As much as I wanted to like and play Wrecking Ball, I think it’s clear at this point (over 20 hours on PTR and QP) that he’s the throw pick of the tanks.
Here is why you shouldn’t play Hammond,
Grapple is the most unreliable movement ability of all of the dive tanks, while Grapple allows for long distance flanks and fast reinforces from spawn the advantages do not outweigh the disadvantages of the ability. Grapple’s momentum mechanic allows enemies to exploit Wrecking Ball’s character model by body blocking him when he tries to escape, so Hammond has to either commit to a dive or die while trying to retreat from one. Furthermore Grapple has poor vertical movement from static positions, so Wrecking Ball is unreliable at contesting high ground and vulnerable to environmental kills that Winston and D.va would be immune to i.e. Lucio Sound Waves or Roadhog Hooks on Ilios Well.
Quad Canons are significantly underpowered, while Quad Canons have great accuracy and fall off damage their 5 damage per shot, 80 ammo per clip and 2 second reload speed makes them the worst tank on tank weapon after Winston’s Tesla canon and completely unreliable in a sustained fire fight. At 125 dps and a 3 second clip, the accuracy requirement in order to one clip targets is extremely high and you’ll spend most of your time either reloading or trying to finish them off with Grapple and escape with Roll.
Adaptive Shields is the worst defensive cooldown in the game, I don’t have anything good to say about this ability because it’s complete garbage - at 15 seconds it has the longest cooldown of any defensive ability in the game, and if you try to maximize your shields then you position yourself into the middle of the enemy team and feed them 600 health worth of ult charge. On average you’ll get a maximum of 300 shields on a clean engagement into the backline, shields in a duel or 100 shields while escaping. Compare that to Winston’s Bubble, which gives him 600 shields and protection from CC on a 13 second cooldown, and Zarya’s Bubble, which gives her 200+ shields and protection from CC on a 10 second cooldown, and you’ll find yourself to be the least survivable of all the tanks.
While Wrecking Ball has a small head hitbox that he’s able to cover with Roll, he also has the largest character model in the game. Character’s like Roadhog, Reaper, Soldier 76, Sombra and Torbjorn can’t miss a bullet on Hammond, so he’s really specific towards having high survivability vs Widowmaker and McCree and that’s about it.
Proximity Mines is a pretty worthless ultimate, while they can be useful for claiming space on the objective generally what happens is the enemy team will use one of their ultimates in order to clear your mines and kill one of your team mates - they end up ahead on ultimate economy in a 6v5. I think this ultimate may actually be worse than Orisa’s ultimate as far as the tank roster is concerned, because while both ultimates are vunerable to counter ultimates Proximity Mines rarely provide any value in a team fight.
Wrecking Ball is easily hard countered, be it Roadhog, Reaper, Mei, Sombra, Doomfist, McCree, Ana or Brigitte it takes very little to shut down Hammond, what should be a character who goes straight into the enemy team in order to maximize his disruption and shields is a character who has to very carefully avoid any potential counter because even a stun is as good as ringing the dinner bell. And normally that would be fine if he were any other dive tank, but the dexterity of movement on Grapple simply isn’t there compared to Leap and Boosters in order to get clean engagements on isolated enemies and it feels very counter intuitive to play him that way when Adaptive Shields and Piledriver are begging for you to go big.
Roll and Piledriver are really what makes Wreckingball what he is, being able to quickly maneuver around the battlefield and disrupt the enemy are great abilities but they simply aren’t enough to justify him over D.va and Defense Matrix or Roadhog and Hook as either the off tank or the third tank on the roster most of the time. And while the prospects of triple tank dive are rather exciting, I feel that if triple tank dive is the only composition you can justify him in then you’ve basically failed to add anything of value to the roster.
I don’t know how you should go about addressing his problems, but you seriously need to look at his kit because it’s not doing whatever it’s you designed it do - he’s basically at release Orisa levels of bad right now.
Honestly, sorry I read the first paragraph and got bored. But he is not a throw pick, so that title is complete bs. Also, this is the first hero in a long time that Blizzard has added that actually requires skill. Now everyone’s complaining about him being too weak. He’s good if you’re good. Grapple can dominate the point if you know how to use it.
He’s not too weak, everyone’s just gotten used being able to hold down left click without any skill what so ever. Maybe his adaptive shields could use a little buff, but that’s honestly it I’d say.
Increased radius for adaptive shield is a must. 10 meters knockback but only 7 meters radius to pick up people to adapt just doesn’t make any sense right now. The usual control point is like 3-4 times the size of that.
I can live with the reload time since he automatically reloads when he rolls up into a ball. Just a tad bit more damage on that thing would be nice.
BUT - If the idea is to swing in, combo, unload a clip and get back out and repeat, then the grapple cooldown should simply reset similar to Genji’s dash. I’d just like to have the option to reliably get out of trouble again OR get tethered again to have a chance to bounce people into the mines if I decide to use the ultimate that way rather than blocking off something.
It’s just minor annoyances like that. The only thing that really annoys me is how quickly that ball gets obliterated by Dva without standing a chance. It’s like impossible for any single of her pellets or rockets to miss. Pull up close, matrix & unload - dead hamster.
I think the problem with Hammond’s design is that nothing about him helps out his team mates, except for his capability to push the enemy around which may get them out of position and out of the cover of barriers and thus vulnerable to the teams snipers. I still think in theory, this was supposed to be his purpose.
They call it a “disruptor”, but is that going to be enough? Is it going to warrant a place on the team? Ehhhh, I’m not convinced. I’m inclined to agree with you that there’s a strong chance that he’ll be a troll pick.
There are other heroes in the roster that aren’t team orientated but they’re flankers like Doomfist and Tracer, heroes whose job it is to delete enemy supports and that’s what justifies their presence on the team. Can Hammond delete enemy heroes? Not well enough imo.
One of the few new heroes added that not only NEEDS to aim, but also takes a huge amount of skill. The only real buff he needs is a radius buff on his shield and a slight damage buff on his quad cannons and thats all. Now stop complaining about him like characters in this game shouldn’t take huge amounts of skill to play.
Also, point #4 is BS. ALL Tanks have large hitboxes. They are SUPPOSED to be large targets because they are supposed to soak up the damage. Do you really not know what a Tank is?
Point #5 is also bad. You can’t just use them randomly and expect it to do anything, you have to wait for an enemy team to group up, THEN use it. It can also combo well with Zarya’s or Rein’s ults. It takes basically a equal amount of skill to D.va’s ultimate.
Point #3 is bad too. You can’t just walk in and use that either. It’s good when the enemy team is rushing you, or when you come out of your ball and need some quick defense.
Something tells me you might be a bad tank player, since you make all these complaints about Hammond being bad simply because he takes a high amount of skill. He IS 3 Stars, after all.
Actually… Together with Winston it’s some pretty sweet AOE damage that can’t be mitigated. Add Doomfist and an Ana grenade and you’ll find yourself in a world of hurt and wish yourself back into a gravdragon. I think those 4 could become really good friends.
It -really- strikes a nerve with me when I see hamtaro do this thing. But… I haven’t really tried to play with him yet. From what I have seen though- he’s tough to utilize.
He’s a brand new character, and if he is difficult it’s gonna take time before people are gonna get gud with him. We’ll just have to be patient.
Totally agree, he distrupts but seldom is able to finish off targets without dying. The other problem I noticed so far (in QP at least) is that teams tend to assume that “oh we have a tank” and not roll with a Rein or Winston if Hammond is picked.
but seeing i only play D-va and orissa as my main tanks (rein isn’t my playstyle and zarya isn’t a great solo tank. oh and winston is winston… not bad but not good either)
now hamond… i see no role he can take from any other tank… his kit is, to say nicely… awfull…
it’s a dive tank who needs to dive and get the hell back out because he’s out of tricks.
d-va can dive, eat bombs/orbs, push enemies, eat more crap and dive back out (and with a litlle luck destroy the intire team with a nuke)
My only issue with him is his ult. Either the mines should activate sooner or they should have more health. A single nade from ana can destroy 3/4 of the minefield.
Besides that alot of ults can get rid of the mines like selfdestruct, EMP coalesence, whole hog or even a Zen who uses trans to just run trough them. Heck if a enemy hammond does a pile driver into the mines they all get destroyed. Another option to remove alot of them is a Roadhog running trough them while he is taking a breather.
Hammond is quite a mix but the style is not as “clear” as with Roadhog and Zarya since he has to play mindgames.
The thing is that he is a bruiser but he depends on the team capitalizing the enemy having the attention on HIM and disrupting damage etc.
If you keep moving around, shooting, moving, pushing, piledriver+shields and assisting kills, he is a nightmare.
You cant punish people hard like with Road or Zarya nor abuse the mobility like Winston and Dva and also you cant protect anyone but making the enemy “crazy” looking for him, trying to chase him etc, opens A LOT of space.
If you stand and use it you get a nice sized mine field but if you activate while you’re in air, which is where you spend a lot of time with grapple, the mines spread out to a much bigger radius, which means a lot of them never reach the ground and just stick to walls high up where no one will be bothered by them.
So you’re not rewarded for a nice grapple, ult, pile driver combo with a shield roll away.
It’s a brain reprogramming issue. We’re conditioned to unleash the ultimates on point, in the middle of everyone, and that’s just not the most efficient way to use those mines.
It’s just better to use them to block respawn routes and such to buy some extra time. Also, if they are dropped right next to the point, maybe even as part of the escape plan, there is a greater chance for them not to be bothered by those who can’t afford to get off the point so you can start bumping people into them on the next grapple.
The thing is that when you pick Hammond you’ll take up a DPS slot, not a tank slot. You’ll still need a main tank and an off-tank because Hammond himself doesn’t really offer defensive capabilities to your teammates and the way he disrupts enemies is similar that to a Genji, Tracer or a Sombra with a different kind of kit. His grapple movement was difficult to handle at first but once you play against him for a few games the trajectory becomes really predictable and easy to hit so even when you’re trying to dodge and escape you’ll be gunned down.
I’m not even at the point where I’m considering which slot he’s taking up. My problem is that he’s taking up a slot in the first place! Tanks should support their team in some way and DPS should delete people or dish out epic damage. Hammond doesn’t really do either of those things. He “disrupts” …
A slot is a valuable thing and can be filled with all sorts of heroes. Some people have said stuff like “Well, he can deal damage when it’s combined with other heroes” … Yeah, but that’s true for every hero. The real question is, why do I want this “disruptor” over some added killing power with a Hanzo? or supplemented healing with Brig? or a barrier with Winston?
Taking up a slot is a cost upon the TEAM and that cost has to be JUSTIFIED. There is no room in the roster for dead weight.
(( PS - It sounds like I’m being harsh here, but keep in mind that I’m talking about the general player base and how they will play him. I am certain that the pros will pull off amazing things with him, but mortals make mistakes and are inefficient and with this hero I don’t think it will be very forgiving.
![:joy:](https://d1kzxbyyijk9k6.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")
The real question is, why do I want this “disruptor” over some added killing power with a Hanzo? or supplemented healing with Brig? or a barrier with Winston?![:hushed:](https://d1kzxbyyijk9k6.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/hushed.png?v=6" ":hushed:")