I love Hammond/Wrecking Ball but he needs a few minor tweaks. These are the patch notes that I’m hoping we see soon. I’ve grouped them into Buffs and QoL changes.
Patch Notes
Buffs
1. Adaptive shield no longer breaks Hammond out of ball-mode.
2. Mines are now invincible until they activate.
3. Shields no longer destroy mines.
(Minefield was just to easily countered before. Now it can still be destroyed or evaded but will at least have a chance to activate first and can’t be completely wiped out with a shield.)
QoL
1. Hitting the melee button in ball-mode now breaks him out into mech-mode and melees. For some reason it did nothing before.
2. Reload sound effect has been added in ball-mode.
3. Grappling hook has been changed to be more consistent when hooking onto objects, especially payloads.
These are just a few tweaks that should help Hammond function more as he was intended. There are a number of other changes that we are considering if these aren’t enough to get Hammond where he needs to be. We will be keeping an eye on him in the future.
He also needs a change to his ball form because they can prevent him gaining momentum by walking towards him. So we stop this by his ball form passing through enemies and preventing body blocking. His ammo and fire rate could be increased. The ammo increased from 80 to 90 ammo and his fire rate increased from 25 to 30. And maybe adding one feature were he can grapple the ground but use his grapple like a slingshot.
Umm no. They are too easily destroyed to be OP in any context. Most tanks and a few other characters can take them out quickly for free.
For example your icon is Mei. Mei’s primary fire allows her to disable several at once. Not to mention that her wall can be used to take out several at once and clear a quick path.
I think it’d be better if they just ignored shields.Rein could still just swing his hammer but he’d have to drop his shield. Or he could firestrike but st least it’d use a cooldown and it’d only cut a narrow path. There would still be options to deal with it though.
Right now Winston can just jump over it, drop a shield at the right time and wipe them all out. Brigitte and Rein can just run through them with their shields up with no problem.
Nope. An easy way to take them out is to Pile Drive right in the middle of them before they activate as an enemy Hammond. You can also charge through them with Rein or Hammond before they activate, and other things like that. If you act fast you can clear out most of them before they have a chance to do anything.
They do do damage, but it’s just not helpful. It’s not good for an ultimate to be able to be wiped out completely so easily. The whole point is area denial and they don’t aren’t that if you can just stroll in with your shield up and be completely protected.
I’m 100% sure it is. I’ve done it before several times and I’ve had it done to me a few too. It’s especially easy with 2 Hammond’s. 1 pops ult, the other piledrives it right after it deploys but before the mines finish activating. It takes out the mines but causes no damage to the Hammond that does the pile drive.
You have about 1-1.5 seconds after the ult button is pressed before they activate. After that they will do plenty of damage.
I’m not sure about EMP affecting them before they activate, but that’s a completely different mechanic. What I described uses damage to take them out. EMP doesn’t do damage. EMP also doesn’t destroy them. It just deactivates them temporarily.
There’s a reason why his pickrate is so low, you just get more value out of DVA/Winston with the way Wrecking Ball is currently and they’re much easier to play. He needs buffs.
He needs more Ammo or a faster reload. His guns just don’t do enough damage to warrant such a long reload and small Ammo clip.
Shields should be useable in ball form.
Can move/bump enemies while rolling during normal speed, it doesn’t need to do damage either. He can be too easily body blocked and that can kill his movement since he relies so much on speed through using his grappling hook.
Mines should be given more health or do a little more damage. His mines can be taken out way too easily. Torb’s new ultimate is much better than mines at being a Area of Denial, since you can’t destroy it.
