It’s almost been a week with Wrecking Ball/Hammond, but it didn’t take long for the community to understand his power.  YouTuber and GM player Animetic makes a strong point:

But don’t take Animetic’s word for it. Overwatch analyst Jayne was asked if Hammond is a game-changer and he definitely thought so.

"We needed a new tank with vertical mobility.  This changes a lot of things. A LOT of things."

Last week’s tech

Overwatch contenders player and streamer J3sus was able to show off a bit of that vertical mobility by backcapping King’s Row, right under Jayne’s nose.

New compositions with Hammond are also in the brew.  While musing the possibility of 3/0/3 with 3 dive tanks, Aero, current head coach of Dallas Fuel responds: “Imagine 1800 HP jumping on your face.”

And of course, we have this clip of Guru of the Contenders team Skyfoxes demonstrating what Hammond can do when nano-boosted.

Fresh rollouts

While most of this was discovered last week, rollouts for Hammond are still fresh as new ones are being discovered and posted at /r/Hammondrollouts with a difficulty rating (out of three stars) being listed.

This rollout fromu/aza6001 shows not only Hammond’s vertical mobility, but also the usefulness of a horizontal swing to maintain momentum.

u/KitKatONKitKats notes that this rollout is even faster if you bunny hop to keep momentum.

It’s also worth mentioning that since Hammond doesn’t have a headshot hurtbox in ball form, it may be worth playing aggressively against snipers to pressure them out of popular spots.

Easier said than done?

If you’re having trouble with Hammond ball movement, consider this tip fromJayne: “The actual movement of the ball depends on the orientation of your camera.”

And if you need further tweaking on your grapple timing, you can also set this toggle option:

Also important to keep in mind is how Hammond's Piledriver attack gives him a bit of additional height, which means you can go over short walls without needing to enter Wrecking Ball.  It can be useful against Bastion in this common defensive position:

It’s difficult to say whether Hammond’s mobility options will be nerfed.  Brigitte had incredible shield bash jumps on PTR that never made it live. But we do know that there are still buggy interactions (like with Hammond’s grapple on Mei’s Ice Wall), so Blizzard can’t avoid taking a second look.