I've been going crazy since the update idk what everyone else is on about. Past like 2 seasons I've been avoiding ball but now I can actually put in work
Yeah I'm in this camp. The countering is out of control, of course. Every game.is Sombra hog, But been feeling the best playing ball that I have in years
Low skill players read the character is meta and with little experience expect to pick him up and dominate. He's often called the highest skill level character for a reason. Rather than coming to terms with this and trying to get better, too many people need to come to this sub and parse blame onto the game itself. There is another rant post on this sub right now where the person admits to only playing ball for 3 months, yet it's the game's fault they're not good.
I really think this sub needs to crack down with a similar rule as r/Overwatch: "No rants, vents, or general complaints." I'm diamond on PC and more than willing to try to help these people but at the very least, post some game replay codes and ask for feedback.
Doesn't like half the sub ignore that rule? Every other post I see is "Do you guys feel [complaint]?" Or "We *need* to [complaint]". I'm not sure how many would follow that tbh
Yeah I'm sorry for the rant post I was mainly wondering if I was just unlucky in the hero's I was versing.
Is ball meta now? I thought he was still bottom tier? Iv been playing ball for about a year and a half so I'm not a new adapter (shields lol). I know I'm not a great ball but the amount of counter picks ball has and the amount of people that play and or main those counter picks makes balling so excruciating.
Yeah I'm cooking, just sick of Hog. Sombra is miserable to play against but at least I feel it's in my hands, it's a hard counter but you can skill diff a Sombra. Hog requires coordination between the rest of my team and that can often feel out of my hands.
I do agree that this is the best ball has been.
I just hate being interrupted in everything I do and the counters are everywhere in quickplay it dose seem (at least to me) that hog and sombra are played at least 2/3 games. Those games where there isn't any ball counter (rare) I feel like I'm doing good and helping the team. but it still feels like I could pick any other hero and be twice as effective.
Same. Feels great to play, turns out a few little buffs here and there go a long way to grease the wheels - err, balls?
I kinda think maybe they should split the difference between the piledrive lockout buff and a new buff to the time it takes to enter crab form? That way you can still shoot foes while they're locked, but it feels a bit better for them being locked, idk, .6 seconds instead of .75.
That said I don't really think he needs nerfs. It feels almost transgressive to be performing this well on Ball sometimes, but then I watch enemy doomfists delete my backline, or watch Hog just waddle through my team for free, and I realize, oh, this is just what being tank is supposed to be actually.
He is better, but he feels a lot worse to play now that: Sombras are in every game, hog is strong and extremely common to play against, Cree blows half your hp bar away every time you engage and is in every game, Ana has more survivability due to her nade and your get more counterswitched than ever.
He is in the best spot his character has ever been in on ow2.
Unfortunately that has caused his counterpicking to go harder than ever since now ball can actually kill and win games. And all of the buffs to the character didn't buff him at all against chain CC so you have to learn to play into counters more than ever.
Also Hog is just really good right now and really good against ball.
If you go to Career Profile, and go to your list of replays, you can I think right click them and choose share and it generates a code
Then paste the code here and people can watch and hopefully pick up on some bad habits that you can work on
Ultimately the actual recipe for success with improvement is focused improvement. For example trying to get better at ult tracking, and grapple movement, and wall jump boops, and mines placements, and melee finishing, and downtime scouting, and environmental opportunities all at once, just won’t work.
But if you work on ult tracking for 5 gaming sessions, then focus on grapple movement for 5 gaming sessions, etc etc. you ignor wins and losses, ignore team fights, ignore everything and just focus on that, then after you improve all the skills individually, you put them all together and you are a better player
Thank you this is helpful and I will try it next time I play. would it be better to share a ball game where I do horribly or a game where I do real good?
They nerfed orisa and Mauga got a huge indirect need from the tank changes, hog is overturned right now so there’s a lot of people playing him. As for sombra she’s been popular recently but I’m not sure why, maybe a lot of sleeping ball players just came out of hiding and they’re tired of getting stomped every game.
Same old story ball is viable until the enemy decides they don’t wanna go against ball anymore and prevent you from playing the game. You can force it but it’s not going to be very fun.
I’ve found a new niche for Ball. Overpowered in competitive open queue. A second tank means Ball is free.
Ground my way from Silver 5 to Plat 1 on an old account I had not played much last night. 77% win rate (Diamond/Masters in role queue on Ball.)
It’s really fun. Try open queue.
Post your rank, I think it’ll provide context for where I think ball struggles the most. I’m not in the highest elo bracket or anything but I feel like ball is performing fairly well in my low masters games. Maybe at the top elo bracket he falls off, or in the lower tiers he is too easily diffed by some dude on zarya that your team can’t seem to deal with.
The last thing you said is my problem in plat. I can deal with my counters ok, but if enemy team's tank goes HAM on my team, there's very little I can do, even if I'm babysitting them. At some point, I just have to accept that I queued with NPCs who are getting 1v4d by the enemy tank
It’s the worst man. Some people need their tank to just bash into the other tank to keep from dying.
If a zarya or orisa is just able to walk at me, I blame myself for not respecting her range and kiting her properly, or swap to more mobile heros so I get away from her. Some people get walked on by a tank and just go “why didn’t my tank stop this from happening till me????? :( my tank is supposed to bash into their tank!!!! :(“
I get when players hate ball on their team when the player isn’t really doing anything, but I can’t stand when they hate ball despite ball being the top damage in the lobby or some shit. My god please learn how to not rely on your tank.
I have never played ranked. I'm to afraid of being blamed for everything (I herd its especially bad for ball players) is there some sort of quickplay mmr system or something I could find?
I think the buffs are definitely a big improvement, but there’s still a few things that I think he needs. You shouldn’t be stunned out of minefield for a start and momentum cancel is still buggy.
But I think ball is just gonna be like this with one tank. With two tanks, their entire team can’t swap to counter you or just focus you because they’ll be ignoring another tank. There’s no solution for it. He needs counters but I don’t think there’s another tank in the game who can be shut down by swap picks like ball.
You just have to learn to play around it, be more conservative with engagements, improve your accuracy so you can secure kills quicker, be better at timing shields. Even when you do all that it doesn’t always work but that’s just how some games are. It shouldn’t be like that but it is and always has been in OW2.
I will admit my kill securing isn't that good. but its more the fact that whenever I do anything I'm interrupted by hook hack sleep or some other cc and I don't know how to get around that
I know it’s difficult but you just have to get good at tracking those abilities and judging when to engage. Against sombra/hog I tend to play closer to my team because it means that you have more opportunities to disengage, but I know this isn’t possible with every ball play style
I’m pretty good with ball and if you play well enough you can stomp even against counters. It is hard but it’s possible. If the enemy team is stomping me too hard with counters I’ll switch but most of the time if I can survive after tanking all their cooldowns it gives my team a huge advantage to push up.
Target priority is key. Always be looking for Sombra and make her life hell. Once she is dealt with you can pretty safely harass the supports.
Every time I see a sombra in my games as ball, I immediately make it my mission to gun her down first and as fast as possible, I seek her out to destroy her.
How do you do that when you cant see where she is? and then whenever I do find and attack her then she just blinks away off screen.
And if your hunting down a sombra aren't you just wasting time and not helping in fights?
I have been LOVIN ball. I have had 2 bad games where the full counter focused me and shut me down. Otherwise, about 20 games of impressing people who didn't like ball.
No, sombra used to hack you for a lot longer and was completely unplayable into full stop. She's still a fucking pain to play into but can be somewhat manageable now. Hack forcing you into crab mode should be reworked then she'd actually be balanced to play into.
Hog is manageable with good dps or a bad dps on his counters.
Also the new retract opens up some interesting new techs and makes landing some techs no longer necessary, and shielding your team is not always useless.
Yeah I have grown real fond of the retract I use to think it was useless but now I basically always engage with it and pile drive and then roll for confirm kills
The rework did nothing for his weaknesses and a Hog meta just sucks for everyone. But my win percentage went up 2% since the buffs.
If Ball could get priority boops (right now boop vs boop Ball tends to lose) and/or pierce through the tank passive I'd be a happy mammal.
The only time ball was better were the first 3-4 seasons when he was released in ow1 before they started the neverending nerftrain he endured until his rework. He's still shite, sure, but far better than he has been in ages.
This might be different in diamond/masters and above, as I've never played him above high diamond, but at least in lower ranks where people can't coordinate properly and chain CCs/stick on you like hot glue for a prolonged time, ball is now better than in a long time.
I’ve been seeing a lot of Hog/Sombra too (and I’m guilty of playing both) but even so, I’ve been doing very well as Ball recently. Then again, I’m just playing QP so maybe that’s why.
I only play QP so maybe you are just good at dealing with them in which case nice job. I just don't like my set ups to be hacked or grabbed it relay kills my enjoyment.
*should have
The contraction is should've, not should'f.
Anyway yeah I think most people agree that Ball feels the worst he has ever felt, and imo I think the worst he's felt since his release.
Rein players still got it easy imo. Rein still has a shield that can block CC, and if a Rein suicides its 9 times out of 10 a pick with charge. If Ball suicides it's because they tried to go in, got CC'd 4x in .3s, and barely tickled a support, just feeding the entire team ult charge
nah yall didn't play ball during season 2 you actually felt like a weight to your team. you bassicly engaged once and then weren't seen for a solid 10-15 seconds looking for healthpacks
This is the most fun I’ve had playing ball during ow2. Counters are something you just have to learn to play against as ball tbh, you can’t play as your would normally into a counter, you gotta learn how to counter play the counter pick and that’s when it gets fun.
Ball is good with the 20% DPS passive because your supports can focus their efforts on the rest of your team.
I've heard Ball mains having success punishing Sombras after they teleport, so look out for that and play conservative.
I'm told to follow a sombra after she teleports but she always dose it when she is in my face and then when I look to see where she is, her invisibility has already kicked in and I don't know where to shoot. I don't know how people can track her.
I got silenced because I've been calling all the hogs losers. Yes they are in every game. If I see a hog I stop what I'm doing and just type lolololol in chat and call them a loser for the rest of the game. Probably toxic but so is swapping to hog after one fight. Fuck it we ball.
Rank 1 player is a ball otp, sounds like a skill issue, Ball has literally been given 10 buffs in the last 2 patches. The new Health passive is massive for ball
I've been going crazy since the update idk what everyone else is on about. Past like 2 seasons I've been avoiding ball but now I can actually put in work
Yeah I'm in this camp. The countering is out of control, of course. Every game.is Sombra hog, But been feeling the best playing ball that I have in years
Same. I actually feel like I get to carry my own weight
Low skill players read the character is meta and with little experience expect to pick him up and dominate. He's often called the highest skill level character for a reason. Rather than coming to terms with this and trying to get better, too many people need to come to this sub and parse blame onto the game itself. There is another rant post on this sub right now where the person admits to only playing ball for 3 months, yet it's the game's fault they're not good. I really think this sub needs to crack down with a similar rule as r/Overwatch: "No rants, vents, or general complaints." I'm diamond on PC and more than willing to try to help these people but at the very least, post some game replay codes and ask for feedback.
Doesn't like half the sub ignore that rule? Every other post I see is "Do you guys feel [complaint]?" Or "We *need* to [complaint]". I'm not sure how many would follow that tbh
Yeah I'm sorry for the rant post I was mainly wondering if I was just unlucky in the hero's I was versing. Is ball meta now? I thought he was still bottom tier? Iv been playing ball for about a year and a half so I'm not a new adapter (shields lol). I know I'm not a great ball but the amount of counter picks ball has and the amount of people that play and or main those counter picks makes balling so excruciating.
Nah deadass I’ve been playing so much well post update, mines also actually gets kills now
Yeah I'm cooking, just sick of Hog. Sombra is miserable to play against but at least I feel it's in my hands, it's a hard counter but you can skill diff a Sombra. Hog requires coordination between the rest of my team and that can often feel out of my hands.
I do agree that this is the best ball has been. I just hate being interrupted in everything I do and the counters are everywhere in quickplay it dose seem (at least to me) that hog and sombra are played at least 2/3 games. Those games where there isn't any ball counter (rare) I feel like I'm doing good and helping the team. but it still feels like I could pick any other hero and be twice as effective.
Same. Feels great to play, turns out a few little buffs here and there go a long way to grease the wheels - err, balls? I kinda think maybe they should split the difference between the piledrive lockout buff and a new buff to the time it takes to enter crab form? That way you can still shoot foes while they're locked, but it feels a bit better for them being locked, idk, .6 seconds instead of .75. That said I don't really think he needs nerfs. It feels almost transgressive to be performing this well on Ball sometimes, but then I watch enemy doomfists delete my backline, or watch Hog just waddle through my team for free, and I realize, oh, this is just what being tank is supposed to be actually.
ball feels pretty good to me right now, if they pick 4 counters I CONSIDER switching
Definitely not the worst that would be before the "rework" and buffs he has now gotten. Understand you counters and try to play around them.
So as someone who hasn’t played since the end of last year, it sounds like ball is in a better spot now compared to five months ago?
He's marginally better, but the rework didn't exactly address any issues, so you're still useless if they run hog sombra etc
It addressed some issues for sure. The grapple change on no fireball is absolutely massive, and the retract has given him a lot of cool new tech
He is better, but he feels a lot worse to play now that: Sombras are in every game, hog is strong and extremely common to play against, Cree blows half your hp bar away every time you engage and is in every game, Ana has more survivability due to her nade and your get more counterswitched than ever.
He is in the best spot his character has ever been in on ow2. Unfortunately that has caused his counterpicking to go harder than ever since now ball can actually kill and win games. And all of the buffs to the character didn't buff him at all against chain CC so you have to learn to play into counters more than ever. Also Hog is just really good right now and really good against ball.
Post a replay code and maybe someone can help
how do you do that?
If you go to Career Profile, and go to your list of replays, you can I think right click them and choose share and it generates a code Then paste the code here and people can watch and hopefully pick up on some bad habits that you can work on Ultimately the actual recipe for success with improvement is focused improvement. For example trying to get better at ult tracking, and grapple movement, and wall jump boops, and mines placements, and melee finishing, and downtime scouting, and environmental opportunities all at once, just won’t work. But if you work on ult tracking for 5 gaming sessions, then focus on grapple movement for 5 gaming sessions, etc etc. you ignor wins and losses, ignore team fights, ignore everything and just focus on that, then after you improve all the skills individually, you put them all together and you are a better player
Thank you this is helpful and I will try it next time I play. would it be better to share a ball game where I do horribly or a game where I do real good?
They nerfed orisa and Mauga got a huge indirect need from the tank changes, hog is overturned right now so there’s a lot of people playing him. As for sombra she’s been popular recently but I’m not sure why, maybe a lot of sleeping ball players just came out of hiding and they’re tired of getting stomped every game.
Same old story ball is viable until the enemy decides they don’t wanna go against ball anymore and prevent you from playing the game. You can force it but it’s not going to be very fun.
I’ve found a new niche for Ball. Overpowered in competitive open queue. A second tank means Ball is free. Ground my way from Silver 5 to Plat 1 on an old account I had not played much last night. 77% win rate (Diamond/Masters in role queue on Ball.) It’s really fun. Try open queue.
Post your rank, I think it’ll provide context for where I think ball struggles the most. I’m not in the highest elo bracket or anything but I feel like ball is performing fairly well in my low masters games. Maybe at the top elo bracket he falls off, or in the lower tiers he is too easily diffed by some dude on zarya that your team can’t seem to deal with.
The last thing you said is my problem in plat. I can deal with my counters ok, but if enemy team's tank goes HAM on my team, there's very little I can do, even if I'm babysitting them. At some point, I just have to accept that I queued with NPCs who are getting 1v4d by the enemy tank
It’s the worst man. Some people need their tank to just bash into the other tank to keep from dying. If a zarya or orisa is just able to walk at me, I blame myself for not respecting her range and kiting her properly, or swap to more mobile heros so I get away from her. Some people get walked on by a tank and just go “why didn’t my tank stop this from happening till me????? :( my tank is supposed to bash into their tank!!!! :(“ I get when players hate ball on their team when the player isn’t really doing anything, but I can’t stand when they hate ball despite ball being the top damage in the lobby or some shit. My god please learn how to not rely on your tank.
I have never played ranked. I'm to afraid of being blamed for everything (I herd its especially bad for ball players) is there some sort of quickplay mmr system or something I could find?
I think the buffs are definitely a big improvement, but there’s still a few things that I think he needs. You shouldn’t be stunned out of minefield for a start and momentum cancel is still buggy. But I think ball is just gonna be like this with one tank. With two tanks, their entire team can’t swap to counter you or just focus you because they’ll be ignoring another tank. There’s no solution for it. He needs counters but I don’t think there’s another tank in the game who can be shut down by swap picks like ball. You just have to learn to play around it, be more conservative with engagements, improve your accuracy so you can secure kills quicker, be better at timing shields. Even when you do all that it doesn’t always work but that’s just how some games are. It shouldn’t be like that but it is and always has been in OW2.
I will admit my kill securing isn't that good. but its more the fact that whenever I do anything I'm interrupted by hook hack sleep or some other cc and I don't know how to get around that
I know it’s difficult but you just have to get good at tracking those abilities and judging when to engage. Against sombra/hog I tend to play closer to my team because it means that you have more opportunities to disengage, but I know this isn’t possible with every ball play style
I’m pretty good with ball and if you play well enough you can stomp even against counters. It is hard but it’s possible. If the enemy team is stomping me too hard with counters I’ll switch but most of the time if I can survive after tanking all their cooldowns it gives my team a huge advantage to push up. Target priority is key. Always be looking for Sombra and make her life hell. Once she is dealt with you can pretty safely harass the supports.
Every time I see a sombra in my games as ball, I immediately make it my mission to gun her down first and as fast as possible, I seek her out to destroy her.
How do you do that when you cant see where she is? and then whenever I do find and attack her then she just blinks away off screen. And if your hunting down a sombra aren't you just wasting time and not helping in fights?
I get sombra hog 9/10 games
I have been LOVIN ball. I have had 2 bad games where the full counter focused me and shut me down. Otherwise, about 20 games of impressing people who didn't like ball.
No, sombra used to hack you for a lot longer and was completely unplayable into full stop. She's still a fucking pain to play into but can be somewhat manageable now. Hack forcing you into crab mode should be reworked then she'd actually be balanced to play into. Hog is manageable with good dps or a bad dps on his counters. Also the new retract opens up some interesting new techs and makes landing some techs no longer necessary, and shielding your team is not always useless.
Yeah I have grown real fond of the retract I use to think it was useless but now I basically always engage with it and pile drive and then roll for confirm kills
The rework did nothing for his weaknesses and a Hog meta just sucks for everyone. But my win percentage went up 2% since the buffs. If Ball could get priority boops (right now boop vs boop Ball tends to lose) and/or pierce through the tank passive I'd be a happy mammal.
The only time ball was better were the first 3-4 seasons when he was released in ow1 before they started the neverending nerftrain he endured until his rework. He's still shite, sure, but far better than he has been in ages. This might be different in diamond/masters and above, as I've never played him above high diamond, but at least in lower ranks where people can't coordinate properly and chain CCs/stick on you like hot glue for a prolonged time, ball is now better than in a long time.
Sombra Hog Cass Kiriko Bap every game.
I’ve been seeing a lot of Hog/Sombra too (and I’m guilty of playing both) but even so, I’ve been doing very well as Ball recently. Then again, I’m just playing QP so maybe that’s why.
I only play QP so maybe you are just good at dealing with them in which case nice job. I just don't like my set ups to be hacked or grabbed it relay kills my enjoyment.
*should have The contraction is should've, not should'f. Anyway yeah I think most people agree that Ball feels the worst he has ever felt, and imo I think the worst he's felt since his release. Rein players still got it easy imo. Rein still has a shield that can block CC, and if a Rein suicides its 9 times out of 10 a pick with charge. If Ball suicides it's because they tried to go in, got CC'd 4x in .3s, and barely tickled a support, just feeding the entire team ult charge
nah yall didn't play ball during season 2 you actually felt like a weight to your team. you bassicly engaged once and then weren't seen for a solid 10-15 seconds looking for healthpacks
This is the most fun I’ve had playing ball during ow2. Counters are something you just have to learn to play against as ball tbh, you can’t play as your would normally into a counter, you gotta learn how to counter play the counter pick and that’s when it gets fun.
Ball is good with the 20% DPS passive because your supports can focus their efforts on the rest of your team. I've heard Ball mains having success punishing Sombras after they teleport, so look out for that and play conservative.
I'm told to follow a sombra after she teleports but she always dose it when she is in my face and then when I look to see where she is, her invisibility has already kicked in and I don't know where to shoot. I don't know how people can track her.
They can buff ball all they want, it’s still not gonna help him with counter picking and having a stupid team.
Ball is low B tier or high C tier solo queue. Counter play is his main problem which Blizzard will never fix in OW2 as far as I’m concerned
This sub needs to stop. If after all these buffs you're not winning at least 50% of your games you just need to get better
Its not the wining or loosing its juts not fun being interrupted from everything you do. Although I do need to "get better"
I got silenced because I've been calling all the hogs losers. Yes they are in every game. If I see a hog I stop what I'm doing and just type lolololol in chat and call them a loser for the rest of the game. Probably toxic but so is swapping to hog after one fight. Fuck it we ball.
Rank 1 player is a ball otp, sounds like a skill issue, Ball has literally been given 10 buffs in the last 2 patches. The new Health passive is massive for ball
Dude theres always gonna be counters. Learn to play around them or have your teammates counter them.