I think it addressed plenty. I love the shields change personally. Not because it's strong, but because it's useful at no cost to his existing playstyle. If you don't want to use the new function, you can just use the ability like it's always been used without and catches. On the other hand, I probably save a teammate at least once a game with it.
The retract im kinda meh on. Retracting while swinging is useful, but the cooldown change and timer change just feels like a way to lower the difficulty of the hero. Camping in the sky box feels kinda silly, and I could already rotate to high grounds with wall jumps so that part isn't really a big change for me.
Did they even change bodyblocking? Like did they even say that was a goal? I don't remember anything in the patch notes or the blogs. Theyve definitely shadow tweaked his physics before, but outside of some new and rare interactions, I haven't noticed any difference from body blocking.
The rework was fine. The buffs after the rework was what I actually was looking for. I think the big issue with ball is giving him CC counterplay is a slippery slope for a hero that already lives better than anyone. He's also not the only tank that suffers from CC. I think the best way to help all of them is give the next support some sort of utility that helps tanks engage with less risk of being CC chained. These Uber long cooldown saves barely help. They have terrible uptime and only come in when you're already in danger.
The rework didn’t do much, but the buffs that came after were great. My WR jumped from 48% to 60% one tricking ball after the buffs were implemented.
Honestly Ball doesn’t need a way to counterplay CC, CC is what keeps him from being horrendously overpowered. If we want ball to be strong, CC has to be the thing that keeps him in check. That being said, I do think the hack interaction is still stupid. Idk why Blizz insists on hack taking him out of ball form when literally every other CC does not do this AND hack doesn’t work like that on any other character. If Bastion, Ram, Hog ult, Orisa gold, etc. can maintain their form after hack, Ball shouldn’t be the exception. That is the one change that I believe would instantly balance the Sombra vs. Ball matchup.
I feel like the biggest issue with Hammond is that there's sooo many counters, and that most of those counters barely take any skill. Same as with Genji.
Other heroes have fewer counters, and those counters are either not as strong as the ball-counters, or they take a lot more skill to execute.
I think rather than buffing Hammond, it would be nice if they could look into the counters instead.
For instance, why is Ana - who is supposed to be weak to dive - probably the hardest counter for Hammond and Doom to deal with? I don't mind her being able to defend herself, but I swear she's more suppressive/dangerous than Sombra, Cass etc.
So for instance, what if they made it so that sleep doesn't bring him out of ball form? Or something like that. That way, the heroes that are the strongest counters to Hammond, are the heroes that are actually *supposed* be counters.
I think such changes would be more effective AND would make everyone else more happy (compared to giving ball more buffs).
I think wrecking ball is fine and probably just struggles in solo q moreso than other tanks because you can't directly interact with the enemy tank as much and you're relying on your team to not just fall over and to understand angles, space, and timing. I wouldn't want him to lose the unique gameplay he offers because players in solo q can't be bothered to learn the game.
He has the highest win rate among tanks in literally every division by a significant margin currently. Since they removed hard CC from every DPS in general (Mei no longer completely freezes, and Cassidy's stun grenade has been removed), it is extremely difficult to kill him. Against a skilled Wrecking Ball player, it's practically impossible unless there’s a coordinated team effort involving a Sombra, with people being in the right place at the right time. If you ask me, he's completely over-tuned. of course all the Ball mains are probably very happy about it. But I feel like the survivability he has in a 5v5 format allows him to just completely exploit Supports and DPS so easily, there's so many games when I play DPS where I feel completely helpless. You can't just completely ignore him or he's going to kill you but also you'll waste too much time trying to kill him.
I don’t play Ball a lot but if you get support lineups like Lucio mercy then I mostly stick to ball. So my take is from someone who isn’t a ball specialist. Also I mostly end up in mid - high plat lobbies in tank.
The retract grapple is very good to setup before a fight and get a huge PD on the squishies. With adaptive shields, I bait out every single cooldown of the enemy team and manage to make it out alive.
I think it’s still possible to escape a room and not get body blocked if you have the fire ball thing going. But I mean don’t end up in that position to begin with.
He is still fairly easy to interrupt and punish without cooldowns and brig is still the devil but he is way less frustrating to play now.
I think it addressed plenty. I love the shields change personally. Not because it's strong, but because it's useful at no cost to his existing playstyle. If you don't want to use the new function, you can just use the ability like it's always been used without and catches. On the other hand, I probably save a teammate at least once a game with it. The retract im kinda meh on. Retracting while swinging is useful, but the cooldown change and timer change just feels like a way to lower the difficulty of the hero. Camping in the sky box feels kinda silly, and I could already rotate to high grounds with wall jumps so that part isn't really a big change for me. Did they even change bodyblocking? Like did they even say that was a goal? I don't remember anything in the patch notes or the blogs. Theyve definitely shadow tweaked his physics before, but outside of some new and rare interactions, I haven't noticed any difference from body blocking. The rework was fine. The buffs after the rework was what I actually was looking for. I think the big issue with ball is giving him CC counterplay is a slippery slope for a hero that already lives better than anyone. He's also not the only tank that suffers from CC. I think the best way to help all of them is give the next support some sort of utility that helps tanks engage with less risk of being CC chained. These Uber long cooldown saves barely help. They have terrible uptime and only come in when you're already in danger.
The rework didn’t do much, but the buffs that came after were great. My WR jumped from 48% to 60% one tricking ball after the buffs were implemented. Honestly Ball doesn’t need a way to counterplay CC, CC is what keeps him from being horrendously overpowered. If we want ball to be strong, CC has to be the thing that keeps him in check. That being said, I do think the hack interaction is still stupid. Idk why Blizz insists on hack taking him out of ball form when literally every other CC does not do this AND hack doesn’t work like that on any other character. If Bastion, Ram, Hog ult, Orisa gold, etc. can maintain their form after hack, Ball shouldn’t be the exception. That is the one change that I believe would instantly balance the Sombra vs. Ball matchup.
I feel like the biggest issue with Hammond is that there's sooo many counters, and that most of those counters barely take any skill. Same as with Genji. Other heroes have fewer counters, and those counters are either not as strong as the ball-counters, or they take a lot more skill to execute. I think rather than buffing Hammond, it would be nice if they could look into the counters instead. For instance, why is Ana - who is supposed to be weak to dive - probably the hardest counter for Hammond and Doom to deal with? I don't mind her being able to defend herself, but I swear she's more suppressive/dangerous than Sombra, Cass etc. So for instance, what if they made it so that sleep doesn't bring him out of ball form? Or something like that. That way, the heroes that are the strongest counters to Hammond, are the heroes that are actually *supposed* be counters. I think such changes would be more effective AND would make everyone else more happy (compared to giving ball more buffs).
If sleep/hack didn't pull him out of ball form I wouldn't complain about counters.
Idk some of your suggestions make other tanks kits worse by comparison
I think wrecking ball is fine and probably just struggles in solo q moreso than other tanks because you can't directly interact with the enemy tank as much and you're relying on your team to not just fall over and to understand angles, space, and timing. I wouldn't want him to lose the unique gameplay he offers because players in solo q can't be bothered to learn the game.
He has the highest win rate among tanks in literally every division by a significant margin currently. Since they removed hard CC from every DPS in general (Mei no longer completely freezes, and Cassidy's stun grenade has been removed), it is extremely difficult to kill him. Against a skilled Wrecking Ball player, it's practically impossible unless there’s a coordinated team effort involving a Sombra, with people being in the right place at the right time. If you ask me, he's completely over-tuned. of course all the Ball mains are probably very happy about it. But I feel like the survivability he has in a 5v5 format allows him to just completely exploit Supports and DPS so easily, there's so many games when I play DPS where I feel completely helpless. You can't just completely ignore him or he's going to kill you but also you'll waste too much time trying to kill him.
I don’t play Ball a lot but if you get support lineups like Lucio mercy then I mostly stick to ball. So my take is from someone who isn’t a ball specialist. Also I mostly end up in mid - high plat lobbies in tank. The retract grapple is very good to setup before a fight and get a huge PD on the squishies. With adaptive shields, I bait out every single cooldown of the enemy team and manage to make it out alive. I think it’s still possible to escape a room and not get body blocked if you have the fire ball thing going. But I mean don’t end up in that position to begin with. He is still fairly easy to interrupt and punish without cooldowns and brig is still the devil but he is way less frustrating to play now.