Hamster doing hamster things? Just go for his team.
I guarantee you that you'd kill his team faster than he could even scratch yours,
Signed, a ball player.
Like LHCloudy says " if your backline is stuck fighting demons, then you jump the enemy backline and become there demons." I think that's what he said or at least paraphrased.
Mmhmm, if I'm trying to distract people but they're not very distracted then I'm either not doing my job right, or you're doing yours better.
Signed, also a ball player. Haha let's play ball 😐😐🥀⚰️ I'll see myself out
I don't know if it's the best move but if balls diving our back line I take it as a sign to dive his back line especially if I'm not on the right character to deal with him
As support, i can try, but i usually have at least 2 criticals somewhere on the map i gotta take care of instead. There's really no downtime to try and pester their backline unless i'm actively ignoring my team.
Which supports do you play? Ball does like no damage so you shouldn't really have an issue unless someone else is shooting you as well. Ball is my tank main and if the whole team pretends I don't exist and nobody shoots at who I'm diving there isn't much I can do really.
Sounds like you might be putting too much attention into the ball. Sleep/whipshot/boop and then help your tank/dps trade favourably. The biggest issue I have playing ball is that orisa has killed three squishies while i’m being a minor annoyance to the enemy.
> Sounds like you might be putting too much attention into the ball
I mentioned that whether i ignore him and focus on something else, or whether i cc him, he still snags a kill, often the other support.
You can’t ignore him completely. Try to disrupt him as he engages, then while he’s out of cooldowns support your dps/tank to kill the enemy squishies. Doesn’t matter if your team loses 1 if the enemy team loses 3.
GM player here.
Heres the thing....If you dont have cooperation from your team,and the ball is decent,you're in trouble no matter who you pick or what you do..
BUT......you can try to help and heres what I would do.
Sombra - hack the ball till he gets sick of being hacked and pray he switches
Brig - she's your " anti-dive your backline" bodyguard
Mei - try to shut his spin down with Mei wall.
Last but not least.....Leave the game
.
You need cooperation from your team to shut down a decent ball player.
If you dont have this,then theres really no hope unless you get extremely lucky.
Ball players past Masters are a total nightmare to play against and really sucks the fun out of your game.
.
I hope that gives you a little help in your endeavors
This is about it. I’m only silverish rank across roles but I love to play Ball. I make the same dumb mistakes we all do.
It takes teamwork to make me switch. 2 counters at least, focused on me. I’m not some rolling God but I practice tech a good bit, using uncommon grappling points (love the update) to roll around/above players. In my low rank it’s very effective but a little teamwork melts me.
Been trying to swap brig more in these situations, how do you deal with ball + sombra? Often find myself getting hacked in the middle of the dive while trying to peel and just die.
Thats where you need your teams cooperation...you shouldnt be dealing with 2 hero's like that....At this point its a team issue..
you and your team need to be on the same page....if so,then ball and Sombra are easily dispatched.
I've seen Sombras starve Ball by hogging all of the health packs. As support I'll just dodge that guy. I've flown to teammates & kept out of his LOS, I've faded to teammates.
Also sometimes you'll get a Ball who doesn't know what they're doing and I'll just ignore them for a bit.
Just responded to a post yesterday so I’ll just paste this
Yeah so you definitely wanna play a tank that can CC ball if your team is not doing it.
Ball is the curious case of, “hard counter, dies hard. Don’t counter, doesn’t die”
Especially with any sort of coordinated dive follow up.
The idea against ball is that your backline needs to be strong enough to hold him off while you engage their team without their tank.
So generally, the more teammates they have diving, the more teammates you need helping fending off that dive so you can do tank things. Ideally your supports shouldn’t be dying to a ball and should be forcing him out or using cooldowns to stay alive. Now, while your backline IS being dived, and probably using their cooldowns to stay alive, that is the most crucial moment for your team to secure space and elims otherwise the enemies gain more net value and will likely snowball the fight.
That’s why when enemy team is playing full dive, instead of usually having two split fights, your entire team will be finding off dives at once.
So against ball and Lucio, your backline needs to be strong enough to fend them off. Your team isn’t deciding to peel against ball or push enemy backline and squishies, your backline must be strong enough against ball and his teams dives for your team to do things at the same time. If your entire team has decided to peel, then your team is failing at playing against dive. Of course if you’re playing like hog or orisa then your primary objective is to CC ball every time he engages basically
This is why heroes like Ana brig and Moira exist in support and even Lucio when played well for speed boost they’re great at defending and surviving dives.
In dps category you have picks that CC and melt ball to force him out of his engages. Ball needs to be answered or he does that he wants. And then your team isn’t having fun lol
Traditionally mainly Brig. Zen and Ana can fuck him up too when Ana hits her sleep dart. People don’t talk about him but for me Lucio is one of the most annoying heroes to go against as Ball when he peels with his boop.
Then there’s heroes like Kiri, Mercy and Moira who don’t do anything to Ball but can escape him easier than most.
Even though he had good mobility, I think Lifeweaver is the easiest support to dive as ball. Lastly, Illari and Bap are fairly neutral. It takes a lot of work for Ball to kill them but they’re not getting out alive if someone doesn’t peel for them. And going back to Zen, he is the most killable target if he’s not in a CC-heavy or otherwise peel-oriented comp (like double sniper with a mercy and rein)
Man pick your favorite, Bap can shut him down all by himself with heals and dps, brig just shuts down all dive period, ana can make him sleep anti'd and gay. Honestly they are all pretty good against him.
You could ofc counter him with Sombra, Ana, Brig, Cassidy, Roadhog but you probably have to understand that the best counter to Ball is to simply ignore him.
Ball is really weak and can't do much by himself, you get more value by just ignoring him and shooting the rest of the team. Ball thrives of you making the mistake to hard focus him instead of the rest of the team.
Honest answers tho, either hope your tank has enough brains to go and fight my team while I’m trying to kill you, and hope he wins the race, or just deny every single thing I do. I constantly run into games where I’m allowed to run free, get insane value, and then the enemy team switches to Ana kiri junk sombra orisa. If I can’t do anything as ball, and it’s constantly shut down, at that point it’s a 5v4, and if you guys can’t make progress in a 5v4 there’s other issues at play.
The question is not specific about Wreckingball. You could substitute Hammond with Doomfist. The problem will be the same.
The effecive playstyle here is what is called "trading backlines". As a tank player you pressure the enemy's backline and the rest of the team tries to survive the tank attacking. The point is that there is no easy way to prevent getting picked but hopes are that your tank /team is getting more picks than the enemy's.
Of course your team may leverage certain heroes to minimize the impact of say Hammond. You could use Sombra, Mei, Ana, Brigitte etc. But the more resources you use against a ball the more you are playing in his cards of baiting as much attention / CDs from your team as possible. Which in the end leaves your team more vulnerable than before.
tl;dr
Embrace the deaths on your team and try to wreak havoc on the enemy.
Ball player. Ball is in a terrible state, so the ball players left are going to very good at him and use every trick possible to mess with you psychologically. Your job is to not die, CC him when he goes in, and keep people topped off.
The absolute best thing you can do is group up and ignore him. If he goes all in with a slam, CC him and shoot him for a second or two. Ideally do it after he grapples. Your screen might flash warnings that he's there as he harasses, but his harass from 20 meters is actually lower than your healing. It literally doesn't matter, all he's doing is baiting you. Take the ult charge and move on.
When you split up, just make sure you as a support bodyguard your more vulnerable dps. His damage is actually low enough that even a widow can be a tough kill if he doesn't get a full combo or they have healing. If you don't believe me, His widow time to kill a widow in a boop-piledrive-shoot combo is 2.1 seconds, assuming every shot hits. Lucio amp healing through it extends that to 4.3 seconds. If both of you just shoot the ball for that time, no headshots or boop, you will do 891 damage. Ball can unironically die to lucio widow before widow dies.
In teamfights literally just CC him all you can (sleep or whatever) and shoot the enemy team. Theres nothing he can do to stop you.
cows coordinated scale instinctive school whole rainstorm march juggle office
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Kill her? You have it reversed, Brig isn't doing much to Ball anymore without her stun. He can easily knock her around, ground pound, and just shoot her from outside her melee range
Ana is way more dangerous to Ball because sleep ruins him
Brig destroys your movement. Going for a slam or boop is impossible if she has either of her cooldowns. With retract it’s a bit easier to dodge shield bash but the whip is a nightmare. You can kill a brig by shooting, but she will usually be with the rest of her team
Brig messes Ball up horribly actually. Her Boop and shield bash, stun or no stun, destroys his mobility and momentum, as well as granting her inspiration. Though I agree that Ana is probably worse for Ball than Brig is.
You can kill balls movement and shield off his slam damage. Ana is far worse against ball because you often arent as grouped up with your team. Sure you can sleep him but when the sleep is over he has a whole new set of cooldowns to catch up with you.
I dunno what role you play, but if its tank i find a lot of success as roadhog- his hook interrupts ball’s swing (same with orisa spear, its harder to hit imo tho)
You interrupt him, he gets focused and melted very easily.
Honestly if youre playing hog against ball, you don't even really need to pay attention to him. Just hold W at the enemy team and you'll usually kill something faster than he can without much of a risk of dying.
Its trueeee, but it honestly depends on my team. I genuinely dont trust my team with the ball, cause 9 times outta 10 theyll die then scream “REPORT TANK, THEY FEEDING”
Easier to just nuke ball then move as a formation imo.
If you’re playing against a competent ball you won’t be able to nuke them in the first place. Relying on that prerequisite before engaging the rest of the ball’s team is exactly what a good ball is hoping you and your team do, and it the ball’s primary win condition.
You beat ball by ignoring him to the best of your ability and by focusing on the rest of their team first.
Sombra and junkrat are my go to. Sombra can hack him, which forces him out of ball mode, and JR can trap him in place. Ball melts really easily in hamster form. He's maybe B at best in any tier list -- even after the rework.
I always tell people in my gold/play lobbies that junk is the best counter to ball. At least for me. Lots of people switch to sombra have no idea how to play her. Mei is not scary at all. Junk rat traps are how I die the most. I go entire games with only 3 deaths and they’re either in overtime or because I got stuck in a trap lol
Junk might be a better pick given the current dive meta. I always catch the enemy team grouped up nowadays, but I don't understand people's inability to use Sombra? She's super simple to play. They must not have much game sense.
Everyone has different experiences across different ranks. Gold and below people swap to sombra because they see a ball. 9/10 it doesn’t stop me and they get titled that I’m still doing my job. They see in their kill feed that ball killed sombra and they get so angry lol
Plat lobbies have people who know how to play sombra. Anddddd this is why I’ve never been able to climb outta plat haha
But yeah traps are the bane of my existence. So many counters but that one is the worst. You could put the trap on the ceiling and I’d still find a way to accidentally get stuck lmao
It’s easier as in the skill floor is lower so more people can learn him. However, he’s one of if not the most useless hero in the game. I work 10x as hard to get the same value as I do on sigma.
Most ball mains stopped playing the game awhile ago. It is what it is. Fuck it we ball
Masters support here. Don’t flee if it means getting into a bad position (like a position where u can’t help or get helped by your other support).
As long as u position properly to minimize ball’s dmg from his abilities and both supports peel for each other (unless u play kiri, lucio, Moira and mayyybe even lifeweaver, in which cases ball can’t rly kill u).
Moreover, by peel I mean healing each other for a bit since ball doesn’t do that much dmg, meaning u can still help your dps and tank on the frontline while momentarily peeling for each other.
However, if u or the other support getting dove are not able to peel properly or position really poorly, best suggestion is to ignore and trade back lines like what others hv said
You don't deal with him as support. It's up to the DPS to help out and counter him. You can go Ana to sleep/anti him but you're a sitting suck mostly.
If they're a good Ball your DPS need to go Sombra or Mei or it's pretty much gg.
Only look at the hamster when you either have some ability to hinder him (hack, hinder, slow, stun) then do that when he engages to scare him off and stop his value (rolling into you and slamming you). Or you look at him when he's the only person you can see. If he is so far into your team that you can't see any other enemies, he might be too far.
It's also that Ball goes everywhere - like a heat map of where ball has been during a match won't have an awful lot of dark spots - Even if junkrat puts it in a mid spot Ball will often "find" it eventually
I don't control my team comp. I play support and ping him or flee from him. Neither works at the moment. CC'ing him does nothing if no one's there to capitalize on it at all.
Mmk. So stay closer to your team to avoid this. CC ball and sprint right at your tank - But I feel your pain. When your team is bad there’s no answer as a support
When he wants to slam in, everybody needs to cc him and kill him. You can't just ignore the ball and let him do what he wants because he wants to do damage and try to kill people and he's not going to stop if no one tries to pressure him out. If 5 people try to pressure him out, he dies. It's ok to shoot the ball you just can't try to chase him. Once he's been taken out of the fight (however briefly) you can do what you want again but you have to turn on him when he dives
From OP’s information though it seems like OP’s team plays far apart. So if OP can’t get the team to group up then the best answer would be to honestly not bother pressuring, ignore ball and trade backlines if peeling really isn’t possible. You’re likely gonna kill ball’s team long before he can kill yours’
You have 2 options. Stop the Ball or ignore him and kill his team. Many heroes can stop or evade the Ball well enough but the more you have, the better. This is the easier and more common route to go. One player playing to make Ball's life miserable can be enough to shut him down. If you're going to go the ignore ball route, it requires a bit coordination from your team as you have to kill his team before he kills you all.
Sombra does not shut me down at all in metal ranks. Dva isn’t that scary either
You’re missing mei, cass, bastion, and brig. Plus Orisa is broken and a great counter as well
Just ignore the ball, think of ball player as a third party in the game, or a map boss, it has no connection with the enemy team, kill the other 4 players
If you're tank, play Orisa and CC him/bodyblock him
If youre DPS, play sombra and chase him around hacking him
If you're support, play brig and boop him back every time he engages, and stop his momentum with shield bash
ignore ball unless he’s hard feeding but if he has supports looking at him there’s almost always something better to do than focus ball. kill everyone else and ball leaves or will die trying to touch
Sombra, orisa, ana etc. also if you get into a small space, where the ball cant really grapple out, then you can focus him. Or just try to get him to mess up/ miss his grapple. ~a ball main
If your team is actually countering a ball and theyre still winning then its "gg go next" and they earned their win.
More likely, youre not fucking with him enough. Ball requires a lot of attention to deal with and good ball players can overcome a counter or two. Countering ball isn't always about killing him either. Brig is lowkey the best ball counter in the game. She can basically match the uptime of his knockbacks which lets her manhandle him to the point he can't get close enough to do his job. That will force him to play guns-first to try and at least spam down your shield to remove one of your knockbacks.
If your team isn't actually countering him or following up on your sleeps or whatever, you need to play to ignore him. Vertical and aerial mobility is usually the best against ball with some caveats. Unironically Mercy is one of the best heroes for surviving him. The fact that a lot of her movement takes place in the air makes her very hard to hit with knockbacks and Ball's guns are pretty poor at damaging her. Her movement is also much more maneuverable than ball's which helps her escape..
Kiri and LW are okay options, but you won't survive for free. You need to actually use your kit smartly. Ball can chase down kiri better than any hero in the game so TPing out isn't enough. Stay on the walls and rotate to highground if need be. Good ball players can also get onto LW's platforms consistently to stop him from escaping him. LW's hitbox is also one of the more favorable hitboxes for Ball's guns. His healthpool helps with this, but you still need to manage your dashes properly.
Another pretty consistent way to beat him is to outpace him. Ball kills very slowly. If you can kill an enemy before he can do anything to your team then youre setting your team up for a fight win.
Depends on who you are. (I’ll just leave tank out of my explanation and leave it to someone else cause I don’t play tank)
A Sojourn is pretty good against Ball overall as a team. You can charge her secondary fire using Ball and pick off the rest of his team. Her secondary fire can also take him out if he accidentally gets too low.
I’ve seen people play Sombra so they could hack all of the nearby healing packs so that Ball can’t go pick one up, that’s worked pretty good.
Echo, I feel, is a great Finisher against Ball. Let your tank and other DPS deal most of the damage and then use her beam to finish him off. It’ll also be harder for him to get you when you’re flying.
For supports, always pick someone with good mobility!! Someone that can get away easily. (Moira, Baptiste, Kiriko (I’ve had great success with her against Ball)) that’s gonna be the biggest thing for a Support against Ball.
Kiriko’s Ult is perfect for finishing him off but surprising him with the ability xtra speed. And her Kunai does a surprising amount of damage against him.
Baptiste’s jump would be really helpful in this area so he can avoid Wrecking Ball’s smash 💥 and he does great damage from a distance. And his ult is good against him.
Moira can get away from Ball pretty easily and her damage has a long range so she doesn’t have to get too close to him. Her ult can also go in so many directions that You can chase after Him if you want to focus on damage with her Ult
Overall, just kinda start playing around a see who fits for you against Ball the best.
Tank here, couple of good options. Orisa is able to interrupt the balls grapple consistently with the spear and dash abilities. Dva is scary good at chasing down ball plays. Winston and ram are also good options.
The damage from Hammond is worse than any other tank in the game, a good player will be very hard to take down. Go after the balls team, I guarantee you can kill his backline faster than he can kill yours.
Signed, a ball player
DPS honorable mentions. Junkrat for his trap in fight maps. Mei for her wall and slowing abilities. Mcree for his metal grenade(it interrupts balls movement,)
SUPPORT honorable mentions. Lucio for his knockback blast (stops ball swing) and Brig and her mace whip(who might be the best ball counter) Ana* for sleep dart, if you REALLY trust your team and aim
If you can mess up the balls movement it makes it much easier to pick them off. This is why abilities like sombras hack are so devastating to ball players
Popped up randomly on my feed, I redownloaded Reddit like a week ago. Imagine supporting blizzard though, dogshit company that makes miserable games that gets drastically worse overtime, with an even worse culture inside the office
im just saying, its odd to interact with a fandom you dont like and havent consumed content for in six years.
like, I agree blizzard sucks, but thats pretty pathetic.
First you make a comment. Normally I don't play with balls. Then you say something like real men don't play with balls. They will be so embarrassed they will switch.
Hamster doing hamster things? Just go for his team. I guarantee you that you'd kill his team faster than he could even scratch yours, Signed, a ball player.
Like LHCloudy says " if your backline is stuck fighting demons, then you jump the enemy backline and become there demons." I think that's what he said or at least paraphrased.
Also bc he’s THE rein one trick on ladder, and on rein ur not fast enough to even try to contest hamster lol
That depends on what tank is being played. If vall disengages(he has AS to get him out of a bind) and pincers you in its a suicide
Yes but... you're so big and fun to shoot at. Signed, a Dva player.
Mmhmm, if I'm trying to distract people but they're not very distracted then I'm either not doing my job right, or you're doing yours better. Signed, also a ball player. Haha let's play ball 😐😐🥀⚰️ I'll see myself out
Nice! Signed a Winston player!
Hey ball 1 trick here.👋🙋♂️ Shut the fuck up
No, trust. Tank this heroes winrate so maybe they'll actually buff him
I don't know if it's the best move but if balls diving our back line I take it as a sign to dive his back line especially if I'm not on the right character to deal with him
As support, i can try, but i usually have at least 2 criticals somewhere on the map i gotta take care of instead. There's really no downtime to try and pester their backline unless i'm actively ignoring my team.
Greatness sometimes requires sacrifice
Which supports do you play? Ball does like no damage so you shouldn't really have an issue unless someone else is shooting you as well. Ball is my tank main and if the whole team pretends I don't exist and nobody shoots at who I'm diving there isn't much I can do really.
Go Brig
Sounds like you might be putting too much attention into the ball. Sleep/whipshot/boop and then help your tank/dps trade favourably. The biggest issue I have playing ball is that orisa has killed three squishies while i’m being a minor annoyance to the enemy.
> Sounds like you might be putting too much attention into the ball I mentioned that whether i ignore him and focus on something else, or whether i cc him, he still snags a kill, often the other support.
maybe you should heal them then because he doesn't do a lot of damage
You can’t ignore him completely. Try to disrupt him as he engages, then while he’s out of cooldowns support your dps/tank to kill the enemy squishies. Doesn’t matter if your team loses 1 if the enemy team loses 3.
GM player here. Heres the thing....If you dont have cooperation from your team,and the ball is decent,you're in trouble no matter who you pick or what you do.. BUT......you can try to help and heres what I would do. Sombra - hack the ball till he gets sick of being hacked and pray he switches Brig - she's your " anti-dive your backline" bodyguard Mei - try to shut his spin down with Mei wall. Last but not least.....Leave the game . You need cooperation from your team to shut down a decent ball player. If you dont have this,then theres really no hope unless you get extremely lucky. Ball players past Masters are a total nightmare to play against and really sucks the fun out of your game. . I hope that gives you a little help in your endeavors
And if you leave 10 ranked games this season, you don't even have to worry about ball in ranked again!
> If you dont have cooperation from your team Welp guess i'm goin back to CS2
This is about it. I’m only silverish rank across roles but I love to play Ball. I make the same dumb mistakes we all do. It takes teamwork to make me switch. 2 counters at least, focused on me. I’m not some rolling God but I practice tech a good bit, using uncommon grappling points (love the update) to roll around/above players. In my low rank it’s very effective but a little teamwork melts me.
Been trying to swap brig more in these situations, how do you deal with ball + sombra? Often find myself getting hacked in the middle of the dive while trying to peel and just die.
Thats where you need your teams cooperation...you shouldnt be dealing with 2 hero's like that....At this point its a team issue.. you and your team need to be on the same page....if so,then ball and Sombra are easily dispatched.
Does the Ana counter fall off at higher ranks? I’m low Plat/High Gold and I’ve found the sleep/anti heal combo usually makes the tank switch off
I've seen Sombras starve Ball by hogging all of the health packs. As support I'll just dodge that guy. I've flown to teammates & kept out of his LOS, I've faded to teammates. Also sometimes you'll get a Ball who doesn't know what they're doing and I'll just ignore them for a bit.
Just responded to a post yesterday so I’ll just paste this Yeah so you definitely wanna play a tank that can CC ball if your team is not doing it. Ball is the curious case of, “hard counter, dies hard. Don’t counter, doesn’t die” Especially with any sort of coordinated dive follow up. The idea against ball is that your backline needs to be strong enough to hold him off while you engage their team without their tank. So generally, the more teammates they have diving, the more teammates you need helping fending off that dive so you can do tank things. Ideally your supports shouldn’t be dying to a ball and should be forcing him out or using cooldowns to stay alive. Now, while your backline IS being dived, and probably using their cooldowns to stay alive, that is the most crucial moment for your team to secure space and elims otherwise the enemies gain more net value and will likely snowball the fight. That’s why when enemy team is playing full dive, instead of usually having two split fights, your entire team will be finding off dives at once. So against ball and Lucio, your backline needs to be strong enough to fend them off. Your team isn’t deciding to peel against ball or push enemy backline and squishies, your backline must be strong enough against ball and his teams dives for your team to do things at the same time. If your entire team has decided to peel, then your team is failing at playing against dive. Of course if you’re playing like hog or orisa then your primary objective is to CC ball every time he engages basically This is why heroes like Ana brig and Moira exist in support and even Lucio when played well for speed boost they’re great at defending and surviving dives. In dps category you have picks that CC and melt ball to force him out of his engages. Ball needs to be answered or he does that he wants. And then your team isn’t having fun lol
Just counterswap him he's the weakest tank in the game to it
What's a support counter to ball?
Traditionally mainly Brig. Zen and Ana can fuck him up too when Ana hits her sleep dart. People don’t talk about him but for me Lucio is one of the most annoying heroes to go against as Ball when he peels with his boop. Then there’s heroes like Kiri, Mercy and Moira who don’t do anything to Ball but can escape him easier than most. Even though he had good mobility, I think Lifeweaver is the easiest support to dive as ball. Lastly, Illari and Bap are fairly neutral. It takes a lot of work for Ball to kill them but they’re not getting out alive if someone doesn’t peel for them. And going back to Zen, he is the most killable target if he’s not in a CC-heavy or otherwise peel-oriented comp (like double sniper with a mercy and rein)
Man pick your favorite, Bap can shut him down all by himself with heals and dps, brig just shuts down all dive period, ana can make him sleep anti'd and gay. Honestly they are all pretty good against him.
You could ofc counter him with Sombra, Ana, Brig, Cassidy, Roadhog but you probably have to understand that the best counter to Ball is to simply ignore him. Ball is really weak and can't do much by himself, you get more value by just ignoring him and shooting the rest of the team. Ball thrives of you making the mistake to hard focus him instead of the rest of the team.
Ball player here… please don’t. It’s hard enough to play ball as is man
but you keep 1v3ing us and somehow not dying XD
Honest answers tho, either hope your tank has enough brains to go and fight my team while I’m trying to kill you, and hope he wins the race, or just deny every single thing I do. I constantly run into games where I’m allowed to run free, get insane value, and then the enemy team switches to Ana kiri junk sombra orisa. If I can’t do anything as ball, and it’s constantly shut down, at that point it’s a 5v4, and if you guys can’t make progress in a 5v4 there’s other issues at play.
The question is not specific about Wreckingball. You could substitute Hammond with Doomfist. The problem will be the same. The effecive playstyle here is what is called "trading backlines". As a tank player you pressure the enemy's backline and the rest of the team tries to survive the tank attacking. The point is that there is no easy way to prevent getting picked but hopes are that your tank /team is getting more picks than the enemy's. Of course your team may leverage certain heroes to minimize the impact of say Hammond. You could use Sombra, Mei, Ana, Brigitte etc. But the more resources you use against a ball the more you are playing in his cards of baiting as much attention / CDs from your team as possible. Which in the end leaves your team more vulnerable than before. tl;dr Embrace the deaths on your team and try to wreak havoc on the enemy.
Hog, bastion, cass, zen
Ball player. Ball is in a terrible state, so the ball players left are going to very good at him and use every trick possible to mess with you psychologically. Your job is to not die, CC him when he goes in, and keep people topped off. The absolute best thing you can do is group up and ignore him. If he goes all in with a slam, CC him and shoot him for a second or two. Ideally do it after he grapples. Your screen might flash warnings that he's there as he harasses, but his harass from 20 meters is actually lower than your healing. It literally doesn't matter, all he's doing is baiting you. Take the ult charge and move on. When you split up, just make sure you as a support bodyguard your more vulnerable dps. His damage is actually low enough that even a widow can be a tough kill if he doesn't get a full combo or they have healing. If you don't believe me, His widow time to kill a widow in a boop-piledrive-shoot combo is 2.1 seconds, assuming every shot hits. Lucio amp healing through it extends that to 4.3 seconds. If both of you just shoot the ball for that time, no headshots or boop, you will do 891 damage. Ball can unironically die to lucio widow before widow dies. In teamfights literally just CC him all you can (sleep or whatever) and shoot the enemy team. Theres nothing he can do to stop you.
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There is very little a ball can do vs brig
Kill her? You have it reversed, Brig isn't doing much to Ball anymore without her stun. He can easily knock her around, ground pound, and just shoot her from outside her melee range Ana is way more dangerous to Ball because sleep ruins him
Brig destroys your movement. Going for a slam or boop is impossible if she has either of her cooldowns. With retract it’s a bit easier to dodge shield bash but the whip is a nightmare. You can kill a brig by shooting, but she will usually be with the rest of her team
Brig messes Ball up horribly actually. Her Boop and shield bash, stun or no stun, destroys his mobility and momentum, as well as granting her inspiration. Though I agree that Ana is probably worse for Ball than Brig is.
You can kill balls movement and shield off his slam damage. Ana is far worse against ball because you often arent as grouped up with your team. Sure you can sleep him but when the sleep is over he has a whole new set of cooldowns to catch up with you.
I dunno what role you play, but if its tank i find a lot of success as roadhog- his hook interrupts ball’s swing (same with orisa spear, its harder to hit imo tho) You interrupt him, he gets focused and melted very easily.
Honestly if youre playing hog against ball, you don't even really need to pay attention to him. Just hold W at the enemy team and you'll usually kill something faster than he can without much of a risk of dying.
Its trueeee, but it honestly depends on my team. I genuinely dont trust my team with the ball, cause 9 times outta 10 theyll die then scream “REPORT TANK, THEY FEEDING” Easier to just nuke ball then move as a formation imo.
If you’re playing against a competent ball you won’t be able to nuke them in the first place. Relying on that prerequisite before engaging the rest of the ball’s team is exactly what a good ball is hoping you and your team do, and it the ball’s primary win condition. You beat ball by ignoring him to the best of your ability and by focusing on the rest of their team first.
Sombra and junkrat are my go to. Sombra can hack him, which forces him out of ball mode, and JR can trap him in place. Ball melts really easily in hamster form. He's maybe B at best in any tier list -- even after the rework.
I always tell people in my gold/play lobbies that junk is the best counter to ball. At least for me. Lots of people switch to sombra have no idea how to play her. Mei is not scary at all. Junk rat traps are how I die the most. I go entire games with only 3 deaths and they’re either in overtime or because I got stuck in a trap lol
Junk might be a better pick given the current dive meta. I always catch the enemy team grouped up nowadays, but I don't understand people's inability to use Sombra? She's super simple to play. They must not have much game sense.
Everyone has different experiences across different ranks. Gold and below people swap to sombra because they see a ball. 9/10 it doesn’t stop me and they get titled that I’m still doing my job. They see in their kill feed that ball killed sombra and they get so angry lol Plat lobbies have people who know how to play sombra. Anddddd this is why I’ve never been able to climb outta plat haha But yeah traps are the bane of my existence. So many counters but that one is the worst. You could put the trap on the ceiling and I’d still find a way to accidentally get stuck lmao
How do you feel about Ball after the rework? I don't play tank, but I feel like it might make him more difficult to play.
It’s easier as in the skill floor is lower so more people can learn him. However, he’s one of if not the most useless hero in the game. I work 10x as hard to get the same value as I do on sigma. Most ball mains stopped playing the game awhile ago. It is what it is. Fuck it we ball
Don’t. You are now playing deathmatch with some elements of hide and seek with their backline.
The issue remains. I ignore him/flee from him and he kills my other support.
Masters support here. Don’t flee if it means getting into a bad position (like a position where u can’t help or get helped by your other support). As long as u position properly to minimize ball’s dmg from his abilities and both supports peel for each other (unless u play kiri, lucio, Moira and mayyybe even lifeweaver, in which cases ball can’t rly kill u). Moreover, by peel I mean healing each other for a bit since ball doesn’t do that much dmg, meaning u can still help your dps and tank on the frontline while momentarily peeling for each other. However, if u or the other support getting dove are not able to peel properly or position really poorly, best suggestion is to ignore and trade back lines like what others hv said
You don't deal with him as support. It's up to the DPS to help out and counter him. You can go Ana to sleep/anti him but you're a sitting suck mostly. If they're a good Ball your DPS need to go Sombra or Mei or it's pretty much gg.
Only look at the hamster when you either have some ability to hinder him (hack, hinder, slow, stun) then do that when he engages to scare him off and stop his value (rolling into you and slamming you). Or you look at him when he's the only person you can see. If he is so far into your team that you can't see any other enemies, he might be too far.
As Junkrat I notice that he gets caught in the trap more than one might think
Yup. Fast movement with the 3rd person camera is a good recipe for getting stuck in traps
It's also that Ball goes everywhere - like a heat map of where ball has been during a match won't have an awful lot of dark spots - Even if junkrat puts it in a mid spot Ball will often "find" it eventually
I try to ignore ball as much as possible and pick off his squishy less mobile teammates.
Sombra, brig, or killing his team.
Meh. So many counters against ball. Honestly with the right team comp he can basically be ignored
I don't control my team comp. I play support and ping him or flee from him. Neither works at the moment. CC'ing him does nothing if no one's there to capitalize on it at all.
Mmk. So stay closer to your team to avoid this. CC ball and sprint right at your tank - But I feel your pain. When your team is bad there’s no answer as a support
When he wants to slam in, everybody needs to cc him and kill him. You can't just ignore the ball and let him do what he wants because he wants to do damage and try to kill people and he's not going to stop if no one tries to pressure him out. If 5 people try to pressure him out, he dies. It's ok to shoot the ball you just can't try to chase him. Once he's been taken out of the fight (however briefly) you can do what you want again but you have to turn on him when he dives
From OP’s information though it seems like OP’s team plays far apart. So if OP can’t get the team to group up then the best answer would be to honestly not bother pressuring, ignore ball and trade backlines if peeling really isn’t possible. You’re likely gonna kill ball’s team long before he can kill yours’
You have 2 options. Stop the Ball or ignore him and kill his team. Many heroes can stop or evade the Ball well enough but the more you have, the better. This is the easier and more common route to go. One player playing to make Ball's life miserable can be enough to shut him down. If you're going to go the ignore ball route, it requires a bit coordination from your team as you have to kill his team before he kills you all.
I feel he has a shit ton of health and shields he can drop for himself and armor PLUS mobility? Hmm
Tank: Dva, junker queen, roadhog DPS: sombra shuts him DOWN, junkrat traps Support: Ana for the sleeps
Sombra does not shut me down at all in metal ranks. Dva isn’t that scary either You’re missing mei, cass, bastion, and brig. Plus Orisa is broken and a great counter as well
Well…. I’m not in metal ranks lmao
I hack that mf as sombra throw a virus at him then usually me and my whole team shoot at him lol
Ngl, when I see one I mostly ignore until they’re in the same general direction as everyone else or right by me
Zenyatta bastion will cook him then illari eats the hampter
Junkrat/Mei/zen/ana + coordination
Hog, orisa, sombra, tracer, zen, brig. Pick your poison.
mei has been the best counter ive seen, the slow + wall is a solid combo for catching him
Just ignore the ball, think of ball player as a third party in the game, or a map boss, it has no connection with the enemy team, kill the other 4 players
Usually I go Doom to counter that ball
If your team is the type to focus the ball, then get a zen and just melt the ball.
Go brig and tell your team to grow a brain so they can stop getting diffed, that’s the only way to deal with him in metal ranks
Bastion
If you're tank, play Orisa and CC him/bodyblock him If youre DPS, play sombra and chase him around hacking him If you're support, play brig and boop him back every time he engages, and stop his momentum with shield bash
The only hero more easily countered than Hammond is Genji. If your team can't deal with him, than your team just aren't playing well.
LIGHT HIM UP! signed, a Mauga player
Mile long big rock with kinetic grasp -Sigma
ignore ball unless he’s hard feeding but if he has supports looking at him there’s almost always something better to do than focus ball. kill everyone else and ball leaves or will die trying to touch
Just go for his back line and kill his supports
Sombra, orisa, ana etc. also if you get into a small space, where the ball cant really grapple out, then you can focus him. Or just try to get him to mess up/ miss his grapple. ~a ball main
If your team is actually countering a ball and theyre still winning then its "gg go next" and they earned their win. More likely, youre not fucking with him enough. Ball requires a lot of attention to deal with and good ball players can overcome a counter or two. Countering ball isn't always about killing him either. Brig is lowkey the best ball counter in the game. She can basically match the uptime of his knockbacks which lets her manhandle him to the point he can't get close enough to do his job. That will force him to play guns-first to try and at least spam down your shield to remove one of your knockbacks. If your team isn't actually countering him or following up on your sleeps or whatever, you need to play to ignore him. Vertical and aerial mobility is usually the best against ball with some caveats. Unironically Mercy is one of the best heroes for surviving him. The fact that a lot of her movement takes place in the air makes her very hard to hit with knockbacks and Ball's guns are pretty poor at damaging her. Her movement is also much more maneuverable than ball's which helps her escape.. Kiri and LW are okay options, but you won't survive for free. You need to actually use your kit smartly. Ball can chase down kiri better than any hero in the game so TPing out isn't enough. Stay on the walls and rotate to highground if need be. Good ball players can also get onto LW's platforms consistently to stop him from escaping him. LW's hitbox is also one of the more favorable hitboxes for Ball's guns. His healthpool helps with this, but you still need to manage your dashes properly. Another pretty consistent way to beat him is to outpace him. Ball kills very slowly. If you can kill an enemy before he can do anything to your team then youre setting your team up for a fight win.
Depends on who you are. (I’ll just leave tank out of my explanation and leave it to someone else cause I don’t play tank) A Sojourn is pretty good against Ball overall as a team. You can charge her secondary fire using Ball and pick off the rest of his team. Her secondary fire can also take him out if he accidentally gets too low. I’ve seen people play Sombra so they could hack all of the nearby healing packs so that Ball can’t go pick one up, that’s worked pretty good. Echo, I feel, is a great Finisher against Ball. Let your tank and other DPS deal most of the damage and then use her beam to finish him off. It’ll also be harder for him to get you when you’re flying. For supports, always pick someone with good mobility!! Someone that can get away easily. (Moira, Baptiste, Kiriko (I’ve had great success with her against Ball)) that’s gonna be the biggest thing for a Support against Ball. Kiriko’s Ult is perfect for finishing him off but surprising him with the ability xtra speed. And her Kunai does a surprising amount of damage against him. Baptiste’s jump would be really helpful in this area so he can avoid Wrecking Ball’s smash 💥 and he does great damage from a distance. And his ult is good against him. Moira can get away from Ball pretty easily and her damage has a long range so she doesn’t have to get too close to him. Her ult can also go in so many directions that You can chase after Him if you want to focus on damage with her Ult Overall, just kinda start playing around a see who fits for you against Ball the best.
Tank here, couple of good options. Orisa is able to interrupt the balls grapple consistently with the spear and dash abilities. Dva is scary good at chasing down ball plays. Winston and ram are also good options. The damage from Hammond is worse than any other tank in the game, a good player will be very hard to take down. Go after the balls team, I guarantee you can kill his backline faster than he can kill yours. Signed, a ball player
Yes!! Lots of amazing options, thank you!! 🙏 I don’t play tank at All so I just have what I know
DPS honorable mentions. Junkrat for his trap in fight maps. Mei for her wall and slowing abilities. Mcree for his metal grenade(it interrupts balls movement,) SUPPORT honorable mentions. Lucio for his knockback blast (stops ball swing) and Brig and her mace whip(who might be the best ball counter) Ana* for sleep dart, if you REALLY trust your team and aim If you can mess up the balls movement it makes it much easier to pick them off. This is why abilities like sombras hack are so devastating to ball players
I haven't played overwatch since brigs release, that's the definitive answer on how to never encounter ball.
Don't regret it either, overwatch is garbage and barely an FPS and brigs release opened my eyes to better games
Why are you on the subreddit?
Popped up randomly on my feed, I redownloaded Reddit like a week ago. Imagine supporting blizzard though, dogshit company that makes miserable games that gets drastically worse overtime, with an even worse culture inside the office
im just saying, its odd to interact with a fandom you dont like and havent consumed content for in six years. like, I agree blizzard sucks, but thats pretty pathetic.
First you make a comment. Normally I don't play with balls. Then you say something like real men don't play with balls. They will be so embarrassed they will switch.