Nerf his hook cooldown.
You can say all day his sustain is too strong or that he is unpunishable and low skill but the fact is he tanks for his team by doing these things and literally has to be able to to not throw, and every time his sustain is less than broken he becomes utter trash. He has to have sustain. But not sustain + super frequent kill potential.
His combo is deadly. And it’s the second half of his value on the team- and the primary reason to pick him.
Nerfing hook by 2-3 seconds would greatly increase the skill gap but still allow him to perform his role- he could still punish “bad” positioning and provide bough value to swing team fights easily.
But how bad hogs who miss their hooks will feel much heavier punishment for doing so. This would also create more meaningful and realistic downtime to make plays when you know his hook is unavailable.
Lastly- this exclusively nerfs his certain tank matchups which can be outright oppressive- dva, ball, doom, and every other tank that still can hardly afford such heavy displacement- it makes hog hooking the enemy rank a larger investment of his resources, and reduces the frequency of it happening as well, reducing his ability to abuse the enemy tank for team value.
1000% if hog gets a nerf it NEEDS to be his hook cooldown, it is by far the healthiest thing to hit for his tank matchups and his skill expression.
Whether hot hooks 2 squishies in 12 seconds or 14/16 seconds doesn’t make a difference in his value output- one kill is enough to turn the tide anyway. But creating larger windows of punishment for him allow for more general counterplay without being utterly forced to resort to anti, sleep, CC in general.
If the cooldown nerf is substantial but too much, the best and healthiest buff to align him again would be +1 mag size. Hog shooting more often with the new armor changes is much healthier than him hooking so frequently.