You guys failed the rework tremendously. You guys left him awful for months on end until he got his rework, you finally gave him his rework, and it not only didn’t fix any of his problems, you just made certain problems worse.
What was the goal? You “removed” his one shot but then gave him a trap that just added to the hook combo and kept the one shot regardless. You removed one of the very miniscule skill expressions the hero had (his right click) for a mindless just M1 spam hero. And then you took breather and completely removed the stun counterplay from it by putting it on a resource meter.
So now we’re back to square one where we have to keep roadhog at the bottom because the hero design team is chewing on bricks while looking at this hero. What do we do to solve him?
a complete redesign to remove his oneshot would be preferable, but considering most “reworks” are just changing an ability or two or just adding an ability, i dont have much faith
Yeah that’s the problem. Blizzard’s hero design team is too incompetent and “must! preserve! hero! identity!”
Even if it means preserving that hero identity at the cost of not a single person enjoying playing against him, so much so that the hero is forced to consistently be bottom 3 in his role or else the game instantly feels like garbage to play whenever he’s remotely viable.
They did the same exact thing with sombra’s rework. None of the frustrating parts about her kit were changed (hack + perma stealth) and then they just added to the frustration of her kit (virus).
I just pretend he does not exist unless I randomly feel nostalgic and want to hook and cook some award winning chili or the enemy tank wants to offer me a free win in exchange for my OnlyFans.
Honestly, I don’t think there’s much that you can do with him. His design is just bad. JunkerQueen is essentially what happens when Hog is done correctly. She is Hog, but better designed.
You need to change his hero identity to fix him since that is the core reason he is hated.
Problem is the devs dont want to ruin a heroes identity so he will never be fixed until they bite their tongue and just do it.
Sure You might lose 10 hog players from changing him but at least the hero might actually become a viable pick without everyone hating him. Isnt that worth the trade? Or is it better for the hero to just never be allowed to be good for the sake of retaining hero identity?
JQ is absolutely a better designed hog. A pull ability that doesn’t feel like a disease because it isn’t some hard locked stun. Still has high burst damage but not some instantaneous one shot combo. And her self healing isn’t as oppressive as breather, although slightly oppressive since she’s been powercrept so much.
He can, he just can’t do it consistently unless the target is already damaged… which is why the hero is god awful right now because when the tank hero can’t one shot he’s immediately terrible.
But for all intents and purposes they reworked hog and the one shot still existed but now you just needed the trap, the only thing that changed was the season 9 HP increases which made it harder to pull off.
I don’t think Hog will ever be accepted because nobody will ever be happy tanking into Hook, and that ability’s never going anywhere because of hero identity.
I suppose the devs could take another look at Hog’s PP. This is what they said about their goal for the ability back when they released the rework. (Nov. 14, 2024, in case anyone wants to look up the patch notes for themselves.)
He now has a new ability called Pig Pen, which is a deployable trap that activates when enemies are nearby, dealing damage and slowing them. This enables Roadhog to have control over a wider area and, with a little bit of pre-planning, can be used to either help protect his allies or further enhance the effectiveness of his hook combo.
Has any Hog ever used their PP to “help protect their allies”? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. They use their PP entirely for their own purposes. Perhaps that’s a starting point for changes.
Well unfortunately his PP is needed for the one shot combo and since that is his hero identity, no changes to PP will change the PP usage. As long as hog can’t one shot without the PP and as long as his entire kit revolves around one shotting people, PP will never be used for allies.
They unironically need to strip this hero down to his boxers and change him entirely because it’s actually horrid.
Make it a channeled / charge ability- where the longer its held, the further the hook is thrown. While charging, have hog twirl the hook at his side, in a tight circle at the beginning, but have the circle get larger as he charged it. Give it a distinct whirring sound. This gives you an audible and visual cue for hook.
Remove or drastically reduce pig pen. Slash its damage, and at best have it be a low damage hindering / slowing area- but id lean towards removing it.
Alter his damage as needed to get him into a “balanced” state.
Then I guess Hog is just doomed to stay in the dumpster for all time. They won’t give him any significant rework because of a) hero identity and b) that level of rework might as well be its own new character (like you said earlier, JQ is Hog done right).
I’m not bothered to sit around and wait for their reworks anymore, they change nothing and only continue to add to the already frustrating parts of their kit. No one likes being hooked, so why would anyone like being hooked into a slow that deals big damage
Now they’re gonna “rework” Reaper who doesn’t even really need it at this point, and they’re just gonna butcher his kit I bet
Hog is pretty much unfixable in a solo tank format. Legit just need to let him flank again while another tank babysits the team that’s pretty much the only way to fix him
