Instead of addressing the elephant in the room (anti-heal) they decided to give his self heal a resource meter.
Look how well that went! If stuns were counterplay to his breather before, they’re not anymore. Now he can self heal on demand. There is no 8 second window of vulnerability anymore. Now you anti him off cool-down or he will not die. At least before you could stun him out of his heal as a lot of heroes.
Also giving him more CC that affects already slow tanks the most was definitely one of the decisions of all time. Roadhog historically has always been a tank bully even in his worst state. He exists just to make the enemy tank’s life miserable. I was genuinely really excited to see his rework, now after playing for a while I’ve come to realise how poorly executed it is.
The playstyle and interactions against Roadhog never changed. It’s still “avoid fighting him at all costs”. Hook is still a very low risk high reward ability. Now you also have to watch out for a trap that slows you and chunks away your health especially if you don’t have burst mobility.
I just don’t think there’s a world in which Roadhog will be healthy for the game. Feast or famine designs have always been unhealthy and that design flaw is way more noticeable in 5v5. Roadhog is just the worst offender. Maybe I’m just malding after playing against so many Roadhogs in recent times, but I think a lot of tank players could agree that those 8/9 months where he was a throw pick was actual heaven.
The only consolation prize is that he will barely ever one shot anything in the next patch with increased health pools so that is a huge win
His M1 is still confusing to me, he used to do a normal shotgun blast but now instead does 3 large projectiles that travel infinitely or something. He’s still just not good enough at destroying barriers fast enough.
I really don’t understand what the point of reworking him was if he functions exactly the same and might even be worse since you can’t stun him out of his heal.
Also, I definitely felt the game was better when no one was playing him.
I really like the re-work. Hog is much more encouraged to be brawling in the front line now than going for flank hooks. I love that he can’t reliably one-shot with hook now. It absolutely should take followup or a little extra from Hog, and this rework does that.
He’s more of a tank right now than he’s ever been, and he’s still countered by range and things that are supposed to counter him, so I’m a fan.
People were sick of getting countered on Hog (because he was an extremely 1-dimensional hero, so of course he had hard counters) so Blizzard removed his counters. Yay? Even whole hog can’t be interrupted and hog can heal in the middle of it.
It was certainly a better rework than Sombra’s, but maintaining all the frustrating aspects of hog and simply removing his counters was not what I had hoped for his rework
I was under the public perception that a Mr. Reinhardt Wilhelm was known as THE shield tank; not this barbaric brawl style Mr. Rutledge is known for.
And since his Hogdrogen gas is on a refillable meter, if you keep making him use it, then he won’t have enough to keep himself in shape. It still takes 10 seconds to fill from empty.
I really like pig pin, and I think it makes him more in line to the trapper nature of the other junker characters. But I don’t like the resource meter TAB since it removes one of his greatest weakness: baiting his healing and then taking it from him.
Hook was always controversial, but I think it just needs more wind up. Like, you should have to hold the button to “charge” it, and with each charge the length of the chain would increase. Basically, you’re charging it to increase its range.
Roadhog was completely garbage as a hero primarily BECAUSE of that weakness. No other tank gets dumpstered so hard from having their sole defensive ability gutted by a stupid hard stun or bionade.
Killing Hog requires more finesse where instead of simply CC’ing him the moment he uses breather, you try to get him while he’s low. Its still effective, but the window is narrower as it should.
Its now a resource you pressure out exactly like defense matrix from Dva or another hero like rein shield, sigma shield, etc.
Valid points. I get the argument that the resource meter makes him less punishable for using his key cooldown, but that’s the way the game has evolved over time, in my opinion. All of the other tanks either have multiple ways to mitigate damage, a resource based way to mitigate on demand, an uninterruptable form of mitigation, extreme mobility to get out of the line of fire quickly, or some combination of all those things. Roadhog before his rework had none of those things.
Part of me would love to go back to the old days where cooldowns were simple, straightforward, and (best of all) punishable, but that would require a ton of heroes to get massively reworked to be worse and more simplistic than they are now. So I think the take-a-breather on a resource kind of had to happen.
Again, I do think he could really use some number tweaks, but that’s a different conversation.
It’s off-topic, but I think this goes to show where the team aspect of the game starts to slip.
Back when 2 tanks were a thing, the other tank could’ve played something to help with that weakness. For example, D.Va, Rein, Sigma, and Zarya all could peel for him when his breather was on cooldown.
It still happens with support abilities mainly in OW2, like a good life grip, suzu, nade, lamp. Hog needed to be played effectively with the cooldown in mind, but it makes sense he needed something to change in order to be a solo tank.
Hoggy has always been the guy who can heal himself in the midst of combat (aside from JQ, the doomfist, and Mauga). But he can’t do his job effectively if he can’t maintain his presence since he’s the only bloke out front now.
His breather change was more welcome so he didn’t cower every time Ana showed up (having kiriko around doesn’t count), but he still pops like a balloon if he drains all of his gas in one go (only gives back 450hp); told him to pace himself.