Let's talk about Roadhog

General Discussion
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I recently made a video talking about Roadhog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls8SY_n7j_4
There are some things that I didn’t mention in the video, so I’ll do that in this post:

In what ways were Old Roadhog balanced?
Roadhog had massive burst damage with his left & right click, essentially making hook a death sentence. How was this balanced???
It was balanced because Roadhog has a massive hitbox with zero mobility, and his head hitbox was larger before the Scrap Gun changes. Melting down 600HP was easy if the enemy team focus fired, and it’s still true to current Roadhog (though he survives more because smaller head hitbox and 50% damage reduction on TaB).

Old Roadhog also fed a lot of ult charge to the enemy team, he might’ve been the reason why that Genji had his blade every fight or why the Zarya is getting Graviton every fight. What justified picking him was the fact that he can get picks with his hooks, and early hook picks typically initiated the team fights… Bad oldHog players were practically the reason why your team might’ve lost, due to just how much ult charge he feeds to the enemy team without landing crucial hooks, and based on how this oldHog positions themselves.

“He gets a one-shot every 8 seconds!” Which isn’t true at all. This is assuming Roadhog is spamming hook every 8 seconds and is landing 100% of his hooks. But assuming hook accuracy is 50% and Hog is spamming hooks every 8 seconds, that’s a pick every 16-20 seconds. But that doesn’t mean that the hooked target is dead, there are so many ways that the enemy team could deny your hook kill (boop, bubbled, stunned, defense matrix, shield, ice wall, etc…), especially with new heroes like Brigitte being released.

Old Roadhog, right before the scrap gun changes went live, had a pickrate of around 6.87%, and his winrate generally hovered between 47% and 52%. That version of Roadhog was balanced, and in the video I linked, I talk about why he was changed.

Blizzard, you should really stick with what you originally designed Roadhog to be. He was extremely healthy for the meta and balance of the game, he was the reason why teams didn’t exclusively run dive. He had a huge impact on the meta, and now the only thing Roadhog is good for is the Halt+Hook combo, in high level play.

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As a mercy main, I’m not even scared when I get hooked
I miss having a real challenge with Roadhog. It was fun to play around

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Ahh, the good old logic, i agree with all of your post dude.

Too bad we got almost 10k replies in the old forums, only to be ignored by the devs who only like to hear at thenselves.

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low ranks complained about hog after his hook changes as he severely punished their bad positioning and they could no longer use ‘oh its just broken’ as an excuse for their bad positioning

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Its sad to see that hog is in such a decrepit state right now

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I dunno, I played Hog recently and put some time into him and he seems like he’s in a good state overall. He can still one-shot, even if it’s harder to do, and he pairs well with all but Winston on main tank. He does a lot of things: he can peel, he can frontline, he can flank, etc. He’s just a good hero.

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Any thoughts on these change ideas?

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Yeah, this is a pretty good idea.

Good idea, but other variations on how pellets exit the scrap gun are better imo. Plus I don’t think Blizzard wants fixed shotgun spreads, I had read that somewhere, I’m not sure. A decrease in the spread would be good too.

In my video, I’ve mentioned this as a part of a buff. Instead of pulling to 3.5m, it pulls the hooked target 2m.

I’m not a fan of this one.

Of course! This should be for all heroes that have bugs, but unfortunately these bugs for Roadhog are in his hook and that’s pretty huge, considering hook is Roadhog’s identity.

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all i want is the 1st 2nd and 5th one. 3 and 4 would probably make hog op af again, considering i can one shot reaper if i can manage to get him close enough to me to where my reticle is on his head close range.

Roadhog became op after his hook rework because his hook pulled the enemies closer to him, doing it again would have a similar outcome i imagine.

And please dont make roadhog ignore armor, tanks already have a hard time

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The trick is shotgun damage goes down to 70 with armor. And assuming you aren’t going a perfect shot off, ~50 damage from a nearly pointblank shotgun is pretty underwhelming.

And Brig makes armor common.

And Torb rework will end up making double armor a thing.

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dont say torb, we dont know how big it actually is(could be a different ability instead of armor), everything else i agree.

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All they need to do is make Torb not be a throw pick, and have armor.

Both of which are a near certainty.

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torb will never not be a throw pick(or not op if thats what happens) as long as hes based around his turret

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Well all the reworks I’m hearing about seem to be focused on making Torb more independent from his turret.

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Yeah, I understand that. I know that shotguns are extremely weak against armor. I just fundamentally think that armor countering shotgun pellets is a good thing, even though it does heavily weaken Hog’s weapon.

Yeah, that’s assuming that teams run Torb+Brig every game. At that point, you pick another hero that is better for the situation, or your team just constantly poke damage the armor, depleting it.

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I used to main hog, but now I barely play him at all anymore because the hook is so unreliable. My biggest complaint about its reliability isn’t how close it pulls the target or its tendency to release targets that retain horizontal momentum, but rather targets that retain vertical momentum.

I feel extremely cheated every time I land a perfectly fine hook right in the center of the hitbox of some enemy that decides to jump on high ground (or float if it’s a pharah/mercy), but then they proceed to fall down and the hook breaks because their bottom half is no longer in LoS. Or when some Doomfist or Genji just keeps on flying upwards and gets pulled in at a completely bogus angle.

Not being able to pull people from high ground really limits your options as a zero mobility hero. I used to do that all the time with a little jump to gain altitude, but that obviously doesn’t work at all anymore with the secondary hook check.

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Yeah, I agree. His hook is pretty inconsistent alongside with his gun too, making him just a bad pick overall.
Weaknesses from oldHog to this new one still exist. He’s still extremely immobile and feeds a lot of ult charge.
There’s almost no justification for picking Roadhog unless you have an Orisa. The hook and the scrap gun are too unreliable.
The other off-tanks are just better. Dva, she feeds ult charge, but she is mobile, has the ability to block bullets and projectiles, and she has high burst damage, alongside a great ultimate that clears the area.
Zarya can output massive damage when high charge and her ultimate is one of the strongest ultimate’s in the game. She is immobile too.
Roadhog has a huge hitbox, immobile, ult battery, and inconsistent.

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Maybe Hog could get some of that Blue zero Ult charge HP that Hammond gets.

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Yeah that would help the character, but I feel like that’s lazy balancing.
I don’t think Roadhog needs anymore defensive buffs.

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