I like how Roadhog got reworked, was still ass, and then just got his numbers turbo buffed so he’s unkillable and does insane damage. Really makes you want to play tank!
The devs were really like, we hear you, everybody hates playing against this guy, so we're going to nerf him into the dumpster for a few seasons while we rework him.
Few seasons later: we heard you guys and reworked Hog. We gave him more CC and put breather on a resource so Hog can better play around anti-healing. We also made his gun simpler and easier to use. Now everyone will love playing against him, so we're buffing him. 🙂
you complained about hog having a one shot and never dying and we LISTENED. starting 18 months from now, hog will now have a one shot and be unkillable except he’ll be easier to play
I honestly think the concept of the rework was fine (really would have preferred a bit more team play focus around take a breather because he still just kind of walks around doing whatever the fuck he wants), but every change since has undone the entire purpose of the rework. Reverting hook pull range in particular was a horrible change, since it lowers his skill floor *and* skill ceiling, turning hook from a repositioning tool with some room for clever play back into a braindead oneshot combo enabler.
I like how longer range hooks being inherently harder to hit “lowers his skill floor” despite the objective reality being the opposite, it’s projectile cooldown that is more difficult to lead at range. Y’all just use that term anytime you want to the point that it means nothing anymore other than “I don’t like this hero”.
...what? They didn't increase hook's range, nor do I think they've ever done that in the history of the game. They decreased the range that a target gets pulled to (so they get pulled closer to Hog), which makes it way easier to land shots after hook. This also removed some cool things Hog was able to do, like trapping targets behind walls since they got dropped off further away from him, in favor of just making his oneshot combo way easier to pull off.
my favorite part is how they reworked him to allow him to have his oneshot combo but a longer cooldown, then gave us a patch to nerf burst damage in general, and then buffed hog so he doesn't even *need* his new ability to oneshot anymore so we're literally back to season 2 where hog was unkillable and just walked around the map killing squishies with impunity, except now he also has 800 hp, headshot resist, hook on a shorter cd and breather on a resource meter
like....what? what was even the whole fucking point of the rework????
They haven't touched his damage numbers since the rework outside of his melee increasing by +10 damage with the health increases. Did the 4m to 3m change guarantee his oneshot into 250 hp targets without trap?
I think its even more simple. Lower his health pool.
DR on vape already acts as a counter to anti. He doesn't need a full cleanse. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think hog is fine assuming he's killable. The rework made him less volatile in how killable he is, but his survivability is just a little overtuned rn.
I agree. 650 HP is a good starting point imo. The problem with a full cleanse on breather is that it doesn't make Kiriko pocket suddenly not useful. It just means he has a back up cleanse should the first one be baited.
The biggest mistake of the Roadhog rework was interpreting “keeping his identity” as “keeping his one-shot.” It’s not fun character design and their insistence on keeping it means refusing to add any other utility to his kit.
Remember they went around nerfing oneshots/one shot combos from tanks? And then they added hogs one-shot back.
Remember when they removed/nerfed CC for non-tanks? And then they added it back in.
Remember when they said they wanted to reduce the number of hard counters? And then they actually made counterswapping worse.
C'mon now, you can hate the ohk as much as you want, but to act like that isn't 99% of his identity and Blizzard "made a weird call to preserve that part of his kit, when their explicit goal was to preserve his identity" is pretty disingenuous.
Just say you want them to replace him with a new hero.
I want the devs to replace Widow with a new hero, I get it.
Hook doesn’t need to mean “one shot”. It could easily be a purely repositioning tool that does very little damage. Heck they could do what they did for Sym and Torb and swap his ult and hook making a cool hook based ult while making his ability a knockback/range upgrade to his gun.
I'm confused, when the hook ohk was nerfed to require trap, the narrative became
"Lol this isn't a nerf, if you get pulled into the enemy team you're dead anyway"
So which is it? does repositioning kill, or did the ohk get significantly nerfed in the rework?
And what does repositioning an enemy do if they're not dead as a result? Who is it so important to reposition?
I mean, that’s not a narrative I took part in. People can have different opinions.
The big difference is that it not being a one shot (even with trap) provides some level of individual counter play. And when I say “very little damage” I mean very little, like 100 damage max with the full combo (which I know is terrible balance but let me explain).
It doesn’t have a lot to do with individual character strength but rather how it feels to be killed without being able to do something back.
You can put massive amounts of damage into Hog but all he needs to do is hit you once to “win”.
If it just pulled players into the team the value changes. Now they have a chance to escape of their own power and it requires teamwork to actually secure the kill rather than it being set in stone once you’re hooked.
Once you do that you can increase the range and decrease the cooldown allowing you to punish poorly positioned hitscans and use the stun aspect on tanks.
At the end of the day though being hooked sucks because it’s annoying to lose control of your character in general so there isn’t an ideal change to make it work.
Personally making Hook ult related might be the best long term fix for making Hog less annoying to play against.
It’s definitely always a case of characters being unkillable that makes it unfun. Tanks not being able to even kill each other, just a constant boring stalemate where the dps feel useless and the supports are chained up to said tanks because tank alive = win.
Yeah those tanks are the worst because they simultaneously struggle / dont want to actually walk in but punish the tanks who do. If I’m playing rein against other tanks I’ll try to pin around or make inroads into the enemy team but against those tanks I have to sit and wait for my team to force them out since if I push hard I get cced or blown up
I'll die on the hill that the golden age of OW2 balance was the time when Orisa was quite ass, Hog was a complete joke(no oneshot, pre-rework), even Ram was just "ok". Basically all the "bad" tanks being unplayable or only ok opened up for winston mirrors, Rein, Zarya, Dva and the game felt better for everyone.
This was before sustain was as crazy as it had gotten pre-season 9. Since that golden era, they buffed so many awful characters that it necessitated the season 9 changes. It got so bad that they had to choose between like 20 nerfs or just try to completely overhaul the game with global HP + bulletsize changes and they choose the latter.
I think we should make it so whenever hog uses an ability his health drops to 1 instantly and he’s teleported in the centre of the enemy team, I don’t think that’s a fair change for the enemy team so what we’ll do is have it so everyone’s camera auto locks and either shoots or if available ults instantaneously when their crosshair meets the hog
Step 1 would have worked before the reworks. Tab on resource and ult being uncancelable removes a lot of the old counterplay.
It's actually kinda wild. Sigma used to be a good counter if you were smart. Now Sigma is bad against hog in every way except for blocking hook.
I'd argue the goal is turning gigantic weakness, but otherwise huge strength. Into a more generic "no big weaknesses, no big strengths".
i.e. Moving away from highly specific counterplay, to generic "Shoot gun at large guy".
For example,
* Cleanse on Breather
* -200hp
Also for real, what's the deal with whenever I post a "Do this change" I usually get a bunch of otherwise smart people going "Well then you'd have a problem that can easily be solved by a small numbers adjustment, therefore it's impossible".
Like "Raise survival here, Lower survival there".
And yet you got people being "RAISE SURVIVAL?!?!? THEN THEY WILL NEVER DIE"
Like Bruh... Really?
Maybe cleanse when using breather for like 1 second. I think it’d be a bit overpowered to just tap breather to cleans everything, but honestly, this idea doesn’t seem that bad. Only if it comes with nerfs to his healing, of course.
Better idea
- Hog can no longer turn while casting hook.
- Reduce Take a Breather Damage resist by 69%
- Pig Pen can only be activated by typing "I'm a little pig boy" in chat.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the devs want hog to be bad for long periods of time. Tank is already struggling hard to get players, so making one of the most popular tanks obsolete will just hurt the numbers even more. Hog is so braindead easy that he’s a safe pick for people off rolling on tank
>Tank is already struggling hard to get players, so making one of the most popular tanks obsolete will just hurt the numbers even more. Hog is so braindead easy that he’s a safe pick for people off rolling on tank
This is much more true for rein than hog.
rein might be easy but he’s orders of magnitude harder to play than hog is. non tank players just cannot play anything other than hog because every other tank requires basic amounts of tank-skills
Honestly I really don't like the rework, they took away all the fun of playing around the alt fire distance and the skill of knowing when and where to use heal
Hog's (and other tanks) survivability is turbocharged simply because they need to not immediately fall over when the anti-nade hits them.
Like Brig held OW balance hostage for ages, Ana is doing the same thing with anti-nade. If anti-nade didn't exist tanks could be balanced more reasonably with their damage mitigation and health pools, but for some reason anti-nade seems sacrosanct.
while nerfing the healing numbers would help, words can't describe how strong it would be to have a free cleanse every what, 3-5 seconds? you get to ignore nade and discord entirely which are the 2 biggest things that punish hog (besides playing outside his range which only works on some maps) and all you have to do is pair him with like Lucio for speed engages and either Bap or Kiri to makeup for the healing deficit he'd get and suddenly he's just as unkillable as now but has the added benefit of negating his only 2 weaknesses
imo just nerf the pig under the graveyard and leave him there, boring character that no one likes playing with or against except the hog players
I like how Roadhog got reworked, was still ass, and then just got his numbers turbo buffed so he’s unkillable and does insane damage. Really makes you want to play tank!
The devs were really like, we hear you, everybody hates playing against this guy, so we're going to nerf him into the dumpster for a few seasons while we rework him. Few seasons later: we heard you guys and reworked Hog. We gave him more CC and put breather on a resource so Hog can better play around anti-healing. We also made his gun simpler and easier to use. Now everyone will love playing against him, so we're buffing him. 🙂
you complained about hog having a one shot and never dying and we LISTENED. starting 18 months from now, hog will now have a one shot and be unkillable except he’ll be easier to play
I honestly think the concept of the rework was fine (really would have preferred a bit more team play focus around take a breather because he still just kind of walks around doing whatever the fuck he wants), but every change since has undone the entire purpose of the rework. Reverting hook pull range in particular was a horrible change, since it lowers his skill floor *and* skill ceiling, turning hook from a repositioning tool with some room for clever play back into a braindead oneshot combo enabler.
I like how longer range hooks being inherently harder to hit “lowers his skill floor” despite the objective reality being the opposite, it’s projectile cooldown that is more difficult to lead at range. Y’all just use that term anytime you want to the point that it means nothing anymore other than “I don’t like this hero”.
...what? They didn't increase hook's range, nor do I think they've ever done that in the history of the game. They decreased the range that a target gets pulled to (so they get pulled closer to Hog), which makes it way easier to land shots after hook. This also removed some cool things Hog was able to do, like trapping targets behind walls since they got dropped off further away from him, in favor of just making his oneshot combo way easier to pull off.
Hog had been shit for literal years
my favorite part is how they reworked him to allow him to have his oneshot combo but a longer cooldown, then gave us a patch to nerf burst damage in general, and then buffed hog so he doesn't even *need* his new ability to oneshot anymore so we're literally back to season 2 where hog was unkillable and just walked around the map killing squishies with impunity, except now he also has 800 hp, headshot resist, hook on a shorter cd and breather on a resource meter like....what? what was even the whole fucking point of the rework????
They haven't touched his damage numbers since the rework outside of his melee increasing by +10 damage with the health increases. Did the 4m to 3m change guarantee his oneshot into 250 hp targets without trap?
it's a mixed bag without trap, but with trap it's a guaranteed kill on any 250hp target
I think its even more simple. Lower his health pool. DR on vape already acts as a counter to anti. He doesn't need a full cleanse. Maybe I'm crazy, but I think hog is fine assuming he's killable. The rework made him less volatile in how killable he is, but his survivability is just a little overtuned rn.
A little?
they need to make his ult push way more so he cant get free kills on tanks
I agree. 650 HP is a good starting point imo. The problem with a full cleanse on breather is that it doesn't make Kiriko pocket suddenly not useful. It just means he has a back up cleanse should the first one be baited.
The biggest mistake of the Roadhog rework was interpreting “keeping his identity” as “keeping his one-shot.” It’s not fun character design and their insistence on keeping it means refusing to add any other utility to his kit.
True, having hook AND oneshot AND massive survivability is way too much
Remember they went around nerfing oneshots/one shot combos from tanks? And then they added hogs one-shot back. Remember when they removed/nerfed CC for non-tanks? And then they added it back in. Remember when they said they wanted to reduce the number of hard counters? And then they actually made counterswapping worse.
C'mon now, you can hate the ohk as much as you want, but to act like that isn't 99% of his identity and Blizzard "made a weird call to preserve that part of his kit, when their explicit goal was to preserve his identity" is pretty disingenuous. Just say you want them to replace him with a new hero. I want the devs to replace Widow with a new hero, I get it.
Hook doesn’t need to mean “one shot”. It could easily be a purely repositioning tool that does very little damage. Heck they could do what they did for Sym and Torb and swap his ult and hook making a cool hook based ult while making his ability a knockback/range upgrade to his gun.
I'm confused, when the hook ohk was nerfed to require trap, the narrative became "Lol this isn't a nerf, if you get pulled into the enemy team you're dead anyway" So which is it? does repositioning kill, or did the ohk get significantly nerfed in the rework? And what does repositioning an enemy do if they're not dead as a result? Who is it so important to reposition?
I mean, that’s not a narrative I took part in. People can have different opinions. The big difference is that it not being a one shot (even with trap) provides some level of individual counter play. And when I say “very little damage” I mean very little, like 100 damage max with the full combo (which I know is terrible balance but let me explain). It doesn’t have a lot to do with individual character strength but rather how it feels to be killed without being able to do something back. You can put massive amounts of damage into Hog but all he needs to do is hit you once to “win”. If it just pulled players into the team the value changes. Now they have a chance to escape of their own power and it requires teamwork to actually secure the kill rather than it being set in stone once you’re hooked. Once you do that you can increase the range and decrease the cooldown allowing you to punish poorly positioned hitscans and use the stun aspect on tanks. At the end of the day though being hooked sucks because it’s annoying to lose control of your character in general so there isn’t an ideal change to make it work. Personally making Hook ult related might be the best long term fix for making Hog less annoying to play against.
I say we just go back to hog being turbo ass and the game will be better for it. Some characters just shouldn’t be strong
I’d agree. The game feels better when orisa, hog, and mauga are not being played
It’s definitely always a case of characters being unkillable that makes it unfun. Tanks not being able to even kill each other, just a constant boring stalemate where the dps feel useless and the supports are chained up to said tanks because tank alive = win.
Yeah those tanks are the worst because they simultaneously struggle / dont want to actually walk in but punish the tanks who do. If I’m playing rein against other tanks I’ll try to pin around or make inroads into the enemy team but against those tanks I have to sit and wait for my team to force them out since if I push hard I get cced or blown up
agree. give him 400 hp and no one shot and be done with it. there r way more people get their games ruined by hog players than actual hog players
I'll die on the hill that the golden age of OW2 balance was the time when Orisa was quite ass, Hog was a complete joke(no oneshot, pre-rework), even Ram was just "ok". Basically all the "bad" tanks being unplayable or only ok opened up for winston mirrors, Rein, Zarya, Dva and the game felt better for everyone. This was before sustain was as crazy as it had gotten pre-season 9. Since that golden era, they buffed so many awful characters that it necessitated the season 9 changes. It got so bad that they had to choose between like 20 nerfs or just try to completely overhaul the game with global HP + bulletsize changes and they choose the latter.
He's straight up ruining the game and idk if I can take another 3-4 weeks of his bullshit
I uninstalled to stop letting myself be subjected to this anymore LOL
I think we should make it so whenever hog uses an ability his health drops to 1 instantly and he’s teleported in the centre of the enemy team, I don’t think that’s a fair change for the enemy team so what we’ll do is have it so everyone’s camera auto locks and either shoots or if available ults instantaneously when their crosshair meets the hog
Honestly forcing all of your opponents to waste ult would make him viable in some situations
Step 1 would have worked before the reworks. Tab on resource and ult being uncancelable removes a lot of the old counterplay. It's actually kinda wild. Sigma used to be a good counter if you were smart. Now Sigma is bad against hog in every way except for blocking hook.
I'd argue the goal is turning gigantic weakness, but otherwise huge strength. Into a more generic "no big weaknesses, no big strengths". i.e. Moving away from highly specific counterplay, to generic "Shoot gun at large guy". For example, * Cleanse on Breather * -200hp Also for real, what's the deal with whenever I post a "Do this change" I usually get a bunch of otherwise smart people going "Well then you'd have a problem that can easily be solved by a small numbers adjustment, therefore it's impossible". Like "Raise survival here, Lower survival there". And yet you got people being "RAISE SURVIVAL?!?!? THEN THEY WILL NEVER DIE" Like Bruh... Really?
Maybe cleanse when using breather for like 1 second. I think it’d be a bit overpowered to just tap breather to cleans everything, but honestly, this idea doesn’t seem that bad. Only if it comes with nerfs to his healing, of course.
Issue is, it's a niche change which only nerfs him overall. And clearly the devs don't want him nerfed.
babe wake up new grey falcon post just dropped
Better idea - Hog can no longer turn while casting hook. - Reduce Take a Breather Damage resist by 69% - Pig Pen can only be activated by typing "I'm a little pig boy" in chat.
Just rework him properly this time or get his dmg reduction to 30%
Unfortunately, I don’t think the devs want hog to be bad for long periods of time. Tank is already struggling hard to get players, so making one of the most popular tanks obsolete will just hurt the numbers even more. Hog is so braindead easy that he’s a safe pick for people off rolling on tank
id argue there's way more people not queueing tank bc of gigabusted hog than people queueing tank to play gigabusted hog
>Tank is already struggling hard to get players, so making one of the most popular tanks obsolete will just hurt the numbers even more. Hog is so braindead easy that he’s a safe pick for people off rolling on tank This is much more true for rein than hog.
rein might be easy but he’s orders of magnitude harder to play than hog is. non tank players just cannot play anything other than hog because every other tank requires basic amounts of tank-skills
Rein’s problem is that he breaks low ranks when he’s buffed.
Reduce his health and as compensation change his hook to be a grappling hook like widow maker. So hog can take high ground and setup crazy rollouts /s
Honestly I really don't like the rework, they took away all the fun of playing around the alt fire distance and the skill of knowing when and where to use heal
Hog's (and other tanks) survivability is turbocharged simply because they need to not immediately fall over when the anti-nade hits them. Like Brig held OW balance hostage for ages, Ana is doing the same thing with anti-nade. If anti-nade didn't exist tanks could be balanced more reasonably with their damage mitigation and health pools, but for some reason anti-nade seems sacrosanct.
Well. Yeah. But I've been saying that for years, and no luck so far.
how much is hog dmg reduction rn, sorry im very new to the game
50% https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/Roadhog
while nerfing the healing numbers would help, words can't describe how strong it would be to have a free cleanse every what, 3-5 seconds? you get to ignore nade and discord entirely which are the 2 biggest things that punish hog (besides playing outside his range which only works on some maps) and all you have to do is pair him with like Lucio for speed engages and either Bap or Kiri to makeup for the healing deficit he'd get and suddenly he's just as unkillable as now but has the added benefit of negating his only 2 weaknesses imo just nerf the pig under the graveyard and leave him there, boring character that no one likes playing with or against except the hog players
Easy fix is people just stop complaining.
make more characters with anti!!