I like the bit where he tried to kill lifeweaver 1v1 and did absolutely nothing

The adaptive shield "immunity" I wonder if we have a character that has something like that *cough* orisa *cough*

I think the anti body-blocking change would be perfect for ball, it would make him a little easier to play and improve his quality of life incredibly

I think it's important to understand that while in OW1 there was a lot more hard CC, there was also another tank to assist in taking that punishment. Now with only one tank, getting hard focused with soft CC (which has become a lot easier since everyone just shoots the tank anyways) is in essence the same thing

I really am enthralled with the idea of ball being in dps. It might be the closest and fastest thing they can do to hot fix him.

There is only 1 ball player left in the world that makes ball look fun, competitive and makes it work and that's Chazm...he is fucking nuts!

Playing what you think is fun is a sentiment that a lot of people forget. I like picking the fun tanks in casual play, but if I start doing good they go Orissa and every dps counter in the game. Like holy shit, I just want to take some time to mess around with Rein or throw games as ball. Every single tank I go up against swaps to Orissa if they’re doing poorly.

I just love that chazm did a road to grandmaster deathless on ball right when this came out

bella is frowning somewhere rn

I had a guy argue to me that a tank shouldn't be able to kill someone if it lands all of its moves. The shit blew my mind.

6v6 was so much better. Junker queen would have been such a sick off tank

13:07 is the best way I’ve ever heard someone describe ball play in 2023

Literally most of my diamond dps losses are because we had passive healbot supports while the other team had an Illari or a Bap out fragging everyone in the lobby while also maintaining the healing our supports had. Support dictates victory in almost all of my games its absurd. Unless your tank is just getting hard diffed or the DPS are insane on the other team its always just supports dropping the ball because they don't realize they're throwing by not trying to kill things and relying solely on the tank or dps to do it while the other supports are hard carrying with frags AND heals.

ball is in a really similar spot to doomfist. Needs insane skill just to compete with other characters. you buff them, they break the game. Thats because they arent the issue its other characters.

I play lots of Zaria I only say nerf zaria

All these Ball doomsayers just make me appreciate Chadzm so much more. He never sees it as a "Ball doesn't work" he just sees it as a "he's not optimal right now, other heroes just need to be nerfed". While I don't agree with his statement that he wouldn't care if Ball did get reworked into a DPS, I love his passion and his unwillingness to swap off. That is true resilience. That is what it means to say "Fuck it, we Ball"

Your spot on about the philosophy that some players actually believe that tanks can’t do damage and they have no rights. Support is pulling all the fun out of the game right now, you can’t kill them, and the mains themselves are so whiny about their characters getting nerfed. It’s such a bad state we’re in right now. Tanks SHOULD be able to secure kills by themselves 1v5, if you solo shatter or flux a whole team, you should be able to secure at least ONE kill, but you can’t, that’s the issue

I have this idea. We should add a second tank like the other roles have. I feel like it would help so many areas of the game.

Lol you're pretty spot on with the tank mindset on balance. They really are the most analytical and big brain thinking types. They also have to look out for their team which makes them more fair and willing to put up with things, even if they don't exactly like it.

Even hard Widow mains have evolved to also play Sombra in the rare case that the enemy tank picks Ball. If they get killed even once by one, they immediately swap. Huge respect to the Widow players that keep trying again and will grapple over and over ignoring me and trying to kill my team anyway

Long Live Hamston

I think adaptive shield should become a barrier with a set amount of health, like 500. That would counter hack, sleep, hinder nade, and other cc's.

As a support main, tank secondary, there's far too much healing in the game that tank can't do any damage at all. I honestly believe they made a good move removing CC from dps and support, but they went back on it. Tank should have all the CC, dps should have all the nuke ability, and healer should only have nullified/buff/debuff/escape ability. Mobility creep is the safes creep to have as long as support have escape ability.

For adaptive shields (Ball otp here btw) make activating shields a cleanse effect, rather than full cc immunity. Shields can be activated while ccd or not, but if activated while ccd, it does a mini self suzu for the ball, like 1.5 secs of immunity. I think thats a fairer take than pressing E and becoming a non cc-able primal winton. If get-out-of-jail free cards are the OW2 way, then adaptive shields should offer a cleanse as well.

I was queueing tank the other day on a cp map and my team was getting destroyed by a widow. I was playing Dva and went to dive the widow to deal with the issue but my supps said that I shouldn't go dive. Now I'm not the highest rank, playing high gold to low plat, but I figured that someone would realize that we would need to dive the widow but no one seemed to get it until I said about it. Mind you my team had a genji and a kiriko so I wasn't the only one who could have dealt with this. I feel that tank just gets blamed for way to much most of the time and that comes from someone who doesn't play tank very often. I also think that dive tanks work well but players around my rank seem to either get that the tank is diving or they don't. If I play my main role of dps, when I see a dva/winton I don't just assume that they will play with the team and not contest highground/ take space so I don't get why other players just assume tanks aren't going to dive in that situation. Maybe I'm just stupid but I don't know.

Fundamentally 5v5 is the source of so many of OW2s issues because the majority of the roster wasn't designed for it and they haven't been given ground up reworks for 5v5 so you have this mix of some characters being OP and others being useless which only gets worse as with each new character the gap between widens as those characters are built for 5v5 and blizzard has every incentive to make those characters stronger as they are the ones that can make them money over older characters

As a ball player i appreciate the thumbnail 😂

Ow3 will be 4v4 or 7v7(1 Tank 2dps and 4 Support)

10:00 Yeah, that's fair. Alot of support and some dps players really freak out when there character is touched. For example, if I say something like make Ana's antinade cut healing in half instead of preventing it entirely, I would be hung for treason and deemed a Ana hater even though she is my favorite character.

That beginning made me respect flats so much more a streamer letting a video they wanna react to actually get some love and also saying hey this a good vid right here we get to it later I hate that we have to say these things

Tank player here. I miss 6v6, my favorite game mode was 2cp, and I also miss open queue being the main game mode. It solved the queue issue and made the most sensible players get an edge beyond skill. I think instead of all these overhauls, what they should have done is add a tank queue and an open queue that both go into the same competitive mode and matchmake for the same games. Tank queue locks you to tank but open queue you can choose any character. Tank queue would essentially be an instant game. Dps would share the same queue with support, since they are essentially the same role anyway. You could even do it 1/5 v 1/5 1 tank and 5 open per team, back to teams of 6. Could even do a 1/3 v 1/3 making teams of 4. You could also just set limitations, separate off tank and main tank so that when one player chooses an off tank for example, that section becomes grayed out for everyone else so that you don't have double shield or goats. Can't have more than 3 healers or 3 dps per team. Once someone choose a third dps the role becomes greyed out for everyone else. Can't have more than 2 tanks, once you have a 2nd tank the role becomes greyed out. If you queue for tank you are basically cheating, it's function is basically to have a game instantly but dps and support are greyed out permanently. Games can be made without a dedicated tank player technically, but the allure of instant games should balance that out, or have games with 2 locked tank players.

Man I swear, I cannot kill lifeweaver as ball, he’s so goddamn slippery

This reaction be ballin'

As a ball main i'm a bit biased towards ball balance, but after eating all that cc and seen countless ana/sombra/mcass swaps I'd love for ball to get a self cleanse while activating adaptive shields just for the lols.

flats imitation of hamter getting hacked basically being a spider that fell from the ceiling in the wrong living room got me laughing so hard

10:39 I think the reason why tank players are more willing to say to nerf a character that they like is because tank players are more conformed to a role rather than a character. It’s more likely to be tank main vs junkerqueen main, where-as with dps/support it’s more likely to be genji main vs dps main.

9:40 I think this is caused because tanks typically have to swap and dont become attached to a specific character in comparison to the rest of the general population. Most people dont have time and or patience to expand their pool when their charater works. In a weird way you gotta defend your character like a friend. So i dont think tank players are inherently more reasonable (ego trip). They're just less attached now.

The worst part of having to listen to them call it "soft CC" was that I knew it was hard CC for Ball and a lot of other tanks. As a tank/ball main it's been sad watching tank counterplay become just getting to turnoff my hero for free. Why did this ever become a thing?

Once I saw the game was changing to 5v5, my mind immediately went to how Ball, Zarya, and Hog mainly would struggle to fit when their role in OW was to enable or disrupt rather than frontline. Sure Hog can still hook into one-shot (might keep this post-rework idk) and Zarya is either top tier or low depending on her balance but Disruption instead of frontline doesn't work when that trade off requires the rest of the team to be able to function without a Tank around them. Either the impact boops or DPS Ball is what he needs, Zarya can work with more tuning.

This video really hit hard when I first watched it. I picked up the hero very quickly after release, and peaked out in OW1 at about 4300 by one-tricking him (even running it successfully into goats) before season 18 crept up and introduced role queue. I thought that he would benefit from the switch to OW2, but he was only hurt. I barely play him anymore, and I logged nearly 500 hours on him between release and the end of OW1. Sad stuff.

OW2 5v5 should've been 2 tanks/2 dps/1 support, and you can't change my mind on this.

15:43 the engine was rebuilt for pve i believe, not 5v5 and if i am not mistaken there is a 6v6 gamemode that cycles in arcade and its possible in custom games so if 6v6 really couldn't work then custom games shouldn't be possible with 6v6 as everything is built around the engine. Please correct me if i am wrong as i dont feel like laoding up overwatch rn to check.

6:50 to be fair if a reaper got a 5 man ult and killed everyone we wouldn't question it.

The rolling small boop sounds like an awesome and fun idea

Hey flats not sure if you'll get a chance to see this, but what would you think about ball's fireball leaving the ground he rolls over on fire for 2-3 seconds after he passes through? I feel like it fits his kit and helps him make space for his team while he sets up his second come around. It would slightly change how he plays and his priorities, but I feel I always have too much time waiting for my team to get into position anyway, this is a way you could help them do that

Random bad idea of Adaptive shields. Now instead of you just using it to survive you can use it to increase the damage of your piledrive lol. X~amount of shields used while using piledriver gains ~x amount of damage

"Doom's fine" nah, he's so full of bugs I call him oogie boogie man.

Road hog is a titanium peashooter now😂

I think if he had an ability that was a little booster, that would be cool. Not to impact enemies but to allow you to get the movement you need sometkmes

I agree with pretty much everything but this also applies for pretty much every tank specially for dive tanks, for me there is two ways Blizz could fix this either remove most if not all CC from none tank characters or give tanks characters a new passive to make CC and debuffs have 50% or so less effect and or duration on them kinda like they did with Ana sleep.

I hope people will appreciate that Yeatle is one of the best players that will ever touch the game. Overwatch 2 players won't remember when this man marched up the entire competitive ladder, sat at #1 World, and just sorta... Chilled for a bit. Not even a pro player btw. I highly recommend "Year of the ball"

Every time i here something talking about the death of ball, i just think of chazm

Bro finally I been eating on u to do this vid. My boy yeatle is epic.

RIP the infinite hook 😢

What if you made the adaptive shields do that but if you crack the added health before the ability times out it increases the duration of the cooldown? This would I feel create the idea of agro for people to focus fire him trying to get the reward of his cooldown being extended drawing fire from his allies, But as well granting him all that freedom of movement to maintain his ability to disrupt and perform as a distraction tank to soak up damage. I also like the idea of giving him a nudging shove like you can do to your teammates. Its nothing you can use to push or boop just sorta bully weave your way through a crowd. And if you wanted it to do damage do like 5-15 for first contact with that player after x time of movement without slowing down. I wouldn't go any higher then a quick melee though. I could see this being a passive for all tanks to have the ability to shove enemy players with basic WASD/Move stick movement as they are all rather large in size.

That small boop idea would be very nice

As a high master gm player flats is not joking I hated ball the most with two tanks especially on sniper 😂 it made me so mad that I just played mei and chased them whole game yea I was tilted

i saw somebody in chat say '2 tanks 1 support' and i just wanna say that im pretty sure thats the meta in paladins

It’s amazing to come back to this today when ball is the meta tank for season 9 😂

I feel like a short burst dash that's on a Hanzo leap cool down that boops would be a good chance. Also replace adaptive shield with and ability that ignores cc for a few seconds and gives damage reduction.

Honestly, the immunity isn't a terrible idea. I think if they made it a super brief window (almost like a parry) to cover something you know is coming could be fun and rewarding. And it could become a mind game for the opposing side of learning when the ball tends to try to use the invuln and popping him with cc before or directly after, etc. Idk I'm just free-Ballin here

As someone who's good friend mains Ball has his primary tank, I can confirm that it can still be terrifying to encounter

10:49 damn the tank glazing is crazy

The slight boop would make ball feel so much better to play but I think a cc resistance would ideal not immunity but like cc doesn’t affect him as much. Like Mcree nade wouldn’t slow him down as much as other heroes or hack doesn’t last as long and sombra doesn’t get as much of a damage boost on a hacked ball

Tanks should be able to 2v1 easily and sometimes 3v1. They should be able to do that because that's what their team already forces them to do half the time, it's the tank versus the enemy team with supports jammed up their ass and sometimes the dps will do something too.

The bit talking about Sojourn Orb is definitely because it obliterates mines, along with dynamite, concussion mine, mei wall, doom slam, and any barrier. Again, not a great ult nowadays against most comps.

The devs on the balance team are literally house cats that communicate by meows at this point.

the mini displace sounds kinda like a controllable perma cc in the right hands. scary

"we got to think of so much more when someone runs at us than kill them or survive" Meanwhile mercy mains are coping that they need to analyze every situation like its rocket science over using blue vs yellow beam, a no cooldown no resource ability.

I have been saying for years that adaptive shield should work like a parry. If you time the shield with a stun, you get a benefit. Whether that is temporary stun immunity, or more shield per target nearby, or even a temporary dmg buff to fireball/pd damage. It should be a skillful move and would fit the fighter “footsies” design of ball.

5:55 you are straight spitting facts 🤣🤣

that whole 7:00 section is really interesting looking back at it. the self heal hints at some ideas of reencouraging individual play. this could mean great things for tanks

A fun buff for ball's ukt would be to make the mines track players if they come to close. Lets say a 5m to 10m radius around the mine field. When a player enters said area 2 or 3 mines start following them at about 90 ish % player movement speed . So you can technically outrun them but they will be hot on your ass. Also buff the damage on his guns with about 10% and lower the head shot multiplier by 0.2. He could also use like 20 more bullets in a mag but that might be overkill if you up his damage. Maybe give him a bit easier boop. Like a speed boost on ground only , that gives you the boop aura ball gets when moving fast so you wont need to graple something to get the speed. Kinda like sonic's ball dash . This acts like a kind of boop or cc and can be used in a lot of ways. It should have quite a cooldown though so it cant be spammed.

Wanting your character to be good should never be seen as whining, and even if it was it works, look at the support role. Enough complaining and they’ll make you immortal. With that in mind, give JQ 1k HP 😂

Why does his mustache look like the dragon in mulan😂😂

As a Doom player that had played quite a bit of Ball, Doom ult is better because it charges his punch.

13:00 as a ball main, this made me want to cry how accurate that is

I miss playing Ball sm, I literally spent all my tank games as him in OW1. I think that adding him to dps (with proper adjustments like base hp and damage) would be the best option for now.

Yeattle was Hamter Yoda. I miss his ball videos with him diffing everyone

i think that making adaptive shields make shield recovery faster and give cc immunity instead of giving like 300 overhealth a good change it would be unique and cool cause it would activate during combat as well and he needs as dps increase as well

As a support I agree tanks tend to have the best perspective of balance. A lot of supports, more so in medal ranks, will talk about how weak they are when its really just a skill issue. Yes supports will need peel sometimes - but if you are incapable of defending yourself in even optimal situations thats a skill issue

Heres my bad take- what if we made his adaptive shield like orisa fortify so he cant be stunned and slept and such. EDIT: i posted this before it was mentioned so nevermind lol

Considering that the characters name is wrecking Ball, I feel like the timer that limits how long you can use his grapple combine with how long the cool down is on the grappling hook just doesn’t put enough emphasis on the whole main gimmick of his kit I think at least one of those timers needs to either be reduced or completely removed or both of them reduced a little bit. And just to clarify, I suppose I should say that my reduced, I mean for the timer on how long he’s allowed to use his grapple, for it actually should be increased, technically. because I was to be honest when he was first released yet true that the ability to infinitely stay grappled in swinging through the environment was to P. I would say it’s true appoint can definitely be made that now that there’s 100 ways to stand slow him down cc sleep hike etc. there are enough counters to somebody constantly staying grappled and swinging around environment that it wouldn’t happen now anyway if they got rid of that grappler limit for example.

I'd be interested in an adaptive shield rework where while the temp shields are up ball can't have negative effects BUT can be displaced. Eg: can't be anti'd, slept, hindered, etc. But can still be hooked, pinned, javelined, etc. I believe it would make way for some breathing room for plays and the ball can be assured they can be healed during adaptive shields

Didn't Flats say he'll quit OW2 like a millions in all his videos? Now he's saying he "doesn't care" which just means he really does care. 🤷

13:17 Lamo so true 😂😂😂

Man, the launch of overwatch 2 was the most fun I had on ball ever in OW. CC wasn’t cancer so I could actually play the game. I even hit GM

18:39 I was thinking they could just implement the teammate pushing / no teammate collision thing with enemies for ball specifically.

As a ball main ive been punching air since his last balance change.

H\The topic of Ball, Ball was designed for Widow and Hanzo in overwatch 1. Those characters are still doing the same thing nowdays, not nerfed somehow, and Ball isn't able to keep them in check. Ball needs in my opinion two buffs, one, small boops walking so He can roll without being body block. i feel that when playing him, second, his damage on primary fire, needs buffed. I would say, more damage but less fire rate, to give him a bit more damage to kill anything. Ball with these two changes, with a total rework with Widow and Hanzo, so ball doesn't have to go contest them, while their tank is killing your team. Ball would be a good dive option with Monkey and Dva. I think he would play like Dva since he is better on high ground maps like Nubani, where his design is to contest high ground and take space. He wouldn't be good at stopping all damage, but his ability to kill and displace should help keep certain maps in check. like Havana or Junker town.

For the CC immunity idea, maybe have that be part of when he's in "fireball" form instead. Couldnt CC him on the engage, but you could as he goes up for a piledriver

i really appreciate and respect when you upload react videos "late" after letting the original creator's videos 'breathe' for a while. not jumping into reacting immediately shows respect for their work. cool man, keep this up.

how did you summ up the whole video in the first minute

" tank players are the most honorable " is Flats watching the video LOL

Just give Ball an ability like Orisa’s fortify where he counters CC for a very short duration, like 5 seconds. However don’t give him the damage resistance.

It’s wild that they took out a tank and the one tank that’s left also doesn’t feel tanky

10:49 as someone who mains Mercy and Ana; I mostly talk about making Mercy a bit more complex like putting her damage amp on a limited bar amount that she could use and healing the same teammate too much decreases the healing amount over time by a small amount.

6:20 I feel the same way. I remember in ow1 if risen hit with his charge you were died the second he hits the wall, (unless you somehow managed to stop him) but now it almost seems like a dickens tracer can survive one (obviously an over statement) but still it’s unbelievable

solution, just give us the first version of ball. with the sonic spin dash, old pile driver, and his dual flame throwers then just give him winstons bubble but attach it to his body. it'd work great pinky promise or the other direction and give his attacks armor strip where the damage you deal towards armor will be direct and not reduced by said armor then 2 grapples. plus he used to soft counter orisa then some switch flipped in some blizzard emplyee and said you know what we need the horse to have no fun abilities. but it all started with the orisa fortify headshots being a thing and ball could 1-2 clips on her and shes dead if out of line or without her sheild. because fortify used to force you to not move as fast and Wrecking ball could just out manover around her. but then he got slowly nerfed over time now with the change to 5v5 they did jack didly to help him in anyway to 2 because once again orisa overnight became a hard counter for wrecking ball then every character added makes his case worse tbh here's a few more ideas make people hit by full speed boop light on fire and maybe a more simple idea like a rock where wrecking ball might have a medium speed mode and if he hit them they get booped a little and take a little damage and possibly a unique low momentum passive like instead of or normal passive when you fall off something you will do a tiny but of a upward boop and tiny bit of damage. and his attaptive sheilds were like winston's bubble but with adaptive sheild info and possibly some rework to his bullets because they are almost useless like i don't think any character but winstons basic shock. like his gun were for finishing off enemies so what if his guns had ammo efficiency gets better with the more damage hes dealt meaning he can mechanically combo his abilities for more damage. so VERY OUT OF POCKET IDEA but Adaptive sheilds should shock people you run into but don't bump into. and maybe make mine fields mines more like sea mines like fewer mines but alot larger like the mines in the first archive mission like 4 giant ones instead of a bunch of tiny ones. plus itd be a bit nicer tuning because wreckingball is in a horrible spot atm

They should probably change adaptive shield to just a regular shield ability, it could be like Winton's April fools bubble shield that follows him around, but with a smaller radius. They would need to tweak the health numbers and duration to compensate, but it would be the best and fairest way to give ball cc "immunity". Because that way you can still counter it by closing the gap and get inside it in time, and this shield would also help isolating targets from their supports.