Overwatch's newest hero comes rolling onto your screens in the next patch, a little genetically-altered hamster in a giant mechaball of doom. His current kit makes him possibly one of the highest skill cap heroes in the game. Most likely fitting into the main tank role, we will go through his kit and see how good this character can be.

Primary Fire

Hammond has two Quad Canons that pack a good amount of punch if hit with up close. The biggest thing to notice about this weapon is that is indeed a hitscan weapon. This is the first hitscan tank we have in the game. This means that Pharah's now have a soft counter in the form of Hammond. He may not do as much damage as McCree or Soldier but if your tracking is good enough, you can still make her uncomfortable. These guns also work very well as a shield breaking weapon. Your rate of fire is pretty high so if they have a Reinhardt on the other team, you can sit back and shield break to your heart's content. But as Hammond, you definitely don't want to be sitting in the backline shooting. Let's talk about the next part of his kit.

Roll and Piledriver

These are the bread and butter of your kit as Hammond. The amount of mobility you can have with this hero if you use these abilities to their full potential is astronomical. Roll will most likely be your primary source of movement outside of combat. Hammond rolls his mech up into a ball and gains movement speed as he rolls across the map. He is able to jump and reload his guns while in this mode. This allows Hammond to have relatively good escape routes or a fast way to get some recon much like D.Va can with her jets.

Another cool thing about this roll ability is that if you are a certain height in the air, you can use the Piledriver ability. After a short animation Hammond slams into the ground dealing damage and knocking enemies into the air. This ability works extremely well against high grouped up comps like Deathball as you can most likely hit everyone with it.

Grappling Claw

Paired with your Grappling Claw ability this is when you can truly become a wrecking ball. You shoot out a claw that attaches to any surface and you can spin around the point where the claw landed. If you gain enough speed while grappled to the wall you can gain air and if you collide with an enemy, they will be knocked back and slightly damaged. The use of this ability will separate the good Hammon players from the great Hammond players. If you are able to maneuver around at a high speed and knock enemies back at a consistent rate, almost all the main tanks will fear you.

Adaptive Shield

This is Hammond's self-sustain ability which most off-tanks have. When you press E, Hammond creates a shield around him which will scale with the number of enemies around him. If used with all six enemies around him, you can stack up to a huge 1200 max health in total. That's a lot of health for the enemy to chew through. This ability should be used only sparingly though, as the cooldown is 15 seconds and the shield is not permanent. It's best used at the start of fights when you can get the most value of having people around you to buff the amount of shields you are getting.

Minefield

The name of the game so far with Hammond's kit has been area denial. With this ultimate, the point is really driven home. When you use your ultimate, it deploys a minefield that covers a pretty large area with proximity mines. These mines pack a punch, doing 130 damage each. If placed correctly on control maps and assault maps, this ultimate can zone out entire teams and force them to deal with the mines by shooting them. This gives you and the rest of your team time to plan out your next move while they are trudging through the minefield.

Conclusion

Hammond will be an interesting character to see moving forward. His ability to stall as well as his mobility will cause players to have a rough time dealing with him at first. With his introduction, Orisa and Roadhog might seeing more play as they can counter his mobility incredibly well with Hook and Halt. In terms of what composition he is going to be played in, I think he can be played in a Deathball or Dive composition. He has the mobility to work in a dive comp but he also is another huge ball of meat that you usually need for those Moira Meatball compositions. We'll see what trouble this little guy can get up to once he hits the live servers.

Special shoutout to /u/i_am_the_soup for these gifs. I'll see you guys next time!

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