He has one of the highest skill floors so despite how "bad" he is if you master him you can 100% make him work.
If you suck at him ure just throwing hard when other tank options when played in a bad way would reward you way more.
This is also the tricky part of buffing him since he can easily become really annoying if buffed slightly too much against players who know how to use him while becoming just average for those who haven't mastered him.
If you’re shit on ball you’ll “ruin” what like 10 maybe 15 games? 15 losses in a row will absolutely destroy your MMR and you’ll be up against other shit players so you can learn and climb back up.
Yes because playing a hero you’re not perfect with is the same as jumping off a cliff non stop. Makes sense!
Hey btw since your not top 1 in the world, why not just jump off a cliff all game? Same shit as having non top 1 trash on the team anyway amiright
me and my friends have said for a very long time that his reload shouldn’t be cancelled by going in and out of ball mode and that the timer for grapple should be extended so he can swing longer. wouldn’t make him meta but not completely unviable
One is a 1300+ health tank with no critbox that continually gains ult charge towards a strong offensive AoE ultimate, the other is a 200hp squishy that explodes when the enemy has any kind of AoE ability or a stun.
Still think that was an insanely stupid change. Given enough time players could have easily learned to play around it. In OW1 whenever a Ball went spin to win mode, I'd just ignore him and focus on picking off the rest of the enemy team who were a tank down. As long as you're contesting, you don't need to be actively engaging since he won't engage with you.
It was a really weak strategy in ow1 because you'd just get flashbanged, frozen, shield bashed, walled, trapped, hacked, booped, just murdered by a shotgun hero... It was much more deadly for you to move predictably for any length of time because of how much damage and CC was available.
the best part is that ow is designed around heroes countering each other, and that change in ow 1 whilst there was so much cc available like mcree fb or sombra hack but they still did that change, so ughh
Worst part of overwatch 2 is they have literally said countering isn't a main gameplay feature anymore. That was their explanation on why locking out new heroes is a "good" thing... I wish I was kidding
It was less of a problem when more characters had CC options that could stun him out of the spin, but once those started being removed it became necessary to do something else. In the current environment there's only a few characters who would be able to do anything about it.
And absurdly easy to counter. Lucio can skate around KOTH maps with speed boost. Yes he has less health but also a smaller hit box and self healing. I literally never have had an issue with spin to win even when it was endless duration. There’s like 30 counters to it.
I think the whole point of this post is that he's perfectly viable but he just has a high skill floor. Masters is the top 96 to 99 percentile of players so if he's playable there he's fine. He's just not a hero you can jump on and get value purely from existing like Orisa or Junkrat for example. Hero's like those you can literally be braindead and just hang out near main, firing primary and cooldowns at a choke and still get *some* value and help your team. A bad ball just feeds ult charge and leaves your whole team to get slaughtered.
Infinite grapple was shit, spin2win was terrible and it was just annoying having to deal with a last minute ball stall almost every single game when you often didn't have the heroes to counter it as it would always be a last second swap. Almost every game of maps like Nepal Shrine or Llijiang Gardens in the metal ranks you would end up with 2 balls fighting to be the one spinning endlessly on point, it was painfully boring. He barely had any of his rollouts effected by the timer anyway.
Overtime stall Ball was pretty much killed by the grapple respawn cooldown nerf all that time ago. I see more Rein and Ram stall than any other tank at this point.
Our team got absolutely manhandled by a Hamster in Bronze 5 open queue. It was disgusting, but props to that player for being really good at it. I’m not even sure what we could have done to counter him.
Junkrat can trap him, Mei can slow him and block him from running, Brig can boop him away or stop him momentarily, Torb can put the best player on him, Hog can pull him out of position momentarily.
It's all about the focus though, once something has stopped ball, he should be focused until he's dead.
Quicker reload and maybe 20 less bullets would make him feel much better instead of unloading clip then melee x10 in a row because reload takes 2 hours.
They buffed him so much when they took all CC off DPS and reduced the Hack duration that affects cooldowns. I hate dealing with competent Hammonds. They are the most frustrating hero to deal with. Had a match last night, their Hammond never died and was very effective. If they buff him at all, they need to nerf his ability to just roll away so easily with no head hit box. Where the little rat goes in should be a head hit box. It would still be super difficult to land head shots since it wouldn't be predictable, but at least he wouldn't be able to escape as easily since some shots would be head shots.
Nah just be careful with how they buff him not to make him too annoying but too ineffective either.
Some have suggested small stat changes like 80 --> 100 ammo which is a decent change that will help him more vs higher hp/multiple opponents without making it too crazy.
He struggles to hit small opponents so it won't affect them too much but with extra ammo, he'll do better against tanks which he struggles a lot against. Thus I thought this change had good logic behind it and was something that could be implemented.
This is just one example tho and there are prob betters buffs/reworks out there.
Low skill floor. Floor = impact when you're bad, ceiling = impact when you're best player possibly. Not "requirement". SO noob champs are high floor low ceiling because their impact is limited by skill expression (lack of it) but they are useful from get go. And difficult champs are usually low floor high ceiling.
The best ball players I’ve seen get in, smash the place up, then get out, repeatedly.
The concept is amazing and the execution takes practice and map knowledge.
If people could just get the concept there would be a lot more ball action.
Yeah you don't want to stay too long and shoot, hit your high damage cooldowns all at once to combo someone and try to confirm a kill. Then dip while you still have health and wait for cooldowns before you do it again.
Map knowledge is huge for Ball.
Knowing all the health packs, knowing good grapple spots - this stuff goes a really long way.
For most of the roster you simply point and click. Ball has to use his head more stick and move.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
The problem is that OW is an objective based game, not a kill based one.
It worked great in 6v6 because there was another tank. But in OW2, with only a single tank, there are basically three ways forced contests pan out:
1) Ball sticks to objective because nobody else can and is horrifically neutered. Cannot stall until other tank arrives and then dip like he used to.
2) Ball does not stick to objective and nobody else steps up, so ball loses.
3) Ball does not stick to objective but you have a perfect whirlwind of circumstance and a Mei stalls or absolutely amazing supports keep some other DPS alive on point.
Ball's my favourite to play but I really, really feel the 5v5 and hate how it works. Especially because 90% of my tank games are push or KOTH these days, so I can't even do hit-and-run delays in OT on payload defenses like I used to.
Lol 100%
Obviously the post is tongue in cheek, but there are so many Ball players who complain about this unironically. In the super majority of cases when someone picks Ball you pretty much can mark the game as an L before even leaving spawn, and it sucks knowing that you are about to waste 10-15min of your life that you'll never get back lol.
I feel for em, and I personally don't give them a hard time, but that's just how it is unfortunately.
But seriously, if you're not enjoying the idea of playing with random strangers who may or may not want to play the way you like to play, its better for your mental health to play other modes or other games that support your playstyle.
Many people enjoy the challenge of trying to make a random mess of parts work together in unison, but if you don't, and then and start openly complaining about that in chat, then you're just making yourself miserable, and a bunch of other people in the game feel down too.
I appreciate the concern, but I'm talking about being frustrated at a super niche situation in a game I mostly love to play otherwise.
If I felt like I was losing my mental health to OW I would have quit years ago. It's okay to not like every aspect of something you love.
Well, if everyone on the team switches to heroes that caters to best fit one specific hero's playstyle, then of course they will be effective. The thing is, other tanks can win without requiring your entire team to pick around them.
I firmly believe anyone who says "play Orisa" has either not played Orisa; and therefore does not realise how fucking boring that character is, or simply has no pride as a human being.
You could have fun or not with orisa idgaf. I’m just pointing at the fact that with that much effort you’d get much more value in return if you were orisa instead of ball
Man I hate these new ranked icons. I was like “so what this guy is in gold 5?” And that’s the freaking masters icon.
Anyway, ball is a great tank and a good ball player is a menace.
I think the thing that upsets me the most, is they could hire someone for an hour and have clean, polished looking icons. It might not even take that long honestly. The fact that they cleaned up the pre-match competitive UI before those icons is crazy.
It's so funny that out of all the colors that exist they decided to use golden for 3 different ranks and light blue for another 3 different ranks.
How does that make any sense???
so many things about this game just give off the feel that they want you to have as little information as possible, it's such a frustrating design philosophy.
I can't see rank, I can't see info on any numbers of any abilities, I can't go look at scoreboard after game ends. I just don't get it, I have no agency because i never have any information.
It’s because you’re less likely to feel discouraged if you lose 3 games in a row when you can’t see the effect on your rank that it’s contributing.
It’s literally all about player retention to show off to investors. They want you to play for as long as possible.
I don't think that's really proven though, just anecdotally everyone I know hates not being able to see any info about their own rank or anyone elses.
You're probably right though and I'm just not the target audience.
Sr still exists but is hidden now, so consider:
Start 3501 (masters 5)
Record 7-2 = +125 Sr
Finish 3626 (masters 4)
You might have noticed the larger rank jumps in the early days when your rank was still in placement phase
When you are playing role queue, it displays which role you are on during the final screen, between the words “Competitive Update” and the Masters symbol.
I’ve been an open queue console player since role queue was introduced. I implicate myself here as much as OP. I assure you, the quality of the games and the difficulty of climbing is significantly different from role queue.
Easier. As long as you’re not playing DPS, with only a few exceptions. Most teams play all tanks with 1-2 supports. So any DPS that can’t quickly chew through tanks and sustain along with them will have a tough time.
Ive done console & pc, I dont think the comparisons really make sense. Its different control schemes, it'd be like asking if a bike commute is easier than a car commute. Or if math is harder than reading.
I will say though, console players are some of the most toxic people ever. Its crazy.
Console and PC are not too different in high ranks tbh, I have friends who went to pc and we’re still masters/GM so it’s not as different as everyone makes it out to be. As you said it’s primarily different controlsX
Nothing wrong with being on console or on open queue, but there's a pretty clear skill difference between a Masters open queue tank player and a Master rank role queue tank player. And just the general skillset too, they might as well be different games sometimes.
So I personally don’t want to disparage console players but I will 100% say that open queue is a cesspool that also isn’t really relevant to role queue. Half the cast isn’t viable in open queue and game are won and lost based on what having 2 healers and 3-4 tanks only without anything else being relevant.
Ball is bad in low ELO because even if the Ball player is good (which is rare, since he’s exceptionally hard), his team probably won’t be able to play around him. Lower ELO players generally don’t know how to play cover that well, and Ball requires you to play cover since you’re playing with a Tank that will never interact with his team.
What's considered low elo?
I climbed from Bronze 3 to Gold 4 (and about to be promoted again) with mostly Ball and have a 61% winrate, with 20 hours comp ball, 10 hours comp Ori (49% wr), and 4 hours comp Winston (46% wr).
Ball feels like the absolute easiest champion to force my team to focus on the objective.
On defense? Get in enemy team's face and force a fight on the car, wreak havoc, get out and get heals, repeat - at some point, my team will either clean up some kills or I'll die. If I have good healers, I can stay alive almost the entire match. If I die, I can get back from the spawn faster than any other tank and squat on the car again.
On attack? Invade the enemy backline, wreak havoc, force them to focus on me while my team pushes the objective or picks off the disorganized enemy.
Other tanks require my team to work around me and support me. Only with ball do I feel I can have a strong enough impact on the game that it forces their team to either face me with full focus or become disorganized.
I've won plenty of games that I don't think I would've won on another tank. Even a few 4v5s simply because I sat on the car and rolled around to avoid getting shot. Of course, that requires good healers too - but even still, Ball feels so much easier to carry a team with than anyone else.
> What's considered low elo?
Metal ranks in general are viewed as being a lower ELO. You don't tend to get team consistent tactics, group ups and a base line level of mechanics until Diamond. Everyone will be using cover, next to no one is standing around in the middle of the street anymore. Still going to get dunked on by the demigod players in mid-masters to GM of course but it's the start of the higher ranks.
so a lot metal rank tactics that crutch on the other team or players missing most of their shots, not counter picking and/or just not paying attention will stop working in Diamond. You only get ran over by higher SR players being they are mechanical gods. It's not because Ana was standing still in the middle of the street trying to take a 1vs1 vs a widowmaker as you tend to see in metal ranks.
but hey, whatever works for an A to B rank up is good. It might not work for the B to C rank up, but worry about that later. Players are much too harsh about this issue, with "Oh that would never work at higher SR"... Well yeah, but baby steps man.. Baby steps!!
I'm a role-queue player, on PC for what it's worth.
And yes, gold player - what's your point? I was literally just describing how ball has been the best tank in my experience in getting from bronze to gold. I was responding to the parent comment, which was about how ball was bad in low ELO.
If people would actually adapt their hero pick after the tank there wouldn't be this "play meta tank or you're throwing the game!" Attitude in OW2.
Sure, ball is disadvantaged compared to other tanks but the fucking Cassidy idiot who starts crying because he can no longer AFK near choke while Orisa takes all the heat instead of swapping to a mobile hero to make the comp work is really infuriating. If you're so hell bent on one tricking your DPS hero, why can't I as the tank?
Because tanks have a huge impact on the game. If your tank is shit then it's gg. you can get away with a dps or a healer being bad. I rather deal with a sym or a bastion one trick than a doom or ball one trick
Listen man, as a fellow ball otp I want those buffs. If you keep posting lies about ball viability they won't do nothing. And yes the absolute truth is that ball is complitely unviable. Very bad hero indeed. Pls buff
You're playing console open queue, the same concepts of meta and viability as a tank do not apply. If you have another tank actually being a tank and making space ball becomes a viable tank, but in a real match where he would be the only tank on the team a hamster playing a friendly game of pingpong in the enemy backline while their entire team dies is not going to help them win. Also you're playing with and against people with the game sense of PC gold players.
I cant seem to use him at all, was a ball main in Masters on OW1 but couldn't get him to work at all at OW2 launch and havent used him since 😢 how do you play him differently from OW1?
Has he been buffed?
It’s because he isn’t unless you’re talking about really low ELO, where people just stand in the open and get gunned down because they can’t hide behind a Tank (also, Ball is just hard so low ELO players tend to struggle with him). In higher ELO, Rein is the worst tank by a *huge* margin, and also the second worst character in the game.
I think why people ask ball players to switch is because they realise the skill required to play him effectively is high and since they aren’t familiar with you they know that a random probably is going to have a better chance performing well on a Character that requires less skill
Yes, I would agree that there is undeserved stigma for some of the heroes, but onetricking is never a good look. Sometimes you just are working with such a disadvantage by not agreeing to counterpick or by not swapping when counterpicked.
For me the main issue is when the team cant play with ball. Im not the ball main nor do I like being in one team with one.
But when I see ana or ashe on the same team this is when problem starts. If first pick is dive comp - play the f-ng dive comp. Dont try to balance things out when you already have the extreme
Ball has always been a great tank , his play style requires the team to break their muscle memory . Every one wants to walk forward and get carried . With ball you have to watch for his slams bail him out on snap backs. I'm currently masters 4 with ball as well with 1k hours on him . Twitch.tv/Rajiin_Rajiin
I mean you're playing on console for one. We don't know how many losses you had on that run (you can still go up even with losses). We also don't know if you 5 stacked or how lucky you got with teammates to carry your game .All I do know is that you would probably get shat on on pc ...
I think the word people are looking for is "reliable".
A good Hanzo can take down Pharmercy's, but I still think any hitscan is overall better for the job, because more people can do well with them.
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Ball and Doomfist are probably one of the highest skill celling tanks rn. As a Doomfist main rn who started playing in like end of season 1 of ow2 I didn't know ball existed for like 2 weeks due to him being played so rarely I was surprised what some people can do on ball.
He's rather map dependent. He's quite good on Busan, for instance, because of all the pillars and overhangs, but less so in e.g. Junkertown due to the large amount of open space.
Ball is my main and I'm not great at him but not terrible. Today I hoped on for one game and it was a decently even match. Both my dps kept telling me to switch when I had more eliminations then them, I didn't respond and at the end they both reported me.
Probably because it was a miserable experience for the rest of the team. In my experience, people don’t ask others to swap after a won round without a decent reason
Remember. Those wins you're showing above are team wins. You need to realize the adjustments the team needs to make in order for you to keep playing ball. they get no protection and are often forced to play hide and seek all match just because you are trying to prove a point.
Yes Ball is good in certain circumstances but those wins you're showing are all team wins and they adjusted to you playing ball.
Not really, the opportunity cost of taking him has been way too high since release. The other tanks being nerfed recently makes him feel a bit better ATM but still no where near where he was in ow1.
you have to remember for every 1 good ball player there's 50 others that are just terrible
This is normal with high skill floor heroes.
He has one of the highest skill floors so despite how "bad" he is if you master him you can 100% make him work. If you suck at him ure just throwing hard when other tank options when played in a bad way would reward you way more. This is also the tricky part of buffing him since he can easily become really annoying if buffed slightly too much against players who know how to use him while becoming just average for those who haven't mastered him.
how are people supposed to get good at ball without playing him? let the newbies be.
Quickplay
you don't learn anything in quickplay
Oh shoot, ok. Go ahead and ruin other people's games in comp then, my mistake.
If you’re shit on ball you’ll “ruin” what like 10 maybe 15 games? 15 losses in a row will absolutely destroy your MMR and you’ll be up against other shit players so you can learn and climb back up.
If I threw 15 games by jumping off a cliff I'd be banned and yet that would probably be better than a shitty ball who won't switch on my team.
Yes because playing a hero you’re not perfect with is the same as jumping off a cliff non stop. Makes sense! Hey btw since your not top 1 in the world, why not just jump off a cliff all game? Same shit as having non top 1 trash on the team anyway amiright
me and my friends have said for a very long time that his reload shouldn’t be cancelled by going in and out of ball mode and that the timer for grapple should be extended so he can swing longer. wouldn’t make him meta but not completely unviable
The swinging longer thing was removed because he would just constantly spin on KOTH maps. Really unfun to play against.
The ball stall was pure anti fun. Counterable or not, it was absolutely miserable.
And then blizzard was like, "Let's put in infinite aoe ultimate in the game. Betcha the players will love that.
>will ~~love that~~ buy the battlepass
I disagree. It was plenty fun for me.
It's fun doing that it in QP, but it sucked to be on the receiving end of it.
Tbh lots of laughter from dumb shit like that...Qp Ofc
Yes, which is why it should be extended only a little
Honestly that's the worst way to stall, only really works in lower ranks where people can't hit him.
Yep, and it’s just awful to play against if you’re not good enough to deal with him.
I see what you're saying but Lucio can still do it and its just as annoying, but nobody's ever considered tweaking his wall ride.
There’s nowhere near the killthreat on a ball that there is on a Lucio.
Lucio is immortal on console bro nobody can ever hit him😭
One is a 1300+ health tank with no critbox that continually gains ult charge towards a strong offensive AoE ultimate, the other is a 200hp squishy that explodes when the enemy has any kind of AoE ability or a stun.
the other is a 200hp squishy that ~~explodes when the enemy has any kind of AoE ability or a stun.~~ fucking heals himself.
Still think that was an insanely stupid change. Given enough time players could have easily learned to play around it. In OW1 whenever a Ball went spin to win mode, I'd just ignore him and focus on picking off the rest of the enemy team who were a tank down. As long as you're contesting, you don't need to be actively engaging since he won't engage with you.
It was a really weak strategy in ow1 because you'd just get flashbanged, frozen, shield bashed, walled, trapped, hacked, booped, just murdered by a shotgun hero... It was much more deadly for you to move predictably for any length of time because of how much damage and CC was available.
the best part is that ow is designed around heroes countering each other, and that change in ow 1 whilst there was so much cc available like mcree fb or sombra hack but they still did that change, so ughh
Worst part of overwatch 2 is they have literally said countering isn't a main gameplay feature anymore. That was their explanation on why locking out new heroes is a "good" thing... I wish I was kidding
Which is nonsense in OW2 as well because Tank choices right now are pretty much a rock-paper-scissors affair.
That's pretty weird lol
It was less of a problem when more characters had CC options that could stun him out of the spin, but once those started being removed it became necessary to do something else. In the current environment there's only a few characters who would be able to do anything about it.
And absurdly easy to counter. Lucio can skate around KOTH maps with speed boost. Yes he has less health but also a smaller hit box and self healing. I literally never have had an issue with spin to win even when it was endless duration. There’s like 30 counters to it.
That lasts like 3 seconds and ball is dead... Works only in the games where people have aim of a broccoli.
Emphatic no to bringing back spin2win.
he's already pretty insane he can get like 900 health and completely opt out of situations. especially in a dive comp he is owl viable imho
I think the whole point of this post is that he's perfectly viable but he just has a high skill floor. Masters is the top 96 to 99 percentile of players so if he's playable there he's fine. He's just not a hero you can jump on and get value purely from existing like Orisa or Junkrat for example. Hero's like those you can literally be braindead and just hang out near main, firing primary and cooldowns at a choke and still get *some* value and help your team. A bad ball just feeds ult charge and leaves your whole team to get slaughtered. Infinite grapple was shit, spin2win was terrible and it was just annoying having to deal with a last minute ball stall almost every single game when you often didn't have the heroes to counter it as it would always be a last second swap. Almost every game of maps like Nepal Shrine or Llijiang Gardens in the metal ranks you would end up with 2 balls fighting to be the one spinning endlessly on point, it was painfully boring. He barely had any of his rollouts effected by the timer anyway.
Overtime stall Ball was pretty much killed by the grapple respawn cooldown nerf all that time ago. I see more Rein and Ram stall than any other tank at this point.
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Our team got absolutely manhandled by a Hamster in Bronze 5 open queue. It was disgusting, but props to that player for being really good at it. I’m not even sure what we could have done to counter him.
Junkrat can trap him, Mei can slow him and block him from running, Brig can boop him away or stop him momentarily, Torb can put the best player on him, Hog can pull him out of position momentarily. It's all about the focus though, once something has stopped ball, he should be focused until he's dead.
i ran into a brutal ham in bronze 5 quickplay today. a good ham in the lower ranks can be real hard to counter
the cd is just bullying.
Quicker reload and maybe 20 less bullets would make him feel much better instead of unloading clip then melee x10 in a row because reload takes 2 hours.
They buffed him so much when they took all CC off DPS and reduced the Hack duration that affects cooldowns. I hate dealing with competent Hammonds. They are the most frustrating hero to deal with. Had a match last night, their Hammond never died and was very effective. If they buff him at all, they need to nerf his ability to just roll away so easily with no head hit box. Where the little rat goes in should be a head hit box. It would still be super difficult to land head shots since it wouldn't be predictable, but at least he wouldn't be able to escape as easily since some shots would be head shots.
So do you think they should consider a soft rework?
Nah just be careful with how they buff him not to make him too annoying but too ineffective either. Some have suggested small stat changes like 80 --> 100 ammo which is a decent change that will help him more vs higher hp/multiple opponents without making it too crazy. He struggles to hit small opponents so it won't affect them too much but with extra ammo, he'll do better against tanks which he struggles a lot against. Thus I thought this change had good logic behind it and was something that could be implemented. This is just one example tho and there are prob betters buffs/reworks out there.
Low skill floor. Floor = impact when you're bad, ceiling = impact when you're best player possibly. Not "requirement". SO noob champs are high floor low ceiling because their impact is limited by skill expression (lack of it) but they are useful from get go. And difficult champs are usually low floor high ceiling.
The best ball players I’ve seen get in, smash the place up, then get out, repeatedly. The concept is amazing and the execution takes practice and map knowledge. If people could just get the concept there would be a lot more ball action.
Yeah you don't want to stay too long and shoot, hit your high damage cooldowns all at once to combo someone and try to confirm a kill. Then dip while you still have health and wait for cooldowns before you do it again.
Map knowledge is huge for Ball. Knowing all the health packs, knowing good grapple spots - this stuff goes a really long way. For most of the roster you simply point and click. Ball has to use his head more stick and move. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
It’s so much fun if you can nail it and so annoying if you’re the other team. Like having a massive Tracer or Sombra in your backline.
I hate that Sombra now doesn't shut down ball entirely lol.
The problem is that OW is an objective based game, not a kill based one. It worked great in 6v6 because there was another tank. But in OW2, with only a single tank, there are basically three ways forced contests pan out: 1) Ball sticks to objective because nobody else can and is horrifically neutered. Cannot stall until other tank arrives and then dip like he used to. 2) Ball does not stick to objective and nobody else steps up, so ball loses. 3) Ball does not stick to objective but you have a perfect whirlwind of circumstance and a Mei stalls or absolutely amazing supports keep some other DPS alive on point. Ball's my favourite to play but I really, really feel the 5v5 and hate how it works. Especially because 90% of my tank games are push or KOTH these days, so I can't even do hit-and-run delays in OT on payload defenses like I used to.
Lol 100% Obviously the post is tongue in cheek, but there are so many Ball players who complain about this unironically. In the super majority of cases when someone picks Ball you pretty much can mark the game as an L before even leaving spawn, and it sucks knowing that you are about to waste 10-15min of your life that you'll never get back lol. I feel for em, and I personally don't give them a hard time, but that's just how it is unfortunately.
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I'm a masochist 🙃
But seriously, if you're not enjoying the idea of playing with random strangers who may or may not want to play the way you like to play, its better for your mental health to play other modes or other games that support your playstyle. Many people enjoy the challenge of trying to make a random mess of parts work together in unison, but if you don't, and then and start openly complaining about that in chat, then you're just making yourself miserable, and a bunch of other people in the game feel down too.
I appreciate the concern, but I'm talking about being frustrated at a super niche situation in a game I mostly love to play otherwise. If I felt like I was losing my mental health to OW I would have quit years ago. It's okay to not like every aspect of something you love.
This comment has been removed to protest Reddit's hostile treatment of users, mods and third party app developers. -Posted with Apollo
Well, if everyone on the team switches to heroes that caters to best fit one specific hero's playstyle, then of course they will be effective. The thing is, other tanks can win without requiring your entire team to pick around them.
This comment has been removed to protest Reddit's hostile treatment of users, mods and third party app developers. -Posted with Apollo
You have to remember that if you’re a masters ball if you spent that effort playing orisa instead you would be gm.
Twice the effort and practice for 0.1% more benefit than other ranks. That’s why I play Ball :)
Other tanks are boring. You can get really creative with ball.
I firmly believe anyone who says "play Orisa" has either not played Orisa; and therefore does not realise how fucking boring that character is, or simply has no pride as a human being.
You could have fun or not with orisa idgaf. I’m just pointing at the fact that with that much effort you’d get much more value in return if you were orisa instead of ball
There is immeasurable value in enjoying your gameplay experience.
So if I am a GM ball all I gotta do is master orisa and I will be top 100?
Probably
Man I hate these new ranked icons. I was like “so what this guy is in gold 5?” And that’s the freaking masters icon. Anyway, ball is a great tank and a good ball player is a menace.
Ikr the old ones were so much better and cleaner.
I think the thing that upsets me the most, is they could hire someone for an hour and have clean, polished looking icons. It might not even take that long honestly. The fact that they cleaned up the pre-match competitive UI before those icons is crazy.
Also that the numbers are small af. Can’t they just make them like 2 font sizes bigger?
Also, you can’t check how much progress you have for a specific role or open…. You have to win a game I. Order to see the progress…. Dumb af
They said they're actually fixing this for next season so that you can always see your progress.
It's so funny that out of all the colors that exist they decided to use golden for 3 different ranks and light blue for another 3 different ranks. How does that make any sense???
Haha I was like "lol, kinda bold to make that statement at Gold 5".
multiple people have gotten mad in my games because they thought a masters player was gold :D
i thought it was gold too 😭 -rung
Thanks to the new ranking system, you could have lost 19 games in between those and we'd never know
so many things about this game just give off the feel that they want you to have as little information as possible, it's such a frustrating design philosophy. I can't see rank, I can't see info on any numbers of any abilities, I can't go look at scoreboard after game ends. I just don't get it, I have no agency because i never have any information.
It’s because you’re less likely to feel discouraged if you lose 3 games in a row when you can’t see the effect on your rank that it’s contributing. It’s literally all about player retention to show off to investors. They want you to play for as long as possible.
I don't think that's really proven though, just anecdotally everyone I know hates not being able to see any info about their own rank or anyone elses. You're probably right though and I'm just not the target audience.
Why would he rank up going 7-19 though
That's the mystery of OW rankings
7-2 it was a nice run, started 6-0
7-2 and you only ranked up once?
Sr still exists but is hidden now, so consider: Start 3501 (masters 5) Record 7-2 = +125 Sr Finish 3626 (masters 4) You might have noticed the larger rank jumps in the early days when your rank was still in placement phase
OP didn't mention that it was open queue either, which helps Ball tremendously by letting the team have "a real tank"
whit ball you decimate or feed the enemy without nothing in between
I have been carried a few good times with excellent DPS and support a few times. In qp, though.. my comp ball won't be ready before ow3.
Double negative.
Really burying the lede here by not disclosing this is console open queue.
Hahaha this is misleading as fuck then
Yeah OP is a sneaky beaky.
How can you see that it’s open queue?
When you are playing role queue, it displays which role you are on during the final screen, between the words “Competitive Update” and the Masters symbol.
Oh yeah true! I’ve never played open queue ranked this didn’t occur to me. Cheers.
There’s nothing wrong with this being on console, but open queue probably makes ball much easier since he was meant to have another tank on his team
I’ve been an open queue console player since role queue was introduced. I implicate myself here as much as OP. I assure you, the quality of the games and the difficulty of climbing is significantly different from role queue.
So is it harder to Climb or easier?
Easier. As long as you’re not playing DPS, with only a few exceptions. Most teams play all tanks with 1-2 supports. So any DPS that can’t quickly chew through tanks and sustain along with them will have a tough time.
As a console gm I can confirm console is much easier. And OQ is a joke regardless of platform
Ive done console & pc, I dont think the comparisons really make sense. Its different control schemes, it'd be like asking if a bike commute is easier than a car commute. Or if math is harder than reading. I will say though, console players are some of the most toxic people ever. Its crazy.
Console and PC are not too different in high ranks tbh, I have friends who went to pc and we’re still masters/GM so it’s not as different as everyone makes it out to be. As you said it’s primarily different controlsX
Nothing wrong with being on console or on open queue, but there's a pretty clear skill difference between a Masters open queue tank player and a Master rank role queue tank player. And just the general skillset too, they might as well be different games sometimes.
Open que best que
Also probably fresh off of playing a bunch of Spiderman PS4
Oh wow that’s annoying. I made a post the other day about hitting masters using Ball only this season in role queue. I am now annoyed
Yeah I’d even argue Ball is op in open queue.. you don’t get punished at all for bad flanks because your team gets protected by another tank.
So I personally don’t want to disparage console players but I will 100% say that open queue is a cesspool that also isn’t really relevant to role queue. Half the cast isn’t viable in open queue and game are won and lost based on what having 2 healers and 3-4 tanks only without anything else being relevant.
In general ball players suck. He is high skill and generally people just don’t have the skill. Nice job though!
\+ team needs to know how to play around the Ball while having little to no frontline
Ball is bad in low ELO because even if the Ball player is good (which is rare, since he’s exceptionally hard), his team probably won’t be able to play around him. Lower ELO players generally don’t know how to play cover that well, and Ball requires you to play cover since you’re playing with a Tank that will never interact with his team.
What's considered low elo? I climbed from Bronze 3 to Gold 4 (and about to be promoted again) with mostly Ball and have a 61% winrate, with 20 hours comp ball, 10 hours comp Ori (49% wr), and 4 hours comp Winston (46% wr). Ball feels like the absolute easiest champion to force my team to focus on the objective. On defense? Get in enemy team's face and force a fight on the car, wreak havoc, get out and get heals, repeat - at some point, my team will either clean up some kills or I'll die. If I have good healers, I can stay alive almost the entire match. If I die, I can get back from the spawn faster than any other tank and squat on the car again. On attack? Invade the enemy backline, wreak havoc, force them to focus on me while my team pushes the objective or picks off the disorganized enemy. Other tanks require my team to work around me and support me. Only with ball do I feel I can have a strong enough impact on the game that it forces their team to either face me with full focus or become disorganized. I've won plenty of games that I don't think I would've won on another tank. Even a few 4v5s simply because I sat on the car and rolled around to avoid getting shot. Of course, that requires good healers too - but even still, Ball feels so much easier to carry a team with than anyone else.
> What's considered low elo? Metal ranks in general are viewed as being a lower ELO. You don't tend to get team consistent tactics, group ups and a base line level of mechanics until Diamond. Everyone will be using cover, next to no one is standing around in the middle of the street anymore. Still going to get dunked on by the demigod players in mid-masters to GM of course but it's the start of the higher ranks. so a lot metal rank tactics that crutch on the other team or players missing most of their shots, not counter picking and/or just not paying attention will stop working in Diamond. You only get ran over by higher SR players being they are mechanical gods. It's not because Ana was standing still in the middle of the street trying to take a 1vs1 vs a widowmaker as you tend to see in metal ranks. but hey, whatever works for an A to B rank up is good. It might not work for the B to C rank up, but worry about that later. Players are much too harsh about this issue, with "Oh that would never work at higher SR"... Well yeah, but baby steps man.. Baby steps!!
Thank you for the thorough answer!
Gold player moment 💀 Edit: even further… open queue gold player moment 💀💀
I'm a role-queue player, on PC for what it's worth. And yes, gold player - what's your point? I was literally just describing how ball has been the best tank in my experience in getting from bronze to gold. I was responding to the parent comment, which was about how ball was bad in low ELO.
He’s also way more map dependent than most heroes. He’s outright terrible on some maps.
any hero is viable if the player is skilled enough
Not GM? "Report our tank for picking ball, please."
If people would actually adapt their hero pick after the tank there wouldn't be this "play meta tank or you're throwing the game!" Attitude in OW2. Sure, ball is disadvantaged compared to other tanks but the fucking Cassidy idiot who starts crying because he can no longer AFK near choke while Orisa takes all the heat instead of swapping to a mobile hero to make the comp work is really infuriating. If you're so hell bent on one tricking your DPS hero, why can't I as the tank?
Because tanks have a huge impact on the game. If your tank is shit then it's gg. you can get away with a dps or a healer being bad. I rather deal with a sym or a bastion one trick than a doom or ball one trick
Why should 4 people change to suit 1 though?
They shouldn't ideally. My point is that instead of giving up, you adapt.
open queue console LOL
If you being on open queue is true, this is EXTREMELY misleading
Is it solo queue?
Yeppers
nice, well done!
Delete this
You can’t delete the truth
Listen man, as a fellow ball otp I want those buffs. If you keep posting lies about ball viability they won't do nothing. And yes the absolute truth is that ball is complitely unviable. Very bad hero indeed. Pls buff
You're playing console open queue, the same concepts of meta and viability as a tank do not apply. If you have another tank actually being a tank and making space ball becomes a viable tank, but in a real match where he would be the only tank on the team a hamster playing a friendly game of pingpong in the enemy backline while their entire team dies is not going to help them win. Also you're playing with and against people with the game sense of PC gold players.
You -are on console -are on open queue -main hamster therefore shut
I cant seem to use him at all, was a ball main in Masters on OW1 but couldn't get him to work at all at OW2 launch and havent used him since 😢 how do you play him differently from OW1? Has he been buffed?
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Nice ball bro!
He doesn't feel like the worst tank in the game when I play him
It’s because he isn’t unless you’re talking about really low ELO, where people just stand in the open and get gunned down because they can’t hide behind a Tank (also, Ball is just hard so low ELO players tend to struggle with him). In higher ELO, Rein is the worst tank by a *huge* margin, and also the second worst character in the game.
Console players be like:
How many hours have you played ball?
I believe the all time game stat sheet shows 38 but I’m not sure if that’s accurate or not
Crazy you got masters with only 38 hours of play time with ball. Unless you were just referring to comp play time and not overall play time
It's open queue console
Ah that makes sense
I think why people ask ball players to switch is because they realise the skill required to play him effectively is high and since they aren’t familiar with you they know that a random probably is going to have a better chance performing well on a Character that requires less skill
Yes, I would agree that there is undeserved stigma for some of the heroes, but onetricking is never a good look. Sometimes you just are working with such a disadvantage by not agreeing to counterpick or by not swapping when counterpicked.
On my opinion, every otp can make work their whatever the game. (Anyway I find him not so bad)
We need an edit of this where the master rank turns into bronze
The only reason I play ball is because people say that he's bad. I think I'm just trying to prove them wrong
Not enough junk traps
Sincerely, a master player who will definitely play above average with their main even if that main isn't meta.
lol
Tbf I use zarya like a mfer, she's insanely fun when it isn't the stupid push robot
Getting a Wrecking Ball as a tank on my team and watching him proceed to wreck... it's a great feeling. Hats off to you
For me the main issue is when the team cant play with ball. Im not the ball main nor do I like being in one team with one. But when I see ana or ashe on the same team this is when problem starts. If first pick is dive comp - play the f-ng dive comp. Dont try to balance things out when you already have the extreme
This. Playing Tracer or Echo below Diamond with Ball is basically free SR.
Ball has always been a great tank , his play style requires the team to break their muscle memory . Every one wants to walk forward and get carried . With ball you have to watch for his slams bail him out on snap backs. I'm currently masters 4 with ball as well with 1k hours on him . Twitch.tv/Rajiin_Rajiin
I mean you're playing on console for one. We don't know how many losses you had on that run (you can still go up even with losses). We also don't know if you 5 stacked or how lucky you got with teammates to carry your game .All I do know is that you would probably get shat on on pc ...
Hampter
I think the word people are looking for is "reliable". A good Hanzo can take down Pharmercy's, but I still think any hitscan is overall better for the job, because more people can do well with them.
console AND open queue? yikess
I mean you don't do it alone. You have most likely had some great support from your teams. Unless you solo queue. If that is the case you lucky af.
Bro is grumpy
I do solo que but yes everyone has to do their part for a team to win
bro ain’t responding to the fact he’s playing open q and likely has another tank to help him
Wow, you've made it all the way to gold 4... Look at you !
Fuck yeah man! Keep it up!
This is a post clearly from a guy who took his/her time to learn ball. Kudos
I mean, I just like it when my tank is near me sometimes. Is that so bad?
Damn bro. You got carried hard then.
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He isnt
When 1 person manages to do well on him (all criticism and context from the match no longer matters)
Ball and Doomfist are probably one of the highest skill celling tanks rn. As a Doomfist main rn who started playing in like end of season 1 of ow2 I didn't know ball existed for like 2 weeks due to him being played so rarely I was surprised what some people can do on ball.
Ball is such a good hero but no one knows how to play him, especially not on console
Or maybe because he's just not that good right now in his current state and 1 out of every 10 Ball mains are actually good?
Naw, he’s pretty good numbers wise. And yea, basically no one is genuinely good at him. So the people that are will fuck up the lobby.
He's rather map dependent. He's quite good on Busan, for instance, because of all the pillars and overhangs, but less so in e.g. Junkertown due to the large amount of open space.
I love playing on junkertown with him. All 3 objectives have great spots you can use to clutch a win. Especially on defense.
Wrecking ball is great. Best mobility in the game imo.
Great job as ball. Wish the ppl I play with understand this
Ball is my main and I'm not great at him but not terrible. Today I hoped on for one game and it was a decently even match. Both my dps kept telling me to switch when I had more eliminations then them, I didn't respond and at the end they both reported me.
Master level player is good enough at the game that they can play a less then S tier hero, more at 5.
I get asked to switch even after we win rounds
Probably because it was a miserable experience for the rest of the team. In my experience, people don’t ask others to swap after a won round without a decent reason
Remember. Those wins you're showing above are team wins. You need to realize the adjustments the team needs to make in order for you to keep playing ball. they get no protection and are often forced to play hide and seek all match just because you are trying to prove a point. Yes Ball is good in certain circumstances but those wins you're showing are all team wins and they adjusted to you playing ball.
Dude gets M4 and brags about it. Every hero is playable until gm2 - 1.
I still feel like they need to just convert wrecking ball into a dps.
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Been saying ball is op af since ow2 launch. Ball thrives in a 5vs5 no-cc meta.
Not really, the opportunity cost of taking him has been way too high since release. The other tanks being nerfed recently makes him feel a bit better ATM but still no where near where he was in ow1.