So I just played about 5 minutes of Hammond I have to say that he feels quite insane.
His basic shooting capabilities are a tad fast (I’d say around 60-80% of Bastion’s shooting speed) with you being able to kill a squishie with around 40 rounds to the body and 32 with every shot being a head shot.
His rolling ability allows him to quickly move from one location to the other and with his grasp he can temporarily move in one direction at speeds a bit faster than lucio with his speed boost. This does take a little effort as you have to move against your grapple but it isn’t anything that you can’t learn in 5 minutes.
This grapple issue can however be resolved by instead of grappling onto a wall grappling onto a surface above his point of view, this will cause uninterrupted movement in one area and if said surface is a bridge (training grounds) then you can swing yourself above that bridge.
Add to this that if Hammond jumps from a ledge or anything about a meter from the ground he can use his toggle crouch ability to perform a meteor strike like attack that works in the same fashion as the seismic slam as it boops any surrounding enemies into the air.
I’m not completely sure about this but Hammond has a counter next to his name which indicate the amount of enemies in his direct vicinity, I presume that this works in tandem with his crouch ability to show how many people will be hit
To get to his thanking capabilities, Hammond has 600 hp with about a 100 being from armour, once Hammond uses his shielding ability he gains an extra 200 hp in shields for a short amount of time. His shielding ability can be used while he is rolling
And for his last ability I’ll have to say that it is quite something, Hammond deploys a minefield in a circle around himself ( around a dozen) that knock back enemies and can kill squishies with two mines. These mines do fizzle out after around 10 seconds.
With all that out of the way I think that I get the general gist of his game play, Hammond will be someone that can disturb enemies that group up together by either knocking them all up in the air and then using his minefield or by him swinging into the enemy team with his grapple effectively scattering them.
Hammond is a very strong dps character that in my opinion shouldn’t be put into the thanking role, he’s like Roadhog in the sense that he’s not there to absorb damage but to weaken the enemy position.
So far I think that his only true counters would be Roadhog, Ana and Brigitte with McCree not quite cutting it.
All in all I think that some of the better plays that you can perform with him will be very skill intensive and will definitely look great in a montage.