I would post the link directly if I could, but I still don’t have that flag on my forum account. Here is the link for the whole gallery -
https://imgur.com/gallery/HfhOI9y
The spread pattern is slightly different than I had previously thought.
There are two rings of projectiles, an outer ring made of 9/25 pellets, and a center clustered inner ring which contains 16/25 pellets. I made a visual aid to demonstrate this
https://imgur.com/xhtemBj
10 meters is the ideal distance to maintain for secondary fire. It prevents an enemy that is running towards you from getting too close, avoiding the burst impact, but still gives you one shot kills if a target is backing up.
At 10 meters you can get one shot kills with secondary fire by aligning the inner ring with the top of the head. This usually means aiming towards the bottom of the head or the neck.
The top 3 outer ring impacts will miss on every target, but the side impacts will still land on most targets, giving you 12 head impacts and 10 body impacts, for a total of 204 damage.
I also made a little visual guide showing how the spread expands fairly rapidly with only a few extra steps, and it shows some suggestions about how you should adjust your alternate fire aim on tank sized targets based on increasing distance.
https://imgur.com/i8zUdBW
If aiming alternate fire against a large target that won’t die to a single well placed shot, aim based on the outer ring. This requires you to aim slightly lower the farther away you get.
Finally, I analyzed the ideal way to aim against a small target at a distance of 3.5 meters, which is the exact distance that a target is pulled after landing a hook.
https://imgur.com/RWLaQoW
While it is no longer possible to get 170 damage from primary fire at 3.5 meters on many small targets, it is still possible to secure reliable combo kills with correct aim. Immediately after hooking, shoot a primary fire shot while taking a step forward, and then land a melee hit.
For this I used ana, and the top of the inner ring is aligned to the top of her head by aiming slightly below her chin. Her posture in her default animation tilts her head down by default, so this is quite a bit lower on her model that it would be on most other heroes. On most other DPS models, this ends up being roughly shoulder level.
I doubt many people will be playing roadhog if/when this goes live, but I hope you find it informative anyway.
In case you are curious, reaper’s spread follows a very similar pattern but is surprisingly less center-focused. Reaper fires 20 pellets and has an outer ring made up of 8 pellets, with the inner center-clustered ring containing the remaining 12 pellets.
