Please teach me hogger

General Discussion
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Having trouble with the doggo so for all ya’ll who are doing well and having lots of fun with him please give me all ya tips and tricks. I find doing damage with him and basically contributing to the team difficult. His strong points I have found are clearing waves and capturing mercs where walls allow, and defending points by blocking entrance ways with his loot hoards, but thats about it for me, in fights I do quite little to almost nothing.

To me he’s a bruiser but doesn’t seem to quite function or fight like a traditional squishy hunting bruiser like imperious or sonya. He seems too squishy.

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I can’t say I am doing well, but I have been having fun on him. W build has been the most successful for me so far, and I put most of his abilities on On Release to help with accuracy, especially with his E. I use E to disengage in team fights more than engaging, so in team fights, I am mostly using W with Q for peeling, splitting dynamite, interrupts, or to isolate someone out of position. I don’t really go for the stun on it all that much.

The biggest trick I found is using his trait for sustain as much as the terrain. You can cancel it early if you need the heal.

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E on release is almost mandatory for quick cast users. It saves you from messing up as you can make minor corrections. Having it on instant quickcast makes you completely unable to make reliable bounces.

A few things i noticed is that you should not rely on your trait for repeated bounces too much, it expires quite fast (unlike the ult version). Talking about it, repeated bounces are most of the time not going to happen anyway because of the required angle of initiating it.
The enemy can many times stop your attempt well before you started (knock you back, or already walked out of it).

At every objective its good to look for opportunities to get a rectangle of bounces instead of a back and forth. The rectangle gives more coverage for zoning, and although its less damage when someone is standing still. Its larger zone often still results in higher damage in the end.

Hogger is also a hero that gets his strenght often from the map itself.

  • 2 lane maps often have bad wall angles, this makes it difficult to use your E for extended durations.
  • Hogger benefits from maps where the objective is about killing weak enemies, because the enemy gets a harder time stealing them. This makes him extra powerful when you want to obtain a punisher. And even more since in that map you can create that square pattern in 2 of the 3 objective areas.
  • Whenever hogger can stall/cap an objective by existing and find 2 walls to bounce between, it can create a hazard while contesting. Making him strong at those maps as the enemy often cannot contest that objective without killing you. And otherwise you slow it down at low effort. Often this is lane dependant.
  • The same also counts for waveclear. Bouncing between the bottom and top allows for some easy waveclear, and when in trouble, you can knock back the enemy. Even if you are not ment as offlaner, you can compensate a lot.
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Macro:

Armored Gnolls at lvl 1, 12 sec Clip

Full minion wave at lvl 1, 9 sec Clip

Knights at lvl 1, 22 sec Clip

Goliaths & Raven at lvl 16, 7 sec Link

Boss at lvl 16, 37 sec Link

Build:

Hogg Wild (E) [T3211134,hogger] versus low mobility and high cc. Hard to master. Get the angles right during team fights and try to box the enemies. Not good for 1v1.

Brawler (AA+ trait) [T2331331,hogger] versus high AA weaving opportunities. Easy to master Clip

Dynamite (W) [T1122223,hogger] versus a ranged comp. Intermediate difficulty Clip

Note: Surely, there will be a strong build overall, but I’m not sure which one, yet.

Strategy:

The most important part of Hogger’s kit is his Staggering Blow (Q). Try to proc the stun as much as possible to deal bonus damage and gaining Rage. If there’s no wall near, place your Loot Hoard behind an enemy, then Q him into it. The more enemies you stun, the better.

While the enemy hero is immobile, use Ez-Thro Dynamite (W) directly on him.

Do mercenary camps on cooldown. He’s the fastest at it, if done right. You’ll do need some practice for optimal results. As long as you build up enough Rage before using Hogg Wild, you’ll clear them fast.

Weakness:

Slippery and heavy on ranged enemies (go Dynamite build for AoE dmg).

Percentage damage (go Brawler build for sustain).

Burst comp (go Hogg Wild build for armor).

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Lvl 11 with 63% wr sofar (QM only, mostly solo).

I usually go this build:

  • Rage
  • Rage
  • W
  • Hoardapult
  • Armor
  • W
  • depends

The early Rage talents give me extra, kinda “unconditional” sustain. I find this the best for the sololane, where I’m uncomfirtable to rely on W hits or my Trait cd for Heals.
It also gives mobility through movespeed.

W at 7 so I can remove a weakness Hogger has imo. The fact that he can’t do much without hard commitments. It gives me poke.
Also if aimed properly, it gives nice waveclear.

Lvl 10: Hoardapult: mobility, sustain, more “bodyblocking”, E combos and it has the lower CD.

The Armor on E at 13 is the must for solobossing. (If you have intentions like this, take the E at 4 over the Rage one.)

At 16, you can pick basically anything, but since I picked W on 7, and I might take Hoardapult Upgrade (which synergising with W talents) I usually pick W.

At 20, I pick

  • Loot upgrade for more sustain and for Ws.
  • No Control for chasimg key, slippery targets.
  • Rage to be more tanky and to get stronger PvE.

And I usually just trying to build up to my strengths.
I spam camps.
I dive key targets to distrupt them so they lose their value.
And I poke a lot with the lvl 7 W before hard commitments.
Also getting proper Es is a key for big success.

Hope I could help a bit.

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REEEE hyenas are closest to mustelids REEEE

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Thanks heaps guys these are the kind of replies I wanted. Lucifer your hogger looks insane.

I think part of the problem is that I’ve been playing nothing but hogger and I dunno if mirror matches are disabled but I almost never get to play against a hogger so I don’t really see what tactics others use to be effective.

I watched pallytime play him today and pallytime isn’t even that good of a player but I could see him doing things which brought out the best in hogger which I wasn’t able to do yet.

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I’m just going to start off with…WHY am I the first and only person to like OP’s post, who legit is just asking for help on how to play a new hero?? Really, guys? SMH…

I have the same issues as you my dude. Hogger feels entirely too situational to do much against most live players. I think depending on the right build/circumsances he could probably even solo bosses @ max level, but again…situationally, and not all bosses.

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Mirrors are not disabled, just thecMM tries to avoid it and looks like only a few ppl plays Hogger, prob because he’s hard.

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i think it’s good to find ways to use the way his q/e work in conjunction with terrain effectively with loot hoard/hoardapult, or to find perfect angles with hogg wild to end up in places that would ordinarily be very difficult to end up otherwise

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I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable and happy with hogger now, even getting mvp a few times. I can do a fair amount of damage now. The key I think was just getting better at spotting opportunities to use hog wild and to aim it correctly and do maximum aoe damage as well as understanding that rage is quite important to him as the more rage he has the more damage hog wild does

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Level 1 - Bones to Gnaw
Level 4 - Brute Force
Level 7 - Garbage Fire
Level 10 - Hoardapult
Level 13 - Bloodthirst
Level 16 - Headbanger
Level 20 - Secret Stash

  1. Do that build
  2. Push lanes while nigh-unkillable with infinite sustain, escape, engage, 10 Armor and damage.
  3. Use taunt emoji liberally; because nothing but a 5-stack with 3-4 stuns is killing you.
  4. Be a super-aggerssive disruptor. Put your loot hoards in annoying places and use Hoardapult liberally. Remember, both hoards drop meat that gives you 15% HP and 10 armor, both when first dropped and when they expire, plus even more at level 20. Additionally because you aren’t a meta slave, you followed my build and took Garbage Fire, so the hoards are also doing constant area damage.

GGEZ

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I think people over value Hogg Wild.
It’s incredibly powerful and shouldn’t be neglected, but so can Staggering Blow and Ez-Thro Dynamite be.
At max rage they are 8 second and 5.3 second cooldowns.

I do think it’s useful to know that you can swing Staggering Blow while your Loot Hoard is still flying toward the spot right behind the enemy, and still knock them into it, which makes it easy to combo into your other two abilities for a fair amount of instant damage and rage generation.

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Not impressed with Hogger honestly. I’ve not played him personally, but have lost every single game where my ally picks Hogger(check my history if don’t believe me).

He does end up usually top dps, but w/e reason that’s about it.

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He’s a weird bruiser who can struggle to reliably peel or chase down enemies. When I first started playing him I thought he needed a buff. But now after having more experience I think he’s pretty decent. His most powerful ability hog wild is also the most difficult to master and which can easily get you killed or taken out of a fight. On infernal shrines there is a certain angle at the objective where if you hit the corners correctly hogger can continuously spin endlessly in a square shape around the objective damaging everyone in the area and killing all the shrine guardians. With talents he is armoured and unstoppable and deals big damage in this state. I was thinking damn once ppl get good and consistent with his hog wild he’s going to become very annoying

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But first Hogg Wild needs to be fixed so it doesn’t stop spinning randomly instead of a next ricochet.

(Btw, I’m almost lvl 16 with him, 60% wr atm.)

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Impressive, but you’re one of the better players. I’ve encountered you a few times and usually lost :).

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