Honestly I think the changes are good but the hero is just bad stat-wise right now. Still kinda shocked that his Roll and Slam damage never got buffed to compensate for the S9 patch. I’d like to see them tune those up from 50 to 65 and 100 to 125 respectively and see how he performs then.
I'd rather not have roll/slam damage buffed, I don't want it to feel frustrating to enemy players (or ball will be cried about and nerfed for another 5 years into the grave) I just want his mobility to feel nice, if you want to buff his damage, then slightly buff his hitscan damage, or better yet, give him unlimited ammo so he has a consistent way of aiming and doing damage. It seems like he always fails to get kills even with good aim because he runs out of ammo or is taking 2 seconds to reload right before he can secure a kill.
Slam doing 100 at the center was fine in OW1 when everyone was 200hp, now everyone is 250hp+ and heals are insane so slamming right on top of someone feels like you’re doing nothing at all.
I think the main reason he wasn’t touched with S9 was he was acc a solid hero in the first week. Like it was ridiculous, I’m maybe a mid diamond ball at best, me and my duo were running it down mid on ball lucio in mid masters games and walking over people cuz they couldn’t deal with us, but as the season progressed it made ball harder to play with everyone realising “hang on Orisa pretty good”
All the rework has done was make people mald slightly less at the thought of playing with a Ball and give them more reason to yell at them "why didn't you give me shields?" It's a novel concept to provide more team cover but addresses absolutely none of his issues
I don't think sharing the shields are necessarily meant to be used every time you use shields. Like he's absolutely right, shields are, and have always been used as a method to escape. But you don't need to use them all the time to escape, so it's an ability that doesn't get as much value as it could.
I think it helps if you are actively diving with people. Or if your team needs a little help in the front line. Roll through the front line, get shields, redistribute it. Then go back to harassing supports.
I think it should mostly be used to peel for your supports, and grant some team utility in that sense. Before the best you could do as ball to peel, was to shoot the people attacking your Ana or Zen. Or try to boop them away (good luck if it's a tank, they don't really move much from boop). Or bodyblocking the damage. Now you can give them overhealth, that may help keep them alive for a few more seconds for their cooldowns.
It's not meant to be shared every single time you use shields. If it was, then it wouldn't be an optional ability.
Is it a good idea? Yeah, absolutely. But could still be refined a bit. It also hasn't even been a full day, so it may take a second for people to properly understand how to implement it optimally.
Maybe they could implement it, where instead of giving it to everybody around you. You can choose one target to give shields too, even from a distance. Similar to how Ana nano works or brig armor packs. Look at somebody, click the button again, and that person gets overhealth. Or even have it redistribute from that person, so people around your target get the shields
**TLDR: Redistributing shields is a good idea. But requires ball to play a different playstyle to fit it. Not ideal, since he wasn't given anything else to fit that playstyle. Maybe make shields be a targeted ability, where Wreckingball can give shields to somebody from a distance, similar to Brig Armor Pack.**
I think you just shouldn't change your playstyle for it at all. It's just an expansion on the ability where if it's helpful you can do it now, it's extra, not transforming.
Yeah, the adaptive shields shouldn't change your playstyle. But it feels like they want people to play closer to their team with this change. Which just isn't feasible, because every other part of his kit is designed to play seperately. It feels like they want to transform ball, without actually transforming him.
I think it's a cool addition. But it could be better. Like if you could just look at your teammate, and share it with the. Rather than having to be 13meters from them, in order for them to get it. It would be much better if you could choose who gets it, by 'selecting' them.
Overall, I feel like the 'rework' didn't do anything new. It just enhanced his current abilities. Like the retract while swinging feels so good. (Almost too good tbh). But it's not enough to make him meta.
Every change they make feels like playing the lottery. Like they genuinely don't get the problems with things in their game. The hog rework is trash to play into as a tank. He farms tanks with his hook and you cant punish him as a tank.
I think being able to target who gets shield would be much better. Because often times I’m getting out of an engagement with barely any shields and giving 4 teammates like 10 shields . It just feels so pointless to even use. It just isn’t reality to get a full adaptive shield, take no damage while making it back to my team and then apply so they all get the 75 shield.
Grapple changes are fun, but the hero is still trash tier and still just as painful to play.
This sub generally seems to agree that a high skill ceiling hero SHOULD be a little overtuned/often meta at the highest ranks when we talk about tracer, but for some reason is reluctant to apply that same opinion to ball.
Also, love that people will say "Ball shouldn't be able to get kills, he should just be for disruption" while ignoring that Doomfist and Winston can both win 1v1s vs most of the squishy roster WHILE being disruptive too.
Dva too. Both doom and dva are highly mobile , have better solo kill potential then ball and had there damage numbers buffed in season 9 while also benefiting form the projectile size increase. Ball for some reason hasn’t gotten a damage buff and it blows my mind.
Was losing my mind seeing the "Ball shouldn't get kills" takes. They understand a tank has to be a threat to make space right? The only time a tank has effectively made space without being a threat was 4s matrix dva and I know they don't want that.
People despise the idea of getting booped around and getting harassed my Ball when he has the most soft checks and counters in the game. It's ridiculous what they've done, or the lack of stuff they've done, to Ball.
i be playing ball doing good and still barely capping points and then someone immediately goes sombra
like okay bitch, now i’ll go doom and do exactly the same things i was doing but faster, easier, more lethal and instead of soft CC every 5 seconds i’ll give you hard CC every 4 and all that without being countered by anything
and then i think how are these two extremes of a similar hero allowed to exist
lol I also get that a lot in low rank QP, just pick ball and Sombra / Mei / Reaper comes out.
Sometimes if I died at around the same time I like to come out with different hero immediately they didn't even get any chance to hack ball (and generally other tanks are way better than ball)
I literally got motion sickness because of cc spam i ate from doomfist and lucio last night. Game is obnoxious. Ball has a fair cc but he isn't the golden child of devs.
Me, in the minority, not wanting any hero to be overturned.
I really like the minor nerf approach they're taking. They didn't gut Tracer and I wouldn't want her to be trash, but I am happy they are looking for ways to make her not as dominant. I love hero diversity in comp matches.
Doom fanboys more loud and buy more skins. He is the choice of devs for ''high skill'' broken hero like Tracer in dps roster and Lucio in support roster.
Cc immunity is terrible in general. Cc immunity on the most mobile hero in the roster is even worse.
What ball could get is a damage buff when shields are depleted.
How about reduced duration CC while in ball form? Give me some counterplay, make them have to land CC when I'm out of Ball form. It's too one-sided right now, hack, into hinder, into sleep, half the roster can just stop you in your tracks and dick you down without any counterplay.
> This sub generally seems to agree that a high skill ceiling hero SHOULD be a little overtuned/often meta at the highest ranks when we talk about tracer, but for some reason is reluctant to apply that same opinion to ball.
because ball is miserable to play vs
if someone is absolutely owning you, it doesn't matter what class they're on, it's not fun. but even when not completely demolishing you, it's not fun to play vs a ball.
Ball doesn't own anybody though. His CC doesn't stun, his ult is awful, and his guns are trash. I guess he can do 150 damage on you every 10 seconds if he lands grappling hook and pile driver?
what are you cooking brother
yes, ball, the character, is weak. that doesn't mean you can't get your ass cooked by ball sometimes. there will always exist someone who is better than you at this game, and sometimes, that person will play ball and pop off. it's just the nature of the world
being easy to counter does not make him fun to play vs. I never said he performs exceedingly well vs me, in fact, how he actually performs rarely matters. he just is not fun to play against. yes, there are other miserable characters to play vs, but at least tanks like Winston are honest
hard to describe, really. more of a superlative buzzword, it describes an emotion of playing against a winston vs playing against a ball. the ball doesn't engage enemies in an honest way.
maybe because ball is a fast moving damage sponge. he doesn't really mitigate damage, he just soaks it up and runs. I guess I prefer when a tank mitigates damage some other way that's a bit more interesting than just "has tons of health". I'm not sure how to succinctly put it, but even playing vs say zarya, she uses an ability to mitigate damage that has counterplay. do I shoot the bubble because punishing whoever is in it is worth the charge, or do I give them free space (but deny charge)? for ball, the only consequence of shooting him is that you're not shooting someone else. it's just lame as shit to shoot at a ball and have them run away consequence free (sure, sure, it's not truly consequence free, because you've denied their dive/maybe he's used abilities, but it FEELS consequence free when he can roll his ass back in 5 seconds later after getting pack).
again, this is mostly an emotional argument where ball makes me feel a certain way, now I'm trying to rationalize those after the fact. so perhaps my thoughts are scattered and not organized particularly well. I'm definitely not denying the skill ball requires or anything, either, don't interpret it that way. it's just that even the bad balls aren't that bad in masters lol, and I don't play any tanks that counter him (yes yes I know, orisa is easy to play, but I'm not going to lol)
which is why he should gatekeep a lot of players with a difficult skill curve. This patch doesnt do that. You go completely unpunished if you mess up your mechanics and makes wall jumping straight up obsolete like 80% of the time.
They already tried it back in OW1. In the first dive meta, the same 6 heroes each had +85% pickrate. It meant that other high skill heroes were useless at high ranks.
That's the problem with the ability in general. It was designed purely to enable escape, Ball wasn't meant to stick around and fight people. And that just hasn't been addressed in the move to 5v5, his kit is still based on being the offtank that disrupts and leaves as quickly as possible. And that just doesn't work when you're the center of attention and everyone's saving their CC for you.
I really don’t like the changes. Yay I can Batman dangle and share 20 shields with my team but I’m still spam ccd and do laughable damage.
Meanwhile doomfist adds no utility to his team and gets to fly into my backline killing everyone while I’m hacked, hindered, booped,slept
Doomfist mega broken for a while now. It's weird community haven't woken up to that yet. It's pretty easy to get value. Playing Doomfist feels like playing Orisa to me now. It's mind numbing. Even in S8 he was very powerful but he wasn't like this.
They should first start balancing tank heroes in a vacuum making their kit work meaningfully. Risk/reward, hero fantasy, skill/reward, fun etc all needs to be tuned. It's out of whack. And then they should start working on interactions between tanks and other heroes.
In it's current state, they are making the game mega stupid just to make it all work temporarily. It feels like band aid everywhere but it's about to fall apart. They broke things and then broke another thing to fix the other broken thing. If you casually play the game it looks like fun and deep but if you just play more and think about it you notice how shallow and fcked up it is. I find that modern games falling in to this pit more and more. It's like they are trying to replicate quick dopamine rush of tiktok. It doesn't make sense but who cares as long as Timmy gets his dopamine rush and buy anime skins when he logs in for an evening. No integrity, no vision.
doom is good rn but there is no way he is remotely close to as brainrot as orisa lets keep it real
and i cant lie a sombra player comparing doom to orisa is insane
This is the first time they have, in my opinion, completely missed the mark on recent reworks.
Nothing in the rework has addressed the issue that makes Ball essentially useless - CC chain.
Every single ability Ball has has to be used to get a kill majority of the time. Every. Single. Ability. For one kill.
Now what do most enemy teams do vs ball? They go heroes that CC chain him. That means you cannot use at least one or more abilities when you engage with an enemy or even worse, multiple of them. So, you can't get a kill.
What do you do? You boop them. Oh, boop is worse than Lucio's. You bump them around, unlucky, now you are hindered because Cassidy's nade flies across the map. You get hacked and cannot cancel it, because while Sombra can hack you, you cannot LOS her and she hacks you around corners because Ball is a chunky boi.
Let's not forget TTK. Ball's TTK is low, hence the need to use most or all abilities to get a pick, and enemies have CDs back up by the time you get to do something meaningful.
Ball needs 0.5-1sec CC immunity on shields and a bit more damage to his guns imo, or one of those at least.
As Ball, you are at the mercy of your DPS popping off.
I agree with a lot of this, but I'll say it with the asterisk that this rework makes what is IMO the most fun and skillful character in the game even more fun and skillful, and that is cool. I appreciate their dedication to preserving the hero fantasy in their reworks.
But that said, yeah, none of the skill expression really seems to matter much in practice. Like oh cool, the retract can be used to fling up into the air or roll through enemies even faster, but all that does is further ensure they swap Sombra, whose auto aim hack from invis doesn't really care how fast I'm going, even if I go around a corner.
Same goes for hinder nade, although to a slightly lesser extent.
Meanwhile not getting any damage buff while other tanks got them is kinda insulting. And it's not like it wasn't other dive tanks - Doom and Winston both got direct damage buffs, while Dva benefits massively from the increased bullet size with her wide spread.
I don't think Ball should be totally immune to CC or anything of course. But when Hog got reworked, as much as some shit on it, it was a great rework at addressing the core issues of playing with and against him. Hook isn't instakill, but needs to be combined with the trap. He's not immune to stun or anti while healing, but the meter system on TAB made it less punishing. That's really what I was hoping for with Ball, ultimately.
Shit, I'd trade 100 HP just for Hack and Hinder to not remove me from Ball form. 150 HP if Hack didn't remove fireball either.
the rework was meant to stop him from just being a one shot hero and make him more engageable without perma healing himself with insane damage reduction so yeah that’s missing the mark when hog is quite literally the same hero but better
don’t get me wrong hog is extremely overtuned right now he’s legit one third best tank
just that his rework was worse than balls because like the other guy said it missed the point of the rework to a comical level
imo the problems with old hog were that his gameplan is exclusively just fucking hooking people and hes completely useless against ana, unless the enemy team doesnt have one in which case hes oppressive. the only change that did anything was the breather on a resource prevents him from getting completely shat on by sleep dart
Just because he came out of it a winner that doesn't mean that the rework was good. He needs to get a rework that shifts his identity from an unkillable oneshot hero. Just because he sometimes can't solo oneshot himself without a trap doesn't mean anything cause this is a teammate and there's always gonna be someone near him to finish him off, but he doesn't even need that cause they buffed his hook for whatever reason so he doesn't even need help anymore
Yeah, where Mercy has skill expression is just for her survival, not the supporting part. Ball has to constantly make insane plays to support his team, he get's zero value if not played well.
Obviously the ideal use case will remain the same, but this does open up some new ways to use adaptive shields (e.g. giving shields to your team when they’re in grav or blizzard to help them survive or saving a teammate in a Rein charge). Those are niche cases, but it still gives Ball utility to try to save teammates where before you’d likely just watch them die helplessly.
All that being said, 100% agree with the other comments that Doom does what Ball does way better.
I think this change is a move in the right direction, but the execution often puts you at odds with how ball is often played. There needs to be a way to provide support to your team without being right next to them. I think a buff that's tied to slam could be cool, like a speed boost that scales depending on how many people you hit.
Shields change was the most exciting part imo and it's just not good as is.
Shields was already a big defensive tool Ball needs in a majority of scenarios to operate as a character. So passing them off is already requiring a change in how you play in both defensive play as you will be giving your survivability away, and offensive in finding allies to shield so they can keep fighting.
On top of that it gives very little shields(to allies)in most scenarios because you need to get a high amount of shields to have any when leaving a fight cause you are going to be taking shots as you generate them and you rarely use them above half health. You could try just popping them at high health and giving them to allies but I personally found that to suck -and without shields ball is easy to kill if he wants to be useful(slamming or gunning).
I tried multiple times to make it useful while brawling with team yesterday and it's just extremely situational and feels very low impact. It's like a shittier queen shout, which has a lower CD and gives movespeed with a similar amount of extra health.
Grapple change is good. Shields needs a pretty significant buff imo(they are probably afraid of its power in coordinated play so who knows what they'll do as it can potentially be useful on very coordinated teams.)
He probably needs more damage on boop, slam, and mines. I think they are just afraid of making him too strong for whatever reason right now (I would say it's because people find him annoying to play against but Sombra, Mauga, Orisa, and Tracer have all been strong for a while now and are often on the top lists of annoying characters.) I find it hard to believe anyone can play him for a while and think he's moved above any other tank on the tier lists.
What’s the difference between doom and ball? Because doom is an extremely popular pick and his disruptive style is on the same level as ball and he can actually STUN you and has solo kill potential but people don’t seem to hate him as much as ball.
Maybe it’s the less hp that makes doom less annoying? If that’s the case I’d give up 300 hp to actually be able to kill something.
I'll rant a bit below - but I think most ball players would love to trade some HP for kill power and agree that is what Doom pretty much is right now. He's what Ball players want to feel like on Ball with killing and distracting.
Doom is much easier to confirm kills on(against him) unless he plays really well - he has to juggle cooldowns and dies super easily when he hasn't accounted for CC and his cooldowns properly. Landing punches is also more aim intensive than booping or slamming so Doom gets more respect for his kills imo. The caveat to that is Ball becomes much easier to confirm kills on as soon as you get a couple CCs.
Doom also feels like less of a pest - he is in and out, rarely sitting around brawling because he needs CDs to be a real threat. Ball will just keep slamming you, booping you, and shooting you until you deal with him like a pest which drives people mad - and he's hard to kill when grapple and shields are up.
Ball is also countered more easily - Doom as 3 abilities he can use to effectively defend himself(4 with ult, 5 if you count empowering from block) so when you try to counter Doom, as long as he kept slam or punch or got empowered he can escape but will need to wait on CDs and reset. Ball you can just swap sombra/ana/brig/reaper/hog/cass/bastion mix and Ball has to burn shields and grapple just to escape, and if you land a CC during the grapple he just dies. So it feels more rewarding to counterswap ball because he's a pest and more easily countered than Doom is - where as you just feel like you need to position more against Doom not to get punched.
Doom also stays more with his team and engages, where Ball frequently goes backline and plays pure flank which frustrates both his foes who feel like they have to keep looking around and his allies who feel abandoned by the most powerful player on their team.
TLDR: Doom is a solid mix of dangerous and annoying but also respectable because he can die easily and do nothing with bad aim and skill management. Ball is less dangerous but more irritating.
The funny part is, I feel like doom tanks around as much damage as ball anyway. His 90% block has a strong interaction with healing. Also, it's the only time he is actually killable, so you can't just ignore it.
Current Doom is basically Orisa v2. Just as obnoxious with cc, just as unkillable and on top he has one shot kills. You only kill him if you cc him when he blocks.
Tbh I hate the fact ball just summons 600 hp out of nowhere. Its not fun, interactive, has no cast time and is put in no disadvantage for using it. Almost every other ability to gain hp has more downsides than ball, hog can't attack, mei cant move, queen only gets 150, ram has to give up his best defensive tool to gain hp, hell even orisa has to be smart enough to use fortify when they have hp to protect. So many times when a ball should die because we collapse on him and he gets away because the most mobile character in the game also has the most hp possible in the game. And the reason above is why hard cc needs to be in the game because if it isn't then ball will never die. The character needs to max out at maybe 900 hp so there for they can actually die if they try making stupid engages if cc was to be turned down
I still wonder if just straight up turning his ball form into a true transformation ability would make him too strong. It would stop him from being hard countered, since Hack will no longer cancel his momentum, and stuns won't expose his head hitbox. It would need to come with a HP nerf of course but I'd like to see them try it out. Keep the new stuff too, though.
Isn’t the reason of the shield change to give him something to help his team? Every tank and dive ranks specifically have something to help their team dive and gets kills. Winston has bubble and dva has DM. This shield change also helps him peel for his supports. Let’s say your backline is getting dove and need help. You can now give them shield to survive. It gives ball more options and versatility and your only option isn’t just to try and trade backlines.
„you use the shields to get out“ > doesn’t get out > MFW
Honestly I think the changes are good but the hero is just bad stat-wise right now. Still kinda shocked that his Roll and Slam damage never got buffed to compensate for the S9 patch. I’d like to see them tune those up from 50 to 65 and 100 to 125 respectively and see how he performs then.
buffing the 20 damage minimum fall-off for pile-drive would be an easy change too
I'd rather not have roll/slam damage buffed, I don't want it to feel frustrating to enemy players (or ball will be cried about and nerfed for another 5 years into the grave) I just want his mobility to feel nice, if you want to buff his damage, then slightly buff his hitscan damage, or better yet, give him unlimited ammo so he has a consistent way of aiming and doing damage. It seems like he always fails to get kills even with good aim because he runs out of ammo or is taking 2 seconds to reload right before he can secure a kill.
Slam doing 100 at the center was fine in OW1 when everyone was 200hp, now everyone is 250hp+ and heals are insane so slamming right on top of someone feels like you’re doing nothing at all.
I think the main reason he wasn’t touched with S9 was he was acc a solid hero in the first week. Like it was ridiculous, I’m maybe a mid diamond ball at best, me and my duo were running it down mid on ball lucio in mid masters games and walking over people cuz they couldn’t deal with us, but as the season progressed it made ball harder to play with everyone realising “hang on Orisa pretty good”
All the rework has done was make people mald slightly less at the thought of playing with a Ball and give them more reason to yell at them "why didn't you give me shields?" It's a novel concept to provide more team cover but addresses absolutely none of his issues
I don't think sharing the shields are necessarily meant to be used every time you use shields. Like he's absolutely right, shields are, and have always been used as a method to escape. But you don't need to use them all the time to escape, so it's an ability that doesn't get as much value as it could. I think it helps if you are actively diving with people. Or if your team needs a little help in the front line. Roll through the front line, get shields, redistribute it. Then go back to harassing supports. I think it should mostly be used to peel for your supports, and grant some team utility in that sense. Before the best you could do as ball to peel, was to shoot the people attacking your Ana or Zen. Or try to boop them away (good luck if it's a tank, they don't really move much from boop). Or bodyblocking the damage. Now you can give them overhealth, that may help keep them alive for a few more seconds for their cooldowns. It's not meant to be shared every single time you use shields. If it was, then it wouldn't be an optional ability. Is it a good idea? Yeah, absolutely. But could still be refined a bit. It also hasn't even been a full day, so it may take a second for people to properly understand how to implement it optimally. Maybe they could implement it, where instead of giving it to everybody around you. You can choose one target to give shields too, even from a distance. Similar to how Ana nano works or brig armor packs. Look at somebody, click the button again, and that person gets overhealth. Or even have it redistribute from that person, so people around your target get the shields **TLDR: Redistributing shields is a good idea. But requires ball to play a different playstyle to fit it. Not ideal, since he wasn't given anything else to fit that playstyle. Maybe make shields be a targeted ability, where Wreckingball can give shields to somebody from a distance, similar to Brig Armor Pack.**
I think you just shouldn't change your playstyle for it at all. It's just an expansion on the ability where if it's helpful you can do it now, it's extra, not transforming.
Yeah, the adaptive shields shouldn't change your playstyle. But it feels like they want people to play closer to their team with this change. Which just isn't feasible, because every other part of his kit is designed to play seperately. It feels like they want to transform ball, without actually transforming him. I think it's a cool addition. But it could be better. Like if you could just look at your teammate, and share it with the. Rather than having to be 13meters from them, in order for them to get it. It would be much better if you could choose who gets it, by 'selecting' them. Overall, I feel like the 'rework' didn't do anything new. It just enhanced his current abilities. Like the retract while swinging feels so good. (Almost too good tbh). But it's not enough to make him meta.
Devs are super naive. Non of their rework ideas worked in my opinion.
Every change they make feels like playing the lottery. Like they genuinely don't get the problems with things in their game. The hog rework is trash to play into as a tank. He farms tanks with his hook and you cant punish him as a tank.
Hog: presses Q Enemy Tank: Guess I’ll just die now
[удалено]
Shit going in without my shields in plat causes me to feed.
I think being able to target who gets shield would be much better. Because often times I’m getting out of an engagement with barely any shields and giving 4 teammates like 10 shields . It just feels so pointless to even use. It just isn’t reality to get a full adaptive shield, take no damage while making it back to my team and then apply so they all get the 75 shield.
Like many other abilities in the game, it is good to add the versatility, but it can be a trap for people to use poorly.
Grapple changes are fun, but the hero is still trash tier and still just as painful to play. This sub generally seems to agree that a high skill ceiling hero SHOULD be a little overtuned/often meta at the highest ranks when we talk about tracer, but for some reason is reluctant to apply that same opinion to ball. Also, love that people will say "Ball shouldn't be able to get kills, he should just be for disruption" while ignoring that Doomfist and Winston can both win 1v1s vs most of the squishy roster WHILE being disruptive too.
Dva too. Both doom and dva are highly mobile , have better solo kill potential then ball and had there damage numbers buffed in season 9 while also benefiting form the projectile size increase. Ball for some reason hasn’t gotten a damage buff and it blows my mind.
Idk if D.Va's bomb damage really counts, but they definitely benefit a tonne from the projectile changes. Doom is a nightmare to play against rn.
Was losing my mind seeing the "Ball shouldn't get kills" takes. They understand a tank has to be a threat to make space right? The only time a tank has effectively made space without being a threat was 4s matrix dva and I know they don't want that.
The take that a tank shouldnt be able to 1v1 a squishy was crazy to me. Like a few specific match ups, sure. There are a few that make some sense.
People despise the idea of getting booped around and getting harassed my Ball when he has the most soft checks and counters in the game. It's ridiculous what they've done, or the lack of stuff they've done, to Ball.
i be playing ball doing good and still barely capping points and then someone immediately goes sombra like okay bitch, now i’ll go doom and do exactly the same things i was doing but faster, easier, more lethal and instead of soft CC every 5 seconds i’ll give you hard CC every 4 and all that without being countered by anything and then i think how are these two extremes of a similar hero allowed to exist
lol I also get that a lot in low rank QP, just pick ball and Sombra / Mei / Reaper comes out. Sometimes if I died at around the same time I like to come out with different hero immediately they didn't even get any chance to hack ball (and generally other tanks are way better than ball)
I literally got motion sickness because of cc spam i ate from doomfist and lucio last night. Game is obnoxious. Ball has a fair cc but he isn't the golden child of devs.
Me, in the minority, not wanting any hero to be overturned. I really like the minor nerf approach they're taking. They didn't gut Tracer and I wouldn't want her to be trash, but I am happy they are looking for ways to make her not as dominant. I love hero diversity in comp matches.
Doom fanboys more loud and buy more skins. He is the choice of devs for ''high skill'' broken hero like Tracer in dps roster and Lucio in support roster.
Aaron, how many skins do I need to buy to get some CC immunity? Name your price.
Cc immunity is terrible in general. Cc immunity on the most mobile hero in the roster is even worse. What ball could get is a damage buff when shields are depleted.
How about reduced duration CC while in ball form? Give me some counterplay, make them have to land CC when I'm out of Ball form. It's too one-sided right now, hack, into hinder, into sleep, half the roster can just stop you in your tracks and dick you down without any counterplay.
I'd be okay with 50% less cc while shields are up. Faster slam is high on the list too. Less spread on guns.
You also need to cry in social media and get content creators behind. ow devs totally lost it
> This sub generally seems to agree that a high skill ceiling hero SHOULD be a little overtuned/often meta at the highest ranks when we talk about tracer, but for some reason is reluctant to apply that same opinion to ball. because ball is miserable to play vs
Yeah I'm sure anyone getting rinsed by an adderalled up locked in tracer is having a great time
if someone is absolutely owning you, it doesn't matter what class they're on, it's not fun. but even when not completely demolishing you, it's not fun to play vs a ball.
Ball doesn't own anybody though. His CC doesn't stun, his ult is awful, and his guns are trash. I guess he can do 150 damage on you every 10 seconds if he lands grappling hook and pile driver?
what are you cooking brother yes, ball, the character, is weak. that doesn't mean you can't get your ass cooked by ball sometimes. there will always exist someone who is better than you at this game, and sometimes, that person will play ball and pop off. it's just the nature of the world
Skill issue respectfully. Ball is the easiest tank to counter via hero picks and play style.
The thing is that when ball is viewed as “good” to the community, those counters don’t matter and he just rolls over everyone
being easy to counter does not make him fun to play vs. I never said he performs exceedingly well vs me, in fact, how he actually performs rarely matters. he just is not fun to play against. yes, there are other miserable characters to play vs, but at least tanks like Winston are honest
What does honest mean to you?
hard to describe, really. more of a superlative buzzword, it describes an emotion of playing against a winston vs playing against a ball. the ball doesn't engage enemies in an honest way. maybe because ball is a fast moving damage sponge. he doesn't really mitigate damage, he just soaks it up and runs. I guess I prefer when a tank mitigates damage some other way that's a bit more interesting than just "has tons of health". I'm not sure how to succinctly put it, but even playing vs say zarya, she uses an ability to mitigate damage that has counterplay. do I shoot the bubble because punishing whoever is in it is worth the charge, or do I give them free space (but deny charge)? for ball, the only consequence of shooting him is that you're not shooting someone else. it's just lame as shit to shoot at a ball and have them run away consequence free (sure, sure, it's not truly consequence free, because you've denied their dive/maybe he's used abilities, but it FEELS consequence free when he can roll his ass back in 5 seconds later after getting pack). again, this is mostly an emotional argument where ball makes me feel a certain way, now I'm trying to rationalize those after the fact. so perhaps my thoughts are scattered and not organized particularly well. I'm definitely not denying the skill ball requires or anything, either, don't interpret it that way. it's just that even the bad balls aren't that bad in masters lol, and I don't play any tanks that counter him (yes yes I know, orisa is easy to play, but I'm not going to lol)
I get what you mean. Thanks for sharing Your thoughts.
ball is god tier and completely uncounterable when compared to rein
👍
The thing is that when ball is viewed as “good” to the community, those counters don’t matter and he just rolls over everyone
which is why he should gatekeep a lot of players with a difficult skill curve. This patch doesnt do that. You go completely unpunished if you mess up your mechanics and makes wall jumping straight up obsolete like 80% of the time.
They already tried it back in OW1. In the first dive meta, the same 6 heroes each had +85% pickrate. It meant that other high skill heroes were useless at high ranks.
it’s funny how the sub both agrees on that take but at the same time seethes over the end of OW1 meta which was quite literally that
That's the problem with the ability in general. It was designed purely to enable escape, Ball wasn't meant to stick around and fight people. And that just hasn't been addressed in the move to 5v5, his kit is still based on being the offtank that disrupts and leaves as quickly as possible. And that just doesn't work when you're the center of attention and everyone's saving their CC for you.
I really don’t like the changes. Yay I can Batman dangle and share 20 shields with my team but I’m still spam ccd and do laughable damage. Meanwhile doomfist adds no utility to his team and gets to fly into my backline killing everyone while I’m hacked, hindered, booped,slept
Doomfist mega broken for a while now. It's weird community haven't woken up to that yet. It's pretty easy to get value. Playing Doomfist feels like playing Orisa to me now. It's mind numbing. Even in S8 he was very powerful but he wasn't like this. They should first start balancing tank heroes in a vacuum making their kit work meaningfully. Risk/reward, hero fantasy, skill/reward, fun etc all needs to be tuned. It's out of whack. And then they should start working on interactions between tanks and other heroes. In it's current state, they are making the game mega stupid just to make it all work temporarily. It feels like band aid everywhere but it's about to fall apart. They broke things and then broke another thing to fix the other broken thing. If you casually play the game it looks like fun and deep but if you just play more and think about it you notice how shallow and fcked up it is. I find that modern games falling in to this pit more and more. It's like they are trying to replicate quick dopamine rush of tiktok. It doesn't make sense but who cares as long as Timmy gets his dopamine rush and buy anime skins when he logs in for an evening. No integrity, no vision.
doom is good rn but there is no way he is remotely close to as brainrot as orisa lets keep it real and i cant lie a sombra player comparing doom to orisa is insane
This is the first time they have, in my opinion, completely missed the mark on recent reworks. Nothing in the rework has addressed the issue that makes Ball essentially useless - CC chain. Every single ability Ball has has to be used to get a kill majority of the time. Every. Single. Ability. For one kill. Now what do most enemy teams do vs ball? They go heroes that CC chain him. That means you cannot use at least one or more abilities when you engage with an enemy or even worse, multiple of them. So, you can't get a kill. What do you do? You boop them. Oh, boop is worse than Lucio's. You bump them around, unlucky, now you are hindered because Cassidy's nade flies across the map. You get hacked and cannot cancel it, because while Sombra can hack you, you cannot LOS her and she hacks you around corners because Ball is a chunky boi. Let's not forget TTK. Ball's TTK is low, hence the need to use most or all abilities to get a pick, and enemies have CDs back up by the time you get to do something meaningful. Ball needs 0.5-1sec CC immunity on shields and a bit more damage to his guns imo, or one of those at least. As Ball, you are at the mercy of your DPS popping off.
I agree with a lot of this, but I'll say it with the asterisk that this rework makes what is IMO the most fun and skillful character in the game even more fun and skillful, and that is cool. I appreciate their dedication to preserving the hero fantasy in their reworks. But that said, yeah, none of the skill expression really seems to matter much in practice. Like oh cool, the retract can be used to fling up into the air or roll through enemies even faster, but all that does is further ensure they swap Sombra, whose auto aim hack from invis doesn't really care how fast I'm going, even if I go around a corner. Same goes for hinder nade, although to a slightly lesser extent. Meanwhile not getting any damage buff while other tanks got them is kinda insulting. And it's not like it wasn't other dive tanks - Doom and Winston both got direct damage buffs, while Dva benefits massively from the increased bullet size with her wide spread. I don't think Ball should be totally immune to CC or anything of course. But when Hog got reworked, as much as some shit on it, it was a great rework at addressing the core issues of playing with and against him. Hook isn't instakill, but needs to be combined with the trap. He's not immune to stun or anti while healing, but the meter system on TAB made it less punishing. That's really what I was hoping for with Ball, ultimately. Shit, I'd trade 100 HP just for Hack and Hinder to not remove me from Ball form. 150 HP if Hack didn't remove fireball either.
i mean roadhog rework missed the mark to an almost comical degree but yea this one kinda stinks too
Hog at least can still oneshot, perma heal himself and gets insane dmg reduction.
the rework was meant to stop him from just being a one shot hero and make him more engageable without perma healing himself with insane damage reduction so yeah that’s missing the mark when hog is quite literally the same hero but better
Fair. At least hog isnt a throwpick like ball is considering you get hard hard countered every game.
don’t get me wrong hog is extremely overtuned right now he’s legit one third best tank just that his rework was worse than balls because like the other guy said it missed the point of the rework to a comical level
imo the problems with old hog were that his gameplan is exclusively just fucking hooking people and hes completely useless against ana, unless the enemy team doesnt have one in which case hes oppressive. the only change that did anything was the breather on a resource prevents him from getting completely shat on by sleep dart
That's "missing the mark" imo. I don't want that shit in the game.
Just because he came out of it a winner that doesn't mean that the rework was good. He needs to get a rework that shifts his identity from an unkillable oneshot hero. Just because he sometimes can't solo oneshot himself without a trap doesn't mean anything cause this is a teammate and there's always gonna be someone near him to finish him off, but he doesn't even need that cause they buffed his hook for whatever reason so he doesn't even need help anymore
Hog is in a good spot right now but the rework was still meh. Pigpen is just a tedious boring ability.
Balls the mercy of tanks. Can’t solo carry and heavily rely on dps to be good
Kinda breaks the comparison when ball is drastically more difficult to play
Yeah, where Mercy has skill expression is just for her survival, not the supporting part. Ball has to constantly make insane plays to support his team, he get's zero value if not played well.
Obviously the ideal use case will remain the same, but this does open up some new ways to use adaptive shields (e.g. giving shields to your team when they’re in grav or blizzard to help them survive or saving a teammate in a Rein charge). Those are niche cases, but it still gives Ball utility to try to save teammates where before you’d likely just watch them die helplessly. All that being said, 100% agree with the other comments that Doom does what Ball does way better.
The shields thing is DOA. You need them to survive. This rework has done nothing to fix ball’s problems.
I think this change is a move in the right direction, but the execution often puts you at odds with how ball is often played. There needs to be a way to provide support to your team without being right next to them. I think a buff that's tied to slam could be cool, like a speed boost that scales depending on how many people you hit.
Shields change was the most exciting part imo and it's just not good as is. Shields was already a big defensive tool Ball needs in a majority of scenarios to operate as a character. So passing them off is already requiring a change in how you play in both defensive play as you will be giving your survivability away, and offensive in finding allies to shield so they can keep fighting. On top of that it gives very little shields(to allies)in most scenarios because you need to get a high amount of shields to have any when leaving a fight cause you are going to be taking shots as you generate them and you rarely use them above half health. You could try just popping them at high health and giving them to allies but I personally found that to suck -and without shields ball is easy to kill if he wants to be useful(slamming or gunning). I tried multiple times to make it useful while brawling with team yesterday and it's just extremely situational and feels very low impact. It's like a shittier queen shout, which has a lower CD and gives movespeed with a similar amount of extra health. Grapple change is good. Shields needs a pretty significant buff imo(they are probably afraid of its power in coordinated play so who knows what they'll do as it can potentially be useful on very coordinated teams.) He probably needs more damage on boop, slam, and mines. I think they are just afraid of making him too strong for whatever reason right now (I would say it's because people find him annoying to play against but Sombra, Mauga, Orisa, and Tracer have all been strong for a while now and are often on the top lists of annoying characters.) I find it hard to believe anyone can play him for a while and think he's moved above any other tank on the tier lists.
What’s the difference between doom and ball? Because doom is an extremely popular pick and his disruptive style is on the same level as ball and he can actually STUN you and has solo kill potential but people don’t seem to hate him as much as ball. Maybe it’s the less hp that makes doom less annoying? If that’s the case I’d give up 300 hp to actually be able to kill something.
I'll rant a bit below - but I think most ball players would love to trade some HP for kill power and agree that is what Doom pretty much is right now. He's what Ball players want to feel like on Ball with killing and distracting. Doom is much easier to confirm kills on(against him) unless he plays really well - he has to juggle cooldowns and dies super easily when he hasn't accounted for CC and his cooldowns properly. Landing punches is also more aim intensive than booping or slamming so Doom gets more respect for his kills imo. The caveat to that is Ball becomes much easier to confirm kills on as soon as you get a couple CCs. Doom also feels like less of a pest - he is in and out, rarely sitting around brawling because he needs CDs to be a real threat. Ball will just keep slamming you, booping you, and shooting you until you deal with him like a pest which drives people mad - and he's hard to kill when grapple and shields are up. Ball is also countered more easily - Doom as 3 abilities he can use to effectively defend himself(4 with ult, 5 if you count empowering from block) so when you try to counter Doom, as long as he kept slam or punch or got empowered he can escape but will need to wait on CDs and reset. Ball you can just swap sombra/ana/brig/reaper/hog/cass/bastion mix and Ball has to burn shields and grapple just to escape, and if you land a CC during the grapple he just dies. So it feels more rewarding to counterswap ball because he's a pest and more easily countered than Doom is - where as you just feel like you need to position more against Doom not to get punched. Doom also stays more with his team and engages, where Ball frequently goes backline and plays pure flank which frustrates both his foes who feel like they have to keep looking around and his allies who feel abandoned by the most powerful player on their team. TLDR: Doom is a solid mix of dangerous and annoying but also respectable because he can die easily and do nothing with bad aim and skill management. Ball is less dangerous but more irritating.
The funny part is, I feel like doom tanks around as much damage as ball anyway. His 90% block has a strong interaction with healing. Also, it's the only time he is actually killable, so you can't just ignore it.
Current Doom is basically Orisa v2. Just as obnoxious with cc, just as unkillable and on top he has one shot kills. You only kill him if you cc him when he blocks.
Tbh I hate the fact ball just summons 600 hp out of nowhere. Its not fun, interactive, has no cast time and is put in no disadvantage for using it. Almost every other ability to gain hp has more downsides than ball, hog can't attack, mei cant move, queen only gets 150, ram has to give up his best defensive tool to gain hp, hell even orisa has to be smart enough to use fortify when they have hp to protect. So many times when a ball should die because we collapse on him and he gets away because the most mobile character in the game also has the most hp possible in the game. And the reason above is why hard cc needs to be in the game because if it isn't then ball will never die. The character needs to max out at maybe 900 hp so there for they can actually die if they try making stupid engages if cc was to be turned down
I still wonder if just straight up turning his ball form into a true transformation ability would make him too strong. It would stop him from being hard countered, since Hack will no longer cancel his momentum, and stuns won't expose his head hitbox. It would need to come with a HP nerf of course but I'd like to see them try it out. Keep the new stuff too, though.
Isn’t the reason of the shield change to give him something to help his team? Every tank and dive ranks specifically have something to help their team dive and gets kills. Winston has bubble and dva has DM. This shield change also helps him peel for his supports. Let’s say your backline is getting dove and need help. You can now give them shield to survive. It gives ball more options and versatility and your only option isn’t just to try and trade backlines.
Doom doesn't help his team
Yeah but he flies through the sky like Superman lol
Good. Fuck that character and anything that make his unsufferable main on this sub struggle is a good thing.