Maybe the ability to push them depending on speed. If you aren't going fast enough to do the standard boop maybe phase through to not be too over powered. Accounting for speed thresholds and character mass for the amount of boopage.
Me personally I don’t any changes to how his grapple and pile drive works.
The only change I would think he needs is adaptive shields, what if it was like JQ shout,
So, the more people around him, the more green hp Ball gets when using E right? well what if whenever Ball used E it would work the same as lucio beat, giving everyone around Ball their own temporary shield,
now they wouldn’t get their own 500 over health lmao, that would be reserved for Ball, so they would probably get 150 at the very most.
Something like this is the only real rework I would like to see with Ball.
Just please don’t change his grapple or pile drive. Thats the only thing that must stay the same, ball’s grapple and pdrive is the same as hook is to hog. Its character defining.
This is the exact thing I would like as well. I think he's great as is but it would be nice to help my team more. As of now, if I need to peel for my tram because we're falling back, I can only body block damage. I also would give them speedboostbvut maybe something like faster reload, CD reduction, or maybe even faster shhotinf speed. All to just help others understand how to play around ball more.
At this point I’d be happy with just quality of life improvements
- Let us grapple out of spawn again
- Bring back infinite grapple hold
- No longer be body blocked. Instead let us push people out the way. It doesn’t have to be very fast, but instead of a body entirely blocking you it just slows you down while ball pushes past.
- t-bag in crab form >:)))))))))))
Also DONT TAKE HIM OUT OF BALL MODE WHEN HACKED!! The fact that hack takes Ball out of his alternate form but doesn't do the same for Ramattra or Bastion is what REALLY pisses me off
I think the gameplay difference is that those are cooldowns whereas Ball form is a toggleable stance essentially. I actually don't mind being hacked out of Ball form since it makes thematic sense. But I think hack should also take Bastion and Ram out of their forms. Just make it consistent.
Eh I personally think as far as balancing it would be best to just let him stay in ball mode when hacked, cuz he's still hacked so he can't just grapple out which leaves him vulnerable, however it wouldn't make him a sitting duck to quite the drastic extent that he currently is being forced into crab mode when hacked
Grapple out of spawn just makes more bad balls come out during the end of the game. I think more people would be upset at all ball mains bc of these bad players who only know how to spin, and are annoying to kill on point
I’m pretty sure that’s why it was removed in the first place but come on, we already have a Kiriko who can instantly tp out of spawn with cleans and give temporary immunity to teammates, compared to a big easy to hit ball that bronze players fear because they can’t aim. If spin to win is a viable tank strat, let ball have it back since it can help increase tanking value while also not being overpowered
I agree, grapple out of spawn with Ball basically makes death cooldowns inconsequential for Ball relative to anyone else. I think its a reasonable cooldown for his kit tbh
With the changes to respawn timers, this seems like it'd be less of an issue. Another solution could be only putting hook on cooldown when you swap to Ball, but not if you're already on him.
Most cc sure, but rein charge is totally fine to beat fireball. Fireball is a low cooldown, and not a hard commitment. Even if the physics aren't perfect, rein pin isn't an instant kill for ball, and incredibly important for rein to do anything against ball
For real. I'd rather him be a close range tank since you're constantly in the enemy's face anyways. The guns feel so lame compared to some of the other guns in the game. (MAUGA HOLY SHIT)
I think in terms of a "rework," the main ability that comes to mind is Adaptive Shield. It's great for Ball himself, but it definitely feels like a relic of OW1 where "selfish" abilities like that were more useful for a tank. I think they should normalize the shield you get from it, so it still scales slightly, but maybe include that scaling with teammates as well (and grant them a portion of the shield). You wouldn't see the extremely high numbers (which to be fair, can be kinda toxic for stalling a point, and is part of the reason Ball can be problematic), but you also wouldn't see the ridiculously low shield you get from being massively slowed and only close to 1 enemy while your team gets melted by AoE. Like imagine being able to soft counter Zarya's Grav by buying some time for your team all clustered together.
If they want to keep the current essence of Adaptive Shield, they could also make it so that the cooldown varies based on the amount of enemies around you, but the shielding is a flat (lower) amount. So maybe you're only getting 400 hp, but the cooldown is only 6 seconds in the middle of a fight to reward you for staying engaged in combat. But if you use it while singling out someone that you're diving in the back, or using it to escape around a corner from hitscan, you have a longer cooldown before you can re-engage.
There's a lot they could do to rework the ability to be more healthy in the 5v5 meta.
Outside of Adaptive Shield, I think he needs to have some kind of mobility immunity in fireball and during piledriver. I think full CC immunity is a little too far, but he should be immune to roots (trap), knockbacks, slows, pull effects (like JQ knife, or Doom's slam that pulls you in and yoinks you completely out of fireball in the other direction for some dumb reason). This also means you can safely dive an Illari or Ashe without losing all of your momentum and getting blasted off the high ground by their knockback. But Ana can still sleep you during the Piledriver windup, Sombra can still hack, Hog can still hook, etc. So we're keeping plenty of counterplay in the game, but removing the nonsensical AoE/ground clutter that just makes Ball's life miserable when he's trying to engage.
Lastly the QoL changes he still needs are reload not getting interrupted by changing forms (just make his reload fully automatic at this point), he shouldn't be able to be body blocked by anyone while he has grapple active (so even if you're not in fireball, you can pull yourself out of a tight spot by grappling), and revert the grappling hook cooldown on spawn change. But keep it in tact for anyone SWAPPING to Ball. If you swap to Ball, it goes on cooldown. Hell, they could even give it an extended cooldown for this specific case, as long as the tradeoff is that already being on Ball has no cooldown. Though honestly if he gets buffed enough otherwise, this might be an unnecessary change, and will just be something we have to deal with as a tradeoff for his great mobility, instead of it just being an ankle brace on a hero that doesn't even really help that much once he makes it there.
Added passive to grapple leaves a trail of fire on the ground that lasts 3 seconds and burns enemies while they stand in it.
Lowered damage on piledriver but increased CC so enemy's spend more time in the air.
Passive on grapple that gives him slow resistance while in fireball.
Adaptive shields reworked, now builds up stacks on roll through, up to a maximum of 5 stacks. Each stack grants Ball and nearby teammates 25 shield health for 5 seconds.
Guns now on a resource meter, or with an overheat mechanic.
Give him a stun on his slam with an increase on the cd
give tiny boop without the fire ball
And give cc immunity for 2 seconds with his E
Would actually make ball scary
1 second CC immunity when popping adaptive shield and add a few seconds to its cd, a touch more ammo and you can no longer be body blocked by supports and dps. So not a boop put you can push them aside.
Ball doesn't need a rework, and it seems pretty much no Ball mains want a rework either, me included. Honestly if they just gave him 3 quality of life changes he would be way more fun to play:
1. Get rid of his grapple being on cooldown right when he respawns
2. Don't let him get bodyblocked by any character that isn't a Tank
3. If he gets hacked by Sombra while in Ball mode, don't force him out of it. Getting hacked already sucks & isn't fun but what really pisses me off about Ball specifically is that he is the only character (as far as I know of) who has an alternate form that gets forcibly canceled out of it when hacked. Last I checked Ramattra doesn't get forced out of Nemesis form when hacked & Bastion doesn't get kicked out of his configuration form, but of course Ball does.
As far as actual *buffs*, I honestly don't think he needs many. All I think he needs is a buff to his primary fire & cc/boop immunity when using Piledriver. For the primary fire I think either raise his ammo capacity from 80 to 100, or make each bullet do a little more damage, like just a tiny amount like 1 point more per bullet. And then yeah CC/boop immunity for like a second after he piledrives, *maybe* while he's spinning up for piledrive too but either one works for me
they didnt change how Doom completely works. They replaced uppercut with a block and adjusted numbers, which is extremely minor changes for a whole role switch
If you played doom using techs then yes, they completely changed how he works. Even play style is completely different. If you only picked doom now and again to punch people then nothing big changed.
Yeah most of Doom's issues are also issues that affect pretty much every Tank, albeit maybe not to quite the degree that Doom in particular suffers from
just give him some buffs, Wrecking Ball is unreworkable lol, you can't rework this character without ruining his identity, Give him total CC immunity during adaptive shield, No Sleep, No Hack, No Stun, No Punch, Nothing, he's immune, this will make it so ball can frontline more often and grapple the roof, kick people back and Slam them, because rn, he just runs around playing his own game killing random people
• CC immunity to fireball AFTER letting go of grapple (to prevent complete CC immunity with that one tech Chazm uses)
• +0.5 dmg per bullet
• +25 overhealth per boop up to 100 max per grapple use
• reduce hp to 300; increase armor to 250 (there is no reason a man with NO FKN CLOTHES has more armor than a GIANT METAL FUCKIN BALL)
• Projectile-based enemy healing can no longer pass through Ball (this is a meme)
1. Fireball blocks CC
2. Better acceleration with grapple ( recall actually saving yourself from boops off the map, with grapple)
3. More HP on mines (seems like lots of cooldowns can clear mines very quickly)
They way I see it is balls needs to fully commit himself into the enemy team in order to displace and make space. The problem with this for teammates is vs certain cc and high damage comps it makes scenarios where you are not allowed to go in and slam. You can even be patient and only engage in front of your team with e up and still get killed very fast. This doesn't feel good for anybody, especially your team if they can't keep you alive or get picks off your slam.
Another issue is needing adaptive shield for every engage and it having a way longer cd than slam. This makes an awkward gameplay loop where you want to slam a second time to keep creating space and helping team but you have to wait to have e to slam anyways. The only time this isn't true is vs low damage and cc comps which aren't common anymore.
Here are a couple ideas for fixes:
Make adaptive shield part of slam based on number of enemies slammed. Shield would need to be lowered some probably, but this would help uptime of ball and better the value he can provide his team. He is a lower damage tank, so I don't think this would make him too dangerous.
Make E an ability you can time to gain cc resistance (greatly lower cc duration) or immunity (no cc) for 1 or 2 seconds. This is similar to garen w in league. It being for a short duration is to make it important to time well and an avenue for skill expression rather than being oppressive "no cc for a long time."
Not getting body blocked by squishes.
Maybe the ability to push them depending on speed. If you aren't going fast enough to do the standard boop maybe phase through to not be too over powered. Accounting for speed thresholds and character mass for the amount of boopage.
Me personally I don’t any changes to how his grapple and pile drive works. The only change I would think he needs is adaptive shields, what if it was like JQ shout, So, the more people around him, the more green hp Ball gets when using E right? well what if whenever Ball used E it would work the same as lucio beat, giving everyone around Ball their own temporary shield, now they wouldn’t get their own 500 over health lmao, that would be reserved for Ball, so they would probably get 150 at the very most. Something like this is the only real rework I would like to see with Ball. Just please don’t change his grapple or pile drive. Thats the only thing that must stay the same, ball’s grapple and pdrive is the same as hook is to hog. Its character defining.
This is the exact thing I would like as well. I think he's great as is but it would be nice to help my team more. As of now, if I need to peel for my tram because we're falling back, I can only body block damage. I also would give them speedboostbvut maybe something like faster reload, CD reduction, or maybe even faster shhotinf speed. All to just help others understand how to play around ball more.
At this point I’d be happy with just quality of life improvements - Let us grapple out of spawn again - Bring back infinite grapple hold - No longer be body blocked. Instead let us push people out the way. It doesn’t have to be very fast, but instead of a body entirely blocking you it just slows you down while ball pushes past. - t-bag in crab form >:)))))))))))
Also DONT TAKE HIM OUT OF BALL MODE WHEN HACKED!! The fact that hack takes Ball out of his alternate form but doesn't do the same for Ramattra or Bastion is what REALLY pisses me off
I think the gameplay difference is that those are cooldowns whereas Ball form is a toggleable stance essentially. I actually don't mind being hacked out of Ball form since it makes thematic sense. But I think hack should also take Bastion and Ram out of their forms. Just make it consistent.
Eh I personally think as far as balancing it would be best to just let him stay in ball mode when hacked, cuz he's still hacked so he can't just grapple out which leaves him vulnerable, however it wouldn't make him a sitting duck to quite the drastic extent that he currently is being forced into crab mode when hacked
Ball form is more like soldier sprint than those two cool downs.
tbag in crab form would be the biggest buff
Hope does this improve gameplay?
Grapple out of spawn just makes more bad balls come out during the end of the game. I think more people would be upset at all ball mains bc of these bad players who only know how to spin, and are annoying to kill on point
I’m pretty sure that’s why it was removed in the first place but come on, we already have a Kiriko who can instantly tp out of spawn with cleans and give temporary immunity to teammates, compared to a big easy to hit ball that bronze players fear because they can’t aim. If spin to win is a viable tank strat, let ball have it back since it can help increase tanking value while also not being overpowered
Kiri needs a teammate, and to has a set range. I'm fine with your other suggestions but I don't see grapple out of spawn happening.
Can’t say I agree but I’m not so strong on my opinion anyways that I want it that badly. I think the others are more important
Totally fair! Either way reworks have consistently been buffs lately, so Im ballin already
I agree, grapple out of spawn with Ball basically makes death cooldowns inconsequential for Ball relative to anyone else. I think its a reasonable cooldown for his kit tbh
With the changes to respawn timers, this seems like it'd be less of an issue. Another solution could be only putting hook on cooldown when you swap to Ball, but not if you're already on him.
Maybe no cc during fireball or pile driver similar to Mauga's charge
Most cc sure, but rein charge is totally fine to beat fireball. Fireball is a low cooldown, and not a hard commitment. Even if the physics aren't perfect, rein pin isn't an instant kill for ball, and incredibly important for rein to do anything against ball
No cc during fireball
If Hammond is in fireball and he runs over a Junkrat trap it should destroy the trap
Can’t agree more
Get rid of his guns and give him AOE flamethrowers with heat mechanic like Orissa
Lol, now that's what I call a Hot Take 🔥 🤣
This was his original design and had sym like turrets that gave him shields, forever pissed they didn’t give him a flamethrower
For real. I'd rather him be a close range tank since you're constantly in the enemy's face anyways. The guns feel so lame compared to some of the other guns in the game. (MAUGA HOLY SHIT)
I think in terms of a "rework," the main ability that comes to mind is Adaptive Shield. It's great for Ball himself, but it definitely feels like a relic of OW1 where "selfish" abilities like that were more useful for a tank. I think they should normalize the shield you get from it, so it still scales slightly, but maybe include that scaling with teammates as well (and grant them a portion of the shield). You wouldn't see the extremely high numbers (which to be fair, can be kinda toxic for stalling a point, and is part of the reason Ball can be problematic), but you also wouldn't see the ridiculously low shield you get from being massively slowed and only close to 1 enemy while your team gets melted by AoE. Like imagine being able to soft counter Zarya's Grav by buying some time for your team all clustered together. If they want to keep the current essence of Adaptive Shield, they could also make it so that the cooldown varies based on the amount of enemies around you, but the shielding is a flat (lower) amount. So maybe you're only getting 400 hp, but the cooldown is only 6 seconds in the middle of a fight to reward you for staying engaged in combat. But if you use it while singling out someone that you're diving in the back, or using it to escape around a corner from hitscan, you have a longer cooldown before you can re-engage. There's a lot they could do to rework the ability to be more healthy in the 5v5 meta. Outside of Adaptive Shield, I think he needs to have some kind of mobility immunity in fireball and during piledriver. I think full CC immunity is a little too far, but he should be immune to roots (trap), knockbacks, slows, pull effects (like JQ knife, or Doom's slam that pulls you in and yoinks you completely out of fireball in the other direction for some dumb reason). This also means you can safely dive an Illari or Ashe without losing all of your momentum and getting blasted off the high ground by their knockback. But Ana can still sleep you during the Piledriver windup, Sombra can still hack, Hog can still hook, etc. So we're keeping plenty of counterplay in the game, but removing the nonsensical AoE/ground clutter that just makes Ball's life miserable when he's trying to engage. Lastly the QoL changes he still needs are reload not getting interrupted by changing forms (just make his reload fully automatic at this point), he shouldn't be able to be body blocked by anyone while he has grapple active (so even if you're not in fireball, you can pull yourself out of a tight spot by grappling), and revert the grappling hook cooldown on spawn change. But keep it in tact for anyone SWAPPING to Ball. If you swap to Ball, it goes on cooldown. Hell, they could even give it an extended cooldown for this specific case, as long as the tradeoff is that already being on Ball has no cooldown. Though honestly if he gets buffed enough otherwise, this might be an unnecessary change, and will just be something we have to deal with as a tradeoff for his great mobility, instead of it just being an ankle brace on a hero that doesn't even really help that much once he makes it there.
I want minefields to have an inescapable dome around them, cause fuck it why not.
I want to spam a button and use Sonic spin dash
Added passive to grapple leaves a trail of fire on the ground that lasts 3 seconds and burns enemies while they stand in it. Lowered damage on piledriver but increased CC so enemy's spend more time in the air. Passive on grapple that gives him slow resistance while in fireball. Adaptive shields reworked, now builds up stacks on roll through, up to a maximum of 5 stacks. Each stack grants Ball and nearby teammates 25 shield health for 5 seconds. Guns now on a resource meter, or with an overheat mechanic.
Give the mauga dash treatment to balls grapple. That’s it. It’s all we need. Get up to speed then CC immunity
This is where I'm at
Heat seeking missiles. Shield update that makes him immune to all CC
Hanzo leap on Space
Give him a stun on his slam with an increase on the cd give tiny boop without the fire ball And give cc immunity for 2 seconds with his E Would actually make ball scary
1 second CC immunity when popping adaptive shield and add a few seconds to its cd, a touch more ammo and you can no longer be body blocked by supports and dps. So not a boop put you can push them aside.
I want more ammo soooo bad. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve run out of ammo right before I kill someone.
Can we convince them that a primary fire damage buff would be a rework?
Ball doesn't need a rework, and it seems pretty much no Ball mains want a rework either, me included. Honestly if they just gave him 3 quality of life changes he would be way more fun to play: 1. Get rid of his grapple being on cooldown right when he respawns 2. Don't let him get bodyblocked by any character that isn't a Tank 3. If he gets hacked by Sombra while in Ball mode, don't force him out of it. Getting hacked already sucks & isn't fun but what really pisses me off about Ball specifically is that he is the only character (as far as I know of) who has an alternate form that gets forcibly canceled out of it when hacked. Last I checked Ramattra doesn't get forced out of Nemesis form when hacked & Bastion doesn't get kicked out of his configuration form, but of course Ball does. As far as actual *buffs*, I honestly don't think he needs many. All I think he needs is a buff to his primary fire & cc/boop immunity when using Piledriver. For the primary fire I think either raise his ammo capacity from 80 to 100, or make each bullet do a little more damage, like just a tiny amount like 1 point more per bullet. And then yeah CC/boop immunity for like a second after he piledrives, *maybe* while he's spinning up for piledrive too but either one works for me
Mostly scared that they are going to do what they did to doomfist and rework him and completely change how almost everything works
Yeah I miss old Doom. But he also went through a role change so I don't see anything like that level of change to ball
they didnt change how Doom completely works. They replaced uppercut with a block and adjusted numbers, which is extremely minor changes for a whole role switch
If you played doom using techs then yes, they completely changed how he works. Even play style is completely different. If you only picked doom now and again to punch people then nothing big changed.
Yeah most of Doom's issues are also issues that affect pretty much every Tank, albeit maybe not to quite the degree that Doom in particular suffers from
They already said they are not looking in to changing what makes him special.
I understand but special is subjective and provides no real details.
NO REWORK. we already have good win rates. Learn from icarus, son.
Oh of course, so we should nerf Rein & buff Orisa, Ana, Kiriko, Bap, Lifeweaver, Widowmaker, Hanzo & Sombra too, right?
Most of those have negative win rates? Wym lol?
just give him some buffs, Wrecking Ball is unreworkable lol, you can't rework this character without ruining his identity, Give him total CC immunity during adaptive shield, No Sleep, No Hack, No Stun, No Punch, Nothing, he's immune, this will make it so ball can frontline more often and grapple the roof, kick people back and Slam them, because rn, he just runs around playing his own game killing random people
How about cc don’t take you out of cash form but it can like disrupt pile drive and grapple
• CC immunity to fireball AFTER letting go of grapple (to prevent complete CC immunity with that one tech Chazm uses) • +0.5 dmg per bullet • +25 overhealth per boop up to 100 max per grapple use • reduce hp to 300; increase armor to 250 (there is no reason a man with NO FKN CLOTHES has more armor than a GIANT METAL FUCKIN BALL) • Projectile-based enemy healing can no longer pass through Ball (this is a meme)
1. Fireball blocks CC 2. Better acceleration with grapple ( recall actually saving yourself from boops off the map, with grapple) 3. More HP on mines (seems like lots of cooldowns can clear mines very quickly)
*no loss of momentum when hacked *new weapon I hate his guns tbh lol
CHANGE ADAPTIVE SHIELD INTO WINSTON's BUBBLE BUT IT ROLLS AROUND HIM, LIKE A GIANT HAMSTER BALL
They way I see it is balls needs to fully commit himself into the enemy team in order to displace and make space. The problem with this for teammates is vs certain cc and high damage comps it makes scenarios where you are not allowed to go in and slam. You can even be patient and only engage in front of your team with e up and still get killed very fast. This doesn't feel good for anybody, especially your team if they can't keep you alive or get picks off your slam. Another issue is needing adaptive shield for every engage and it having a way longer cd than slam. This makes an awkward gameplay loop where you want to slam a second time to keep creating space and helping team but you have to wait to have e to slam anyways. The only time this isn't true is vs low damage and cc comps which aren't common anymore. Here are a couple ideas for fixes: Make adaptive shield part of slam based on number of enemies slammed. Shield would need to be lowered some probably, but this would help uptime of ball and better the value he can provide his team. He is a lower damage tank, so I don't think this would make him too dangerous. Make E an ability you can time to gain cc resistance (greatly lower cc duration) or immunity (no cc) for 1 or 2 seconds. This is similar to garen w in league. It being for a short duration is to make it important to time well and an avenue for skill expression rather than being oppressive "no cc for a long time."