Wrecking Ball’s swing is one of Overwatch’s most unique features

Wrecking Ball is Overwatch’s newest hero. He has all sorts of fun stuff in his kit, including mines and some real big guns. But the really interesting part of Wrecking Ball’s kit is his very unique grappling hook.

While it may not be immediately apparent, this hook gives Wrecking Ball some of the most incredible mobility in the game — especially for a tank. Sure we have Winston and D.Va, but neither of them have the same kind of heft that Wrecking Ball does. He’s a beefy tank, and slow by design. This grappling hook fixes that problem with style.

Wrecking Ball can essentially fire out a line at any time — on a short cooldown, of course — and attach himself to objects. He can swing around and hit people and that’s great. But the use cases for damage/knock-back will be less frequent than as a powerful mobility tool.

Wrecking Ball has the kind of jump you’d expect a mechanized hamster to have — short. But with the grappling hook, you can get up to all kinds of shenanigans. By holding in the button, you can swing yourself up walls completely, or around walkways and onto higher platforms.

As a tank, getting close DPS can sometimes take forever. One of the major ways DPS differentiate themselves from the beefier heroes is their ability to move around quickly and get to high places. Think about it. Pharah is good against Reinhardt because there is no way in hell he can ever challenge her mid-air.

Wrecking Ball can’t necessarily deal with Pharah, but he can find his way into hard to reach places very quickly on a very short cooldown. For example, most tanks can’t really get up to the walkway in the first section of Temple of Anubis. But Wrecking Ball can. When you pair this with his ability to slam down and completely disrupt the enemy team, it makes for a wicked hamster ball.

The entirety of Wrecking Ball kit feels pretty unique — a slow moving, high damage tank with the option to switch to a speedy version with no weapons is something Overwatch doesn’t have yet. But of everything Wrecking Ball has, it’s his grappling hook that makes him truly interesting.

In just a few minutes of messing around in the practice arena, I was able to do some — what I thought to be — impressive stunts with Wrecking Ball’s grappling hook. I can only imagine what players in the Overwatch League will get up to with Wrecking Ball, and I’m so excited to find out.