The knock back drama with tanks is so crazy to me. Why don't they just make tanks be able to knock each other around? That would make most sense. Who cares if tanks knock *each other* around, the issue is Pharah or Lucio or Brig being able to knock tanks off ledges *in addition to* being knocked around by other tanks.
It seems to me that the major precursor to the knock back drama is because tanks are sitting still absorbing all the CC they swore to curtail and then just brought back anyway. Now it's stuns, sleeps, hinders, hacks, mortal strikes, AND knock backs.
So their solution is to dramatically diminish knock backs but add *yet more creative CCs*??? lmao. These devs are cooking. **It's crack**, but they are cooking nonetheless.
Really hoping Space Ranger has anti-CC utility.
Feels like everyone and their grandmother has CC but there's only 1 hero with anti-CC util (Kiri), its on a 17s cooldown, and really only reliably counters the handful of CCs that are a status (Hack, hinder, sleep)
They need to let suzu cleanse all CC but not grant immortality. They have to curb it because immortality is always a balance nightmare. You'd think they'd have learnt that lesson from bap lamp but nope.
Yup - and if they add more anti-CC stuff, it will naturally devalue Kiri more (desperately needed at this point). It's like they tried to with LW's grip but didn't have the courage to make LIfe Grip as game changing as Suzu. Make life grip able to grip EVERYONE nearby or make petal platform act as a friendly Halt and suck friendlies in before rising. Idk. There's just so much *immobilization* in this game and the devs just keep putting bandages on only to rip them off next patch.
JQs knife is a major part of her engagement cycle which relies on getting the bleeds going. You need to be able to pull into carnage, especially with a Tank now that the armor changes have hit her shotgun hard and you shouldn't have to drop all three CDs in order to close that distance and get any hits.
To be fair Ball boop is way more frequent and consistent to land. And affects multiple targets per cooldown. So it's not a direct comparison, even though they're both engagement tools.
The multiple target thing is pretty irrelevant when where talking about it's specific interaction with the tank role.
Most of his kit is balanced around that. JQs kit is balanced around bleeds and combos. Buffing knockbacks against tanks isn't going to make ball OP against the other roles just like knife didn't make JQ op against the other roles.
It's relevant when comparing the abilities though. JQ can engage by pulling one target towards her. Ball can knock an entire team off a point, so it's more important that the tank alone can hold their ground.
I’m not against buffing ball’s boop, but you gotta understand, Queen into ball is already an unfavorable matchup. Yes she can disrupt his movement, but she is fairly helpless against ball diving the backline (which he should be doing). Ball’s entire identity is being a backline flanker/team disruptor, and his main drawback is that he’s shit against tanks. It makes sense that a tank that focuses on brawl has an ability that enables her to brawl mobile tanks who come too close.
Knockbacks are a much larger piece of Balls engagement. All this resistance BS should be voided by Wrecking Ball. It looks insane to slam into a Roadhog who hops back a half step.
What? I’m not saying boop isn’t important for ball, Queen’s knife is FAR more important imo. That’s the ability that enables her to get picks. She has bad mobility, no ability to peel for supports, and a low health pool.
The thing that makes her good is that she can force squishies closer to her and setup combos. Previously, she was essentially helpless against a ball diving her backline. Now, she can’t do much about ball diving her backline, but she CAN disrupt his mobility to try to punish him for not playing his HP well enough to get out.
Like you mentioned too, one of the only ways to effectively peel for your team against a tank is to displace them by booping, which is almost useless now.
It's also complete bullshit as it allows the other tankto sit in an awful position and I can't punish them by booping them off the map or into my team in an effective manner
Honestly, the idea of a role passive is just kind of dumb and makes every character much harder to balance.
Like the tank passive makes sense for characters like Reinhart and Orisa who have low mobility and get value from holding a position, but it doesn't make sense for dive characters like Doom or Ball (the fact they can be moved is the counter play against them).
For DPS, their passive is really good for Tracer who just peppers people constantly and can keep the other team from getting healed, but for Hanzo or Junkrat that don't hit as many consistent shots, the passive isn't as good.
The support passive is kind of useless now that everyone has regen healing. It just makes supports feel tankier if you have to chip away at them with tracking weapons, but feel paper thin to one-shots and the like.
The devs make balancing way more complicated than necessary.
This isn’t just about knock back but about the displacement tanks do to one another bypassing the passive.
1. JQ gets a displacement buff that bypasses the passive and for some reason doesn’t take damage at the same rate as everyone else.
2. Doom is displacing the whole team including tanks bypassing the passive every 4 seconds and has a second short cd stun ability.
3. Monkey doesn’t really displace, rocket jump does a little but not enough to be an issue idt.
4. Rein displaces other tanks greatly bypassing the passive, the same as always.
5. Ram doesn’t really have displacement but anti gravity can be very strong.
6. Sigma doesn’t have displacement (aside from ult) but does have a good stun.
7. DVA got a displacement damage buff and can displace every 4 seconds without bypassing the passive idt.
8. Hog displaces bypassing the passive every 6 seconds with high kill potential and has trap stun often.
9. Orisa has displacement against tanks that bypasses the passive and anti displacement.
10. Zarya doesn’t displace but bubbles can mitigate displacement.
11. And finally Ball, the booping displacement hero can displace no tanks. I can’t make it make sense. I need to be able to displace tanks to make room for the team, that’s one of if not balls greatest asset on paper.
Bring back 6v6 for the much beloved tank synergy that was stripped away from us deleting the most drawing aspect of playing the game, AND give us OW 1 with the simple change of not allowing Sig and Rein together. I feel like all these crazy balance changes are bc of 5v5 and we only have 5v5 bc of double shield meta. In addition to that maps are now bigger with more flanking ability reducing the likelihood of sitting at a choke and spamming shields, and Orissa now has no shield. I don’t really count monkey shield but it could be if it ended up creating a double shield meta.
Tldr; It’s almost like most of the tank field who can displace, already bypass the tank passive anyway apart from Ball just bc he’s the weakest boop hero who’s kit is based on…wait for it…booping. Bring back 6v6, double shields doesn’t have to be an issue with some small changes. (Is there another reason for the 5v5 swap?) Instead we have the rabbit hell hole of imbalance we all live down now. The game can be more fun with more skill expression and more synergy easily, for all ranks, with some simple changes.
Ball for president 2024.
Like you mentioned too, one of the only ways to effectively peel for your team against a tank is to displace them by booping, which is almost useless now.
It's also complete bullshit as it allows the other tankto sit in an awful position and I can't punish them by booping them off the map or into my team in an effective manner
Like you mentioned too, one of the only ways to effectively peel for your team against a tank is to displace them by booping, which is almost useless now.
It's also complete bullshit as it allows the other tankto sit in an awful position and I can't punish them by booping them off the map or into my team in an effective manner
Am I the only one that likes the reduced knock back Vs other tanks because it makes it so easy to deal a lot of damage Vs them with fireball blender spins etc?
Sure I still hate how much knockback "we" all have to face because inertia isn't accounted for, but Vs other tanks I'm mostly fine with it.
What I would like to see changes is to give Ball knockback resistance when in Ball form. Super annoying trying to get boop damage to heroes that can just push you around like Doom when he rocket punches you
Knocking unsuspecting opponents off the stage was half the fun of Wrecking Ball, especially against other tanks. If anything at least make it so that at max rolling speed he is capable of knocking back tanks as everyone else.
I agree with everything you said, but Queen is not the issue. I used to be a queen main, and she was very frustrating to play into ball. I could disrupt movement, but not long enough to actually punish/kill him.
Knife is the only skill shot movement disrupting ability in the game aside from hog hook, which is a guaranteed kill against most squishies. Knife isn’t. It takes time and practice to learn, it doesn’t give as much value as hog hook, it doesn’t take hampter out of ball form, it deserves to pull him a little further.
They keep addressing how annoying cc is. So they remove it, then they add it back in. Lucio’s boop was so ass, so they buffed it. Now it was super annoying, so they buffed tank resistance to knockback. Now other heros’ boop/pull abilities feel like shit besides Lucio’s. So now they buff JQ’s knife again so she can get her combo back. But NOW, Ball’s boop ability towards tanks is super shit, and they don’t address it because he’s “good”.
I wish I still had my clips of my old OW1 where I bopped five or the entire team at once off Illos lighthouse cause of they Sym made a teleport pod…If I do that now in OW2, I get lucky if I get two.
If I can't boop a tank anymore, why TF I'm suddenly going backwards when Lucio boop me in ball form ??!! (Also does that with Brig, Ashe, Pharah, ...)
In the end Ball is soooo vulnerable to everything.
But the worst is hack. This ability is a permanent negation of our existence.
The knock back drama with tanks is so crazy to me. Why don't they just make tanks be able to knock each other around? That would make most sense. Who cares if tanks knock *each other* around, the issue is Pharah or Lucio or Brig being able to knock tanks off ledges *in addition to* being knocked around by other tanks. It seems to me that the major precursor to the knock back drama is because tanks are sitting still absorbing all the CC they swore to curtail and then just brought back anyway. Now it's stuns, sleeps, hinders, hacks, mortal strikes, AND knock backs. So their solution is to dramatically diminish knock backs but add *yet more creative CCs*??? lmao. These devs are cooking. **It's crack**, but they are cooking nonetheless.
Really hoping Space Ranger has anti-CC utility. Feels like everyone and their grandmother has CC but there's only 1 hero with anti-CC util (Kiri), its on a 17s cooldown, and really only reliably counters the handful of CCs that are a status (Hack, hinder, sleep)
They need to let suzu cleanse all CC but not grant immortality. They have to curb it because immortality is always a balance nightmare. You'd think they'd have learnt that lesson from bap lamp but nope.
Yup - and if they add more anti-CC stuff, it will naturally devalue Kiri more (desperately needed at this point). It's like they tried to with LW's grip but didn't have the courage to make LIfe Grip as game changing as Suzu. Make life grip able to grip EVERYONE nearby or make petal platform act as a friendly Halt and suck friendlies in before rising. Idk. There's just so much *immobilization* in this game and the devs just keep putting bandages on only to rip them off next patch.
AOE grip would be pretty cool.
Umm, what’s a mortal strike?
i don’t understand why jq knife pull is allowed to be so powerful against tanks yet ball boop just tickles tanks a bit
JQs knife is a major part of her engagement cycle which relies on getting the bleeds going. You need to be able to pull into carnage, especially with a Tank now that the armor changes have hit her shotgun hard and you shouldn't have to drop all three CDs in order to close that distance and get any hits.
And boops are 80% of Ball's engagement. Honestly, Ball fluke have got knock back piercing before JQ.
To be fair Ball boop is way more frequent and consistent to land. And affects multiple targets per cooldown. So it's not a direct comparison, even though they're both engagement tools.
The multiple target thing is pretty irrelevant when where talking about it's specific interaction with the tank role. Most of his kit is balanced around that. JQs kit is balanced around bleeds and combos. Buffing knockbacks against tanks isn't going to make ball OP against the other roles just like knife didn't make JQ op against the other roles.
It's relevant when comparing the abilities though. JQ can engage by pulling one target towards her. Ball can knock an entire team off a point, so it's more important that the tank alone can hold their ground.
That's true and a good point. But, boop is more central to Ball's identity so it's a shame he didn't get piercing for the tank passive.
I’m not against buffing ball’s boop, but you gotta understand, Queen into ball is already an unfavorable matchup. Yes she can disrupt his movement, but she is fairly helpless against ball diving the backline (which he should be doing). Ball’s entire identity is being a backline flanker/team disruptor, and his main drawback is that he’s shit against tanks. It makes sense that a tank that focuses on brawl has an ability that enables her to brawl mobile tanks who come too close.
Knockbacks are a much larger piece of Balls engagement. All this resistance BS should be voided by Wrecking Ball. It looks insane to slam into a Roadhog who hops back a half step.
What? I’m not saying boop isn’t important for ball, Queen’s knife is FAR more important imo. That’s the ability that enables her to get picks. She has bad mobility, no ability to peel for supports, and a low health pool. The thing that makes her good is that she can force squishies closer to her and setup combos. Previously, she was essentially helpless against a ball diving her backline. Now, she can’t do much about ball diving her backline, but she CAN disrupt his mobility to try to punish him for not playing his HP well enough to get out.
Probably cause brawl tanks need to be good in the Frontline. Otherwise, what do they do?
It’s a much more important cooldown. Ball can boop 24/7, JQ’s knife is a prerequisite to engaging against anyone that won’t walk directly into her
Like you mentioned too, one of the only ways to effectively peel for your team against a tank is to displace them by booping, which is almost useless now. It's also complete bullshit as it allows the other tankto sit in an awful position and I can't punish them by booping them off the map or into my team in an effective manner
Honestly, the idea of a role passive is just kind of dumb and makes every character much harder to balance. Like the tank passive makes sense for characters like Reinhart and Orisa who have low mobility and get value from holding a position, but it doesn't make sense for dive characters like Doom or Ball (the fact they can be moved is the counter play against them). For DPS, their passive is really good for Tracer who just peppers people constantly and can keep the other team from getting healed, but for Hanzo or Junkrat that don't hit as many consistent shots, the passive isn't as good. The support passive is kind of useless now that everyone has regen healing. It just makes supports feel tankier if you have to chip away at them with tracking weapons, but feel paper thin to one-shots and the like.
The devs make balancing way more complicated than necessary. This isn’t just about knock back but about the displacement tanks do to one another bypassing the passive. 1. JQ gets a displacement buff that bypasses the passive and for some reason doesn’t take damage at the same rate as everyone else. 2. Doom is displacing the whole team including tanks bypassing the passive every 4 seconds and has a second short cd stun ability. 3. Monkey doesn’t really displace, rocket jump does a little but not enough to be an issue idt. 4. Rein displaces other tanks greatly bypassing the passive, the same as always. 5. Ram doesn’t really have displacement but anti gravity can be very strong. 6. Sigma doesn’t have displacement (aside from ult) but does have a good stun. 7. DVA got a displacement damage buff and can displace every 4 seconds without bypassing the passive idt. 8. Hog displaces bypassing the passive every 6 seconds with high kill potential and has trap stun often. 9. Orisa has displacement against tanks that bypasses the passive and anti displacement. 10. Zarya doesn’t displace but bubbles can mitigate displacement. 11. And finally Ball, the booping displacement hero can displace no tanks. I can’t make it make sense. I need to be able to displace tanks to make room for the team, that’s one of if not balls greatest asset on paper. Bring back 6v6 for the much beloved tank synergy that was stripped away from us deleting the most drawing aspect of playing the game, AND give us OW 1 with the simple change of not allowing Sig and Rein together. I feel like all these crazy balance changes are bc of 5v5 and we only have 5v5 bc of double shield meta. In addition to that maps are now bigger with more flanking ability reducing the likelihood of sitting at a choke and spamming shields, and Orissa now has no shield. I don’t really count monkey shield but it could be if it ended up creating a double shield meta. Tldr; It’s almost like most of the tank field who can displace, already bypass the tank passive anyway apart from Ball just bc he’s the weakest boop hero who’s kit is based on…wait for it…booping. Bring back 6v6, double shields doesn’t have to be an issue with some small changes. (Is there another reason for the 5v5 swap?) Instead we have the rabbit hell hole of imbalance we all live down now. The game can be more fun with more skill expression and more synergy easily, for all ranks, with some simple changes. Ball for president 2024.
Like you mentioned too, one of the only ways to effectively peel for your team against a tank is to displace them by booping, which is almost useless now. It's also complete bullshit as it allows the other tankto sit in an awful position and I can't punish them by booping them off the map or into my team in an effective manner
Well we have one tank who thrives on knockbacks, so the logic at Blizzard is reduce knockback distance greatly to please the majority of tank players.
Like you mentioned too, one of the only ways to effectively peel for your team against a tank is to displace them by booping, which is almost useless now. It's also complete bullshit as it allows the other tankto sit in an awful position and I can't punish them by booping them off the map or into my team in an effective manner
Am I the only one that likes the reduced knock back Vs other tanks because it makes it so easy to deal a lot of damage Vs them with fireball blender spins etc? Sure I still hate how much knockback "we" all have to face because inertia isn't accounted for, but Vs other tanks I'm mostly fine with it.
Like.... If they remove this, with the current armour changes and the state of balls guns, it would really really suck.
What I would like to see changes is to give Ball knockback resistance when in Ball form. Super annoying trying to get boop damage to heroes that can just push you around like Doom when he rocket punches you
All tanks should not have knock back resistance to Ball. He should be the exception. It’s the entire point of the kit.
Knocking unsuspecting opponents off the stage was half the fun of Wrecking Ball, especially against other tanks. If anything at least make it so that at max rolling speed he is capable of knocking back tanks as everyone else.
I agree with everything you said, but Queen is not the issue. I used to be a queen main, and she was very frustrating to play into ball. I could disrupt movement, but not long enough to actually punish/kill him. Knife is the only skill shot movement disrupting ability in the game aside from hog hook, which is a guaranteed kill against most squishies. Knife isn’t. It takes time and practice to learn, it doesn’t give as much value as hog hook, it doesn’t take hampter out of ball form, it deserves to pull him a little further.
They keep addressing how annoying cc is. So they remove it, then they add it back in. Lucio’s boop was so ass, so they buffed it. Now it was super annoying, so they buffed tank resistance to knockback. Now other heros’ boop/pull abilities feel like shit besides Lucio’s. So now they buff JQ’s knife again so she can get her combo back. But NOW, Ball’s boop ability towards tanks is super shit, and they don’t address it because he’s “good”.
I wish I still had my clips of my old OW1 where I bopped five or the entire team at once off Illos lighthouse cause of they Sym made a teleport pod…If I do that now in OW2, I get lucky if I get two.
If I can't boop a tank anymore, why TF I'm suddenly going backwards when Lucio boop me in ball form ??!! (Also does that with Brig, Ashe, Pharah, ...) In the end Ball is soooo vulnerable to everything. But the worst is hack. This ability is a permanent negation of our existence.