Hook has a 0.3s cast time.
Hook has a 40m/s projectile speed. For reference that’s 5m/s faster than a pharah rocket.
It has a range of 20m.
After some googling I could not find anything to do with the typical human reaction time. other than children’s science experiments so we’ll use the average of 0.25s reaction time when you are looking directly at the stimulus.
So now we’re good on numbers here’s the math.
At 5m away you have 0.425s to react to hook. So basically you don’t really have a chance unless you already anticipated it.
At 10m you have 0.55s to react
At 15m you have 0.675s to react
And at 20m you have a full 0.8s to react.
To put it bluntly this is fast. Overwatch is a chaotic game and there’s 5 other players to worry about on that enemy team. And this roadhog can approach you and depending how far he is from you, you must see this and then react. Even if you react fast enough there may be nothing you can do.
Movement speed is 5.5m/s for most heroes, which means you could walk out of the way if you were moving to the side instantly at about max range. But hitboxes are big and that hook is big.
So now you have to use an ability. I wanted to look at cast times because that could help us much more here but there’s a lack of data on these across wikis.
Let’s set up a scenario. Roadhog begins his hook and you notice at 0.1s into his cast time because you know these animations inside out. Now you react in the next 0.25s. (btw if you were 2m away you are already hooked). Now you click your cooldown to escape. Depending on the cast time this now affects whether you live or die. And even then I was generous with your reaction to the animation. If you don’t react til the hook is thrown out you have already been hooked 10m away. And depending on your cast times. Even further.
Hope this is decent evidence as to why I find hook to be a bit unfair.
P.S roadhog ruins every arcade mode. He is too good in situations with a 6v6 rn never mind in a 4v4 3v3 or even the dreaded 1v1
You can look, if youa re looking for human reaction time to the studies in mental chronometry.
Basically it would say that depending on the stimulus the brain will ahve to detect it… Mean RT for college-age individuals is about 160 [milliseconds]) to detect an auditory stimulus, and approximately 190 milliseconds to detect visual stimulus
But thats the simple reaction time to an stimulus…like the shot from the judge of a race and the runner starting.
It increases greatly when you ahve a discrimination go /not go deivision, or to make a conscious choice. When there are more stimulus and when you get older of course…
This is incorrect. The game’s netcode has built in lag compensation so the server has time to honor the client of the ‘shooter’. The actual time you have to react varies based on the ping of the players involved in the interaction.
If Hog has a relatively high ping then the hook is taking longer than average to reach the server and then your client. By the time you’re hooked on your client, you were actually hooked 200-300ms ago. This is why players get hooked around walls, over mountains and through valleys. The netcode is so generous that Blizzard needed to add an additional line of sight check to make sure overly egregious hooks break, and it still happens frequently.
You’ll always have less time to react because the Hog’s client is interpolating/simulating the action without latency which is then upheld by the server on a successful attach.
Varies based on latency, upto a certain threshold… probably around 250-300ms max.
Average human reaction time to visual input is around .2 of a second and change.
Having a realistic window of around .4-.5 of a second is about “double” what you need- and gives room for even moderate latency.
It’s really not difficult to “react” to hook.
The bigger thing is what heroes can do in response to hook.
Baiting out hook with abilities likes meis ice block or wall, Moira’s fade (a personal favorite of mine- I’ll comfortably assert I dodge hook very reliably with fade the vast majority of the time. Same for reaper- I’m also “looking” for it because I find it “fun” to do though I must admit), teleport or blink or recall, translocator, etc- are all quite easy (in my opinion anyways)
But for other heroes? Trying to avoid it with bapps jump, mccrees roll, any of doomfists abilities, hanzos lunge, etc- it’s as much “luck” as it is skill.
Point is, timing wise, some abilities are easy to react with. Others are not. Keep this in mind when dealing with hogs hook, and play as accordingly as you can.
what would you do to fix roadhog? serious question because i have read a tonne of NERF ROADHOG NOW topics and those people cant be reasoned with but everything you have posted here is reasonable so its interesting to see what people think
for me if he has to be changed i would like him to be reverted to last patch with 1-3-2 styled healing/damage resist cloud coming in whenever he used TAB, however since they want to nerf AOE healing i cant see that happening
if you look at hog’s pickrate in GM, he is OP, you cant argue with that but that is only one stat and one rank
yet somehow i manage to sleep people ulting before their ult voiceline is finished,
i manage to stun a rein before he even knows hes shattering, etc etc and my reflexes arent even all that great.
THIS is your problem. Not hook, but your lack of anticipation.
You cant tell me youre withing 5m of hog and NOT anticipate a hook.
You also have to account for how hook actually works, it doesn’t go in a straight line from when you throw it exactly, you can track with it for a time before it decides it’s trajectory (if you press the button then flick the hook will end up between when you started and when you finished)
btw i know you didnt ask me but im bored:
i would probably shorten his hook range. i find it fair that he is deadly within his comfort zone, like any tank should! but i think 20m is excessive. maybe tone it down to 15-17. just short enough to not be able to pull people into ilios well from literally the other side of the objective.
i am happy to talk about this with anyone who is reasonable and while i disagree with your reply you are reasonable so i like that, i dunno for me places like castle dps will stand on the ledge at the top of the castle and shoot down on my teammates, i would hate to not be able to hook people from there because you wouldnt believe how many teammates i have saved in that exact spot
not the same spot but this hook for example
if hook was lowered maybe it wouldnt have worked, that is just my opinion though i do get he is extremely strong right now but hook range is not where i would look personally
isnt that what we want though? for hog to be less “all around good”?
if you want to save teammates from enemies on high ground, you could instead go dva, winston, even orisa with her pull (thats being buffed back again).
the problem with hog atm seems to be that he doesnt have enough weaknesses.
he seems to be too good at everything he does, so something has to give.
balancing basically means give every hero a reason why you would pick them, and a reason why you wouldnt pick them. we need to give the weaker tanks reasons to be picked again.
the main thing people dont like about hog is the damage, i still think roadhog has clear strengths and clear weaknesses and those weaknesses can still be exploited however maybe the strengths are too strong, i think when it comes to hog being able to do some work on the high ground that winston and d.va easily get to the high ground while roadhog can only contest it if he walks there(which usually takes forever and sometimes is not possible) or if he hits a hook on someone on the high ground which is more difficult than you would expect
the thing about hog is that last patch he was garbage, they change a few numbers around and he is very strong(and OP in GM, that said i dont expect to see him much in the OWL) so its amazing how adjusting a few numbers can change him so much
hogs damage is high, thats true. but his range (outside of hook) is very limited.
so he is only really dangerous within…15m? without hook.
thats more than enough for most DPS to easily dance around him and kill him.
its the 20m hook thats creating the problems, because it can take people from outside of his danger zone and pull them into it.
think about the other tanks: rein can deal TONS of damage within his reach, full charge zarya as well. dva is always memed about, but her close range damage is strong. only outliers are winston, orisa and wreckingball, who either do tickle damage or need a lot of setting up to even get damaging.
tanks need their damage within close range, to contest points. thats what they are made for.
you could definitely tone down hogs damage though, thats one way to go about it. he could become a tank like winston, orisa, wreckingball, that doesnt deal high damage up front, but has great utility and survivability.
just either or: range/versatility, or damage.
that is a good point, i guess i am so drawn to the revert hog but 1-3-2 healing idea is because i am a former support main, it feels good to heal teammates(well most teammates), that is why i dont mind losing some damage for that but i do also understand how hook is a very long ability and can feel unfair to get hit by if you think you are far enough away
its always been a very dodgy ability as in pulling people through walls to randomly breaking for no reason like this
btw the “pulling through walls” thing gets worse the further away you are.
so with a shorter hook range, it would also reduce (not eliminate) that problem a little bit.
of course its not the only way to go about it, its just what i personally think makes sense. theres a million different ways hog could get balanced and all of them are valid.
