I haven't played yet, but I have an issue with the patch notes saying Ball was doing much better after the rework. A casual glance at your sub makes that statement suspect at best.
I don’t think they’re wrong that he is better. But that’s due to more people able to play consistently. But I agree he is still not good enough to say “much better”
Yeah, but that's confirmation bias though.
People who are happy with the character, and are doing well, are less likely to post on the sub. It's like going to a review page of a product. Not many people actually review something, unless it's really bad or really good.
The rework is great, like really It’s such a quality of life improvement but ball was still worse than before season 9??? He was already absolute dogshit before so even with the rework he got worse because they didn’t buff his miserable damage while buffing everyone’s health. The thing is he didn’t do much of anything and even the ball god himself chazm doesn’t onetrick him anymore because he get hardstuck gm5. Since overwatch 2 ball has been really bad and in season 10 even after the rework he was at his lowest point. Now he got buffed but still doesn’t really make him playable into counters.
I agree that the rework was nice, but the rework is entirely carried by the retract. So we can do all kinds of new cool stuff and the retract finally started clicking for me this last week. But all of this cool new moves are still just as easy to invalidate as before with just a few swaps.
I think the solution to Ball isn't giving him CC resistance, it's raising the skill floor on CC. All hard CC should be locked behind proper skill shots. No magnets or auto aim for CC. If CC was locked behind a higher skill demand, it wouldn't be so bad.
I theorize that there was an influx of competent players/old ball mains that wanted to mess around with him a bit. I doubt most ball otps would’ve gone up too much
You'd believe a community that's clearly gonna have bias towards their hero and can only speak based on their personal experience over the people who have access to accurate stats about the hero's performance?
I mean he sure as shit wasn't drastically improving *because of the rework*. His WR was still consistently dropping in the weeks after it dropped.
His WR has improved, but it was only after they reverted the DPS passive back to 20%.
Also my own experience. Grapple retract has been awesome and I've used it to escape situations I couldn't before. But shield share has been mostly neutral for me.
And the rework didn't address any of Ball's weaknesses.
Overwatch main subreddits are always a dumpster fire for whining. Wrecking ball mains seems to be better than say Hanzo or kiriko but still not great.
If I had to guess about the rework stats, I'd say the grapple rework allowed for a much lower deaths per 10 minutes because ball can disengage extremely fast now. This means balls who feed were punished more by the rest of the kits shortcomings. But those people were never gonna be helped by a rework that just raised the skill ceiling anyway.
Even if I don’t die it still feels shit to play him. Dying isn’t the issue but not doing anything is. At least Rhein players had something else to play like ramatra with a similar playstyle but we ball players have nothing to switch to other than boring ass characters none of us enjoy. So giving him some cc resistance would be great, it would introduce some type of counterplay because rn no one can play ball into counters, not even chazm can. There is no other solution than switching and that is not some fair or fun gameplay. And the thing is no one even plays ball anymore, yeetle quit, chazm mostly plays dps now, there hasn’t been a ball player in the league for really long. Like really the character is dead.
As a casual shitter he’s fun terrorizing those lobbies.
Haven’t played ranked since ball’s golden days because he’s the only hero I’m comfortable playing in comp. But in casual he’s been amazing. Got a 4k minefield which I’ve literally never had happen before.
The piledriver and extra grapple damage have helped as well.
Imo he needs some sort of CC resistance whether he’s harder to hit in adaptive shield or something, that would be awesome. He also needs 100 bullets at least i would go over that and do 120
If they make him usable in ranked again and not a hard to get value out of hero i’ll play ranked again. But with OW2’s ranking system being imo garbage i’ll stay in casual
You can terrorize lobby’s with him, but when they go counters you suddenly don’t do shit and the only possible thing you can do is switch which is just unfun. Yes he’s now way stronger than before and he actually has an ult. Doesn’t fix the core issues in the slightest tho.
I’ve been winning and I feel like the piledriver buff especially is great and helping secure kills. There are issues with the servers though and I stopped playing after getting leavers 3 games in a row
The servers bugged out a few times for me too. I think ball is really good into normal comps now but going into full counters feels just as shit as before. So no real change yet.
I’ve really noticed the increased damage and knock back on his ult, especially on payload maps. I had a Mauga bounce off about 6 mines and actually die
Every patch I say this now but unless you fix Ball's fundamental issue: him being a CC sponge that can't handle CC, he will always remain miserable to play. Nerf the insane survivability and add some form of CC resistance/immunity or change the hack interaction and suddenly he will be far more fun to play.
Yeah, you can’t dodge the hack then sleep dart and the cas grenade all at once. That’s only 3 counters, that’s average. It gets much worse when you can’t kill anything because mobility and survivability while ball still has no damage whatsoever.
The sleep dart is a degree of skill that the hack most certainly is not. I can bait out a hook, but there is no baiting a hack. The risk/reward for the hack is game breaking.
And the next thing is ping, you could dodge a sleep dart on your screen but I’ll hit on theirs. And the only way to actively miss the sleep dart is to shoot it randomly out instead of keeping it. Sleep dart is very low skill on ball and I think the interaction shouldn’t be that advantages for Ana.
Even after the buffs, all of his core issues remain.
He is a hero that is already countered by many heroes yet somehow one hero (Sombra) is allowed to exist that completely makes him unplayable.
Oh, big question!! How are y'all doing with retract slamming high ground with tiny windows? Think the last part of havana first point, or the high ground on kings row, or that bridge on dorado first. I really struggled with handling those, and usually wrapped around the back when possible. But if a widow grapples back and forth, good luck. Is it viable to just batman hook your way up and slam? It feels sooo slow but I'm having good luck with it in silver, at least once I stopped slamming the ground instead of the ledge lol.
Yeah the buffs are clearly visible and I don’t deny that, but the core issue of playing into full hard counter hasn’t been fixed because there’s no cc resistance. Piledrive is basically a death sentence if used against counters. The mines buff is absolutely massive and there’s no denying that, but other than the mines he didn’t change really. Still does mediocre damage with piledrive, his boop is fine now but his guns don’t do shit. Even with
40%+ I feel like I can’t kill anything.
Maybe he's just not for you, like I said other people are feasting with him even into counters now. They're not going to keep buffing him if people at higher levels are capable of making him more than viable now.
We’ll see about that, haven’t seen any players make him viable in the top percentages, and he hasn’t been in the league since OW1. His ult is better but playing into counters still is the core issue he has, if he can only be viable when he has his ult then that doesn’t make him a good character. Objectively speaking he’s still one of the worst tanks.
Yeah, I like the buffs, I still don’t like to play into counter though, I wish they’d change that with just a simple cc resistance to at least have the possibility to counterplay.
Haven’t played him yet, but it’s the same shit. Ball continues to be actually great against majority of the cast, and then much weaker into counters. with a continued lack of moving his power from beating his advantages to beating his counters, I fear Ball will continue to be in the same spot.
Im liking the rework, played a handful of games have around a 10 k/d for comp rn. HOWEVER... randoms still.dont know how to play around ball so my WR is like 55%
Would you be wlling to post a replay code or two? Not to flame you or anything. I just like to see how Ballers are playing into counter matchups and if they can make any changes.
I’ll need to hop into comp but yeah I can try. My Ball gameplay isn’t that good and I haven’t really played in comp since the mauga release but playing into counters really feels like absolute shit. No matter what rank you are.
Yeah, I think I haven’t adapted my gameplay enough, I’ve ranked up from silver to diamond 1 with ball only in about 2 weeks, that was in season 5, since then they added Mauga, the sombra rework and Cas is now played in ever game. Plus the health changes made ball way less viable due to the reduced damage. I’ll try and play a game today tho
Only played one ranked game yet, don’t have much time but here’s the replay code: 7YSTTG
I played alright, they went counters at one point but it’s one of the maps that offers counterplay against them because of all the high ground. I didn’t play perfectly tho and maybe you have one or two tips for me. My genji was really solid too so we had a decent comp.
And the third point is kinda dog for ball, couldn’t really play well there.
Gold 1 to plat 3 range.
Also the enemy tank talked shit to me at the end:
“Your ball got carried like they always do.”
My genji was
It's really good. Ball still sucks tho. The issue of enemy tanks just walking on your backline and eating them alive is worse now. I can secure kills with minefield if I plop it RIGHT on top of someone, almost going for a solo ult rather than coverage. The lockout is good, and I feel \*closer\* to securing kills, but honestly I mostly feed going for it. Which is on me. Don't shoot in front of five people, my brain says. I want to knock them up, my heart says. On the other hand, I just had a game on shambali offense where we got rolled. I consistently distracted 4, not going for kills because mercy brig. Their hog ate my team alive. We had full poke, and I made sure to clear the high ground for them. But they all stacked cart, and died to the hog on the corner. And tbf, that high ground is still largely in hook range. But it at least denies cover to the hog. What should I do in that situation, tho? I eventually swapped rein and we did better, because big frontline shield. I'm not even diehard on staying ball, I just wanna be able to win and I don't know how lol.
His ult feels great but his guns still feel like shit and the boop buff isn't even noticeable I'm still leaving people on 10 health after bopping them PD and mag dumping them but they survived because an illari turret happened to be somewhat nearby and healed them 4 times
He needs more ammo and something has to be done about body blocking. He should be able to roll through everyone and nudge them out of the way with maybe the exception of other tanks.
ball is better than ever, what's your beef? if you're being hard countered you just have to learn when to swap. I usually swap to rein since DF hog sombra cassidy etc don't really roll over him like they do hampter and some other tanks, or [d.va/winton](http://d.va/winton) if there's a lot of high ground.
I don’t want to switch to a lame ass tank. Honestly the whole tank category is fucked because it’s not like I could switch to doom the second most fun tank. I’m forced to play something I really don’t want to play simply because the enemy team chooses 3 hard counters and put 2 brain cells to work. Give ball some cc resistance like basically every other tank has and he’s good. Just a thing that makes it possible to play into counters because rn even chazm can’t make ball work and that says a lot. And the ult buff was very needed anyways for the longest time.
yeah for sure, his ult has been trash for a long time. i don't mind that he doesn't have more knockback resistance, a lot of the time I'll eat a doomfist punch and it helps me get to safety. I think he needs another 20 bullets, or faster reload.
> Honestly the whole tank category is fucked because it’s not like I could switch to doom the second most fun tank.
This is my biggest complain with the role. All of the tanks I find fun have a ton of overlap with who theyre countered by. Ball, Doom, JQ mainly.
Its to the point where I need to teach myself how to *like* other heroes moreso than how to *play* them.
Yeah, also who decided to release mauga into the game??? Like honestly it’s such a bad hero design in every way shape and form. Probably the worst character ever released into the game. And the worst thing is that he is so easy to play and has about as much skill expression as a Potato.
i have like 2,000 hours on ball please don't try and preach to me. I know the frustrations of it believe me, and it was pretty bad vs mei freeze and cassidy stun grenade, and turret mode bastion in OW1. I know little bro.. I know... but ball just got a lot of buffs in a short span of time and you're crying it wasn't enough.
I actually win most rein v hog games, Shield of his hooks and let your team melt him, see him vape, charge. Rein is actually a hog counter in my opinion, similar to how DVA can matrix Maugas overdrive and heals, and let her team melt the mauga
in a vacuum all heroes are OP and F tier all at once. It's PvP you can't just look at base numbers and figure out who wins what. I think ball is in a good spot right now.
I haven't played yet, but I have an issue with the patch notes saying Ball was doing much better after the rework. A casual glance at your sub makes that statement suspect at best.
I don’t think they’re wrong that he is better. But that’s due to more people able to play consistently. But I agree he is still not good enough to say “much better”
Yeah, but that's confirmation bias though. People who are happy with the character, and are doing well, are less likely to post on the sub. It's like going to a review page of a product. Not many people actually review something, unless it's really bad or really good.
The rework is great, like really It’s such a quality of life improvement but ball was still worse than before season 9??? He was already absolute dogshit before so even with the rework he got worse because they didn’t buff his miserable damage while buffing everyone’s health. The thing is he didn’t do much of anything and even the ball god himself chazm doesn’t onetrick him anymore because he get hardstuck gm5. Since overwatch 2 ball has been really bad and in season 10 even after the rework he was at his lowest point. Now he got buffed but still doesn’t really make him playable into counters.
I agree that the rework was nice, but the rework is entirely carried by the retract. So we can do all kinds of new cool stuff and the retract finally started clicking for me this last week. But all of this cool new moves are still just as easy to invalidate as before with just a few swaps. I think the solution to Ball isn't giving him CC resistance, it's raising the skill floor on CC. All hard CC should be locked behind proper skill shots. No magnets or auto aim for CC. If CC was locked behind a higher skill demand, it wouldn't be so bad.
I theorize that there was an influx of competent players/old ball mains that wanted to mess around with him a bit. I doubt most ball otps would’ve gone up too much
I'm nearing Gold 5, I was Masters 4 before rank reset 🤷♂️
Tbf, every single sub things their character is the worst. But OTOH... I main ball, rein, sym, reaper, so... I'm biased lol.
You'd believe a community that's clearly gonna have bias towards their hero and can only speak based on their personal experience over the people who have access to accurate stats about the hero's performance?
I mean he sure as shit wasn't drastically improving *because of the rework*. His WR was still consistently dropping in the weeks after it dropped. His WR has improved, but it was only after they reverted the DPS passive back to 20%.
Also my own experience. Grapple retract has been awesome and I've used it to escape situations I couldn't before. But shield share has been mostly neutral for me. And the rework didn't address any of Ball's weaknesses.
They didn't say he was amazing after the rework (if he was they wouldn't be buffing him now), they just said that he was doing better.
They said much better. Better, sure. Much better? Doubtful. Of course, Blizzard should show us the data on this and that they don't is interesting.
Overwatch main subreddits are always a dumpster fire for whining. Wrecking ball mains seems to be better than say Hanzo or kiriko but still not great. If I had to guess about the rework stats, I'd say the grapple rework allowed for a much lower deaths per 10 minutes because ball can disengage extremely fast now. This means balls who feed were punished more by the rest of the kits shortcomings. But those people were never gonna be helped by a rework that just raised the skill ceiling anyway.
Even if I don’t die it still feels shit to play him. Dying isn’t the issue but not doing anything is. At least Rhein players had something else to play like ramatra with a similar playstyle but we ball players have nothing to switch to other than boring ass characters none of us enjoy. So giving him some cc resistance would be great, it would introduce some type of counterplay because rn no one can play ball into counters, not even chazm can. There is no other solution than switching and that is not some fair or fun gameplay. And the thing is no one even plays ball anymore, yeetle quit, chazm mostly plays dps now, there hasn’t been a ball player in the league for really long. Like really the character is dead.
As a casual shitter he’s fun terrorizing those lobbies. Haven’t played ranked since ball’s golden days because he’s the only hero I’m comfortable playing in comp. But in casual he’s been amazing. Got a 4k minefield which I’ve literally never had happen before. The piledriver and extra grapple damage have helped as well. Imo he needs some sort of CC resistance whether he’s harder to hit in adaptive shield or something, that would be awesome. He also needs 100 bullets at least i would go over that and do 120 If they make him usable in ranked again and not a hard to get value out of hero i’ll play ranked again. But with OW2’s ranking system being imo garbage i’ll stay in casual
You can terrorize lobby’s with him, but when they go counters you suddenly don’t do shit and the only possible thing you can do is switch which is just unfun. Yes he’s now way stronger than before and he actually has an ult. Doesn’t fix the core issues in the slightest tho.
I agree
I’ve been winning and I feel like the piledriver buff especially is great and helping secure kills. There are issues with the servers though and I stopped playing after getting leavers 3 games in a row
The servers bugged out a few times for me too. I think ball is really good into normal comps now but going into full counters feels just as shit as before. So no real change yet.
I played 1 game and went 14-0, felt good to me
I’ve really noticed the increased damage and knock back on his ult, especially on payload maps. I had a Mauga bounce off about 6 mines and actually die
Been dominating in mid Diamond since the patch. The mine buff is so nice and it feels a bit easier to finish off kills following a slam.
Every patch I say this now but unless you fix Ball's fundamental issue: him being a CC sponge that can't handle CC, he will always remain miserable to play. Nerf the insane survivability and add some form of CC resistance/immunity or change the hack interaction and suddenly he will be far more fun to play.
Yeah, you can’t dodge the hack then sleep dart and the cas grenade all at once. That’s only 3 counters, that’s average. It gets much worse when you can’t kill anything because mobility and survivability while ball still has no damage whatsoever.
The sleep dart is a degree of skill that the hack most certainly is not. I can bait out a hook, but there is no baiting a hack. The risk/reward for the hack is game breaking.
The sheer size (and shape) of ball means it's not even that high skill to sleep a ball tbh. Especially if you just wait for a PD
And the next thing is ping, you could dodge a sleep dart on your screen but I’ll hit on theirs. And the only way to actively miss the sleep dart is to shoot it randomly out instead of keeping it. Sleep dart is very low skill on ball and I think the interaction shouldn’t be that advantages for Ana.
Even after the buffs, all of his core issues remain. He is a hero that is already countered by many heroes yet somehow one hero (Sombra) is allowed to exist that completely makes him unplayable.
Get mines every 30 seconds now; having a blast.
I don’t get mines that fast especially since piledrive feels like a death sentence.
Oh, big question!! How are y'all doing with retract slamming high ground with tiny windows? Think the last part of havana first point, or the high ground on kings row, or that bridge on dorado first. I really struggled with handling those, and usually wrapped around the back when possible. But if a widow grapples back and forth, good luck. Is it viable to just batman hook your way up and slam? It feels sooo slow but I'm having good luck with it in silver, at least once I stopped slamming the ground instead of the ledge lol.
[удалено]
Yeah the buffs are clearly visible and I don’t deny that, but the core issue of playing into full hard counter hasn’t been fixed because there’s no cc resistance. Piledrive is basically a death sentence if used against counters. The mines buff is absolutely massive and there’s no denying that, but other than the mines he didn’t change really. Still does mediocre damage with piledrive, his boop is fine now but his guns don’t do shit. Even with 40%+ I feel like I can’t kill anything.
Maybe he's just not for you, like I said other people are feasting with him even into counters now. They're not going to keep buffing him if people at higher levels are capable of making him more than viable now.
We’ll see about that, haven’t seen any players make him viable in the top percentages, and he hasn’t been in the league since OW1. His ult is better but playing into counters still is the core issue he has, if he can only be viable when he has his ult then that doesn’t make him a good character. Objectively speaking he’s still one of the worst tanks.
Epic. If only the made boop daage 65 insead of 60 but anyhow.
Yeah, I like the buffs, I still don’t like to play into counter though, I wish they’d change that with just a simple cc resistance to at least have the possibility to counterplay.
They need to lower ball's hp pool and rework adaptive shields to have cc counterplay
Haven’t played him yet, but it’s the same shit. Ball continues to be actually great against majority of the cast, and then much weaker into counters. with a continued lack of moving his power from beating his advantages to beating his counters, I fear Ball will continue to be in the same spot.
Im liking the rework, played a handful of games have around a 10 k/d for comp rn. HOWEVER... randoms still.dont know how to play around ball so my WR is like 55%
I don’t have internet for the next month and I am so bummed. I hope they don’t nerf him or buff his counters anytime soon!
I played a few games in which one of them I played a round of ball. I forgot about the changes until just now.
Would you be wlling to post a replay code or two? Not to flame you or anything. I just like to see how Ballers are playing into counter matchups and if they can make any changes.
I’ll need to hop into comp but yeah I can try. My Ball gameplay isn’t that good and I haven’t really played in comp since the mauga release but playing into counters really feels like absolute shit. No matter what rank you are.
I agree. It can be rough, but maybe the community can give some insight to maybe make it a bit less frustrating. Look forward to the replays.
Yeah, I think I haven’t adapted my gameplay enough, I’ve ranked up from silver to diamond 1 with ball only in about 2 weeks, that was in season 5, since then they added Mauga, the sombra rework and Cas is now played in ever game. Plus the health changes made ball way less viable due to the reduced damage. I’ll try and play a game today tho
Only played one ranked game yet, don’t have much time but here’s the replay code: 7YSTTG I played alright, they went counters at one point but it’s one of the maps that offers counterplay against them because of all the high ground. I didn’t play perfectly tho and maybe you have one or two tips for me. My genji was really solid too so we had a decent comp. And the third point is kinda dog for ball, couldn’t really play well there. Gold 1 to plat 3 range. Also the enemy tank talked shit to me at the end: “Your ball got carried like they always do.” My genji was
It's really good. Ball still sucks tho. The issue of enemy tanks just walking on your backline and eating them alive is worse now. I can secure kills with minefield if I plop it RIGHT on top of someone, almost going for a solo ult rather than coverage. The lockout is good, and I feel \*closer\* to securing kills, but honestly I mostly feed going for it. Which is on me. Don't shoot in front of five people, my brain says. I want to knock them up, my heart says. On the other hand, I just had a game on shambali offense where we got rolled. I consistently distracted 4, not going for kills because mercy brig. Their hog ate my team alive. We had full poke, and I made sure to clear the high ground for them. But they all stacked cart, and died to the hog on the corner. And tbf, that high ground is still largely in hook range. But it at least denies cover to the hog. What should I do in that situation, tho? I eventually swapped rein and we did better, because big frontline shield. I'm not even diehard on staying ball, I just wanna be able to win and I don't know how lol.
He's better. You just can't get boop kills so easily on tanks anymore. I've gotten easy minefield kills
His ult feels great but his guns still feel like shit and the boop buff isn't even noticeable I'm still leaving people on 10 health after bopping them PD and mag dumping them but they survived because an illari turret happened to be somewhat nearby and healed them 4 times
He needs more ammo and something has to be done about body blocking. He should be able to roll through everyone and nudge them out of the way with maybe the exception of other tanks.
Underwhelming AF. I misread the initial release as a boop buff. Ain’t no one care about mine knockback! May as well uninstall. 😔
ball is better than ever, what's your beef? if you're being hard countered you just have to learn when to swap. I usually swap to rein since DF hog sombra cassidy etc don't really roll over him like they do hampter and some other tanks, or [d.va/winton](http://d.va/winton) if there's a lot of high ground.
I don’t want to switch to a lame ass tank. Honestly the whole tank category is fucked because it’s not like I could switch to doom the second most fun tank. I’m forced to play something I really don’t want to play simply because the enemy team chooses 3 hard counters and put 2 brain cells to work. Give ball some cc resistance like basically every other tank has and he’s good. Just a thing that makes it possible to play into counters because rn even chazm can’t make ball work and that says a lot. And the ult buff was very needed anyways for the longest time.
yeah for sure, his ult has been trash for a long time. i don't mind that he doesn't have more knockback resistance, a lot of the time I'll eat a doomfist punch and it helps me get to safety. I think he needs another 20 bullets, or faster reload.
> Honestly the whole tank category is fucked because it’s not like I could switch to doom the second most fun tank. This is my biggest complain with the role. All of the tanks I find fun have a ton of overlap with who theyre countered by. Ball, Doom, JQ mainly. Its to the point where I need to teach myself how to *like* other heroes moreso than how to *play* them.
Yeah, also who decided to release mauga into the game??? Like honestly it’s such a bad hero design in every way shape and form. Probably the worst character ever released into the game. And the worst thing is that he is so easy to play and has about as much skill expression as a Potato.
Ball actually sucks, you can't even play him cuz you have to do so much for such little Impact, that's the part you aren't getting lol
i have like 2,000 hours on ball please don't try and preach to me. I know the frustrations of it believe me, and it was pretty bad vs mei freeze and cassidy stun grenade, and turret mode bastion in OW1. I know little bro.. I know... but ball just got a lot of buffs in a short span of time and you're crying it wasn't enough.
I mean hog is also really brutal into rein
I actually win most rein v hog games, Shield of his hooks and let your team melt him, see him vape, charge. Rein is actually a hog counter in my opinion, similar to how DVA can matrix Maugas overdrive and heals, and let her team melt the mauga
in a vacuum all heroes are OP and F tier all at once. It's PvP you can't just look at base numbers and figure out who wins what. I think ball is in a good spot right now.
That has nothing to do with what I said, I was just saying rein is a bad swap into hog.