so let’s put the git gud argument to rest already.

That’s because tons of times people switch to Hammond on Defense when there’s too little time remaining for the attackers to switch and counter him.

And then he just mindlessly spins and spins, stalling the point and that action is 10X easier to do than stopping him, even by using his counters, because he also has one of the strongest self - sustain abilities in the game, designed to remove most of the risk he takes when he dives into the enemy team.

4

I was hoping for more discourse. You seem to be definitely anti ball in every conversation since you have posted a insane amount against ball. However the other post has been by someone very pro ball as they have posted consistently to counter yours.

It really shows just how polarizing ball is as a character. I think that there is a middle ground to be had, but everyone needs to find a solution instead of posting endlessly to counter each other. It’s like watching a Mei snowball being caught back and forth and never ending with no winner or loser.

2 Likes
5

Hyperbole is a common form of bad faith argument. Btw, cc is a single button.

2 Likes
6

After some more thinking there are my consolidated list of possible thoughts

  1. What if instead of grapple being a one use ability, it functioned more like pharahs flight (with the fuel being like gas on ODS gear.)
    So you have a “fuel” gauge and you can always launch and retract the grapple with no cooldown, but the longer it is out it runs out of fuel and disengages. That way you can use it for mobility, but if you try to hold, it will run out and release. Once its not being used up it fills up with fuel again, just like Pharah.
  2. Remove the grapple cooldown time so that you are limited to 6 seconds but can regrapple right away again. This makes spin to win much harder to accomplish since you would have to aim and regrapple while dealing with the other team.
  3. Treat ball like his mortal enemies Mei or Sombra. Put him exactly as he was before months ago… no nerfs at all. but make him like Mei in Ice Block or Sombra in invisible mode where they cannot cap the point until they come out spinning fireball mode.
  4. Make the grapple time 15 seconds so that you can spin some (and for crying out loud, provide a timer), but not stay permanently.
7

Realistically, removing this disables several out-of-combat techs Ball could do previously. It’s not a major thing (it in no way “ruins” the character) but it definitely hurts his feel a lot.

Here’s my solution to Spin2Win. I’ve seen others that are okay, but this one is still my favorite:

8

I haven’t played this game in months, because the stream of Ball nerfs (and balance in general) has upset me deeply. Anything I say should be taken with a large pillar of salt.

Regardless, here’s my take.

Step one. Add a freaking timer. Every other time-limited ability has some sort of meter that shows you how long you’ve got left. Hell, even D.Va boosters do, afaik. I have no clue how this slipped through the cracks.

Step two, make it so the timer only goes down when in fireball. This still punishes Spin2Win but still allows you to do some other techniques, like holding your grapple in X position in preparation for an enemy, save yourself from being booped, and probably other things my brain is rusty on.

Step three is to revert (maybe partially) his boop or shield nerf, though probably not both. I don’t really know what this character even does now. I used to think that he served as displacement/disruption, especially knocking around the enemy frontline, but with the nerf to his KB you can hardly knock people off high ground unless they’re standing right at the edge. If he’s meant to be a squishy distractor, the shields-per-enemy nerf hurt his ability to do that a little. Personally I’d wanna see his KB reverted over his shields, as I enjoy knocking people into my Reinhardt’s loving arms, or away from my team and into Sigma’s line of fire.

Step four is to maybe take a look at Grapple on CD out of spawn. It does what it’s supposed to, sure, and it really isn’t too bad, though losing on fun rollouts kinda sucks, but it still just sticks out like a sore thumb. No other ability in the game works like this. Besides, there already was an anti-ball-spawn-stall mechanic in place, and it’s called having 600HP worth of ult charge that goes straight into your enemy if you rush in and stall by yourself.

TLDR, a lot of tech has been gutted, so why not return some of his raw power?

Also, I just want to say that Grapple without CD, as absolutely hilarious and fun it would be to use, would be broken, even if you were limited to six seconds at a time. You could swing into someone up, Piledrive, then stack another fireball on them, and run away. Even if it didn’t kill, you’d cripple them, and you’d have insane maneuverability at all times.

9

Pharah doesn’t have a cool down on her flight, and it gives here some pretty crazy manuverability… which I why I mentioned option 1, in both my opening post and my later post with more specific thoughts.

1 Like
10

Sign the petition for WB shouldnt be done like this.

11

Yes it is and the developers also came to that conclusion.

12

There’s the “devs can do no wrong” argument.

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The outrage would be much higher if it was a meaningful nerf, like reducing his slam area or shield and the impact of removing infinite grapple is situational and not a baseline nerf that will make a difference every encounter. I’m certain that 6 second grapple will have close to no impact on winrates. You should thank them that he can still be one of the best tanks in the game and got away with such a minor change compared to Zarya for example.

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14

There’s the “shut up and be thankful you aren’t getting screwed further” argument

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15

I would have preferred shooting the grapple to disable it. So he can still use it for ambushes while waiting hooked on upper surfaces.

The grapple point should have like 80 hp and be shootable. If it dies, it gets an extended cd and he’s forced out at whatever velocity he’s going.

I haven’t tried ball yet but making it 6 seconds just limits his strategies. He needed counterplay, not limitations how how long he can stay with the grapple.

16

100% this.
Knowing Blizzard, they’ll just ignore your feedback and ruin another fun hero.

17

I wanted to post that I think what they did with ball in the Experimental is much more usable… and seems pretty close to what was suggested here by multiple people. I hope it goes to live.