Here’s the reality of the situation:
“We’re going to put this crap through regardless of what the community says.”
I’ve not met a reasonable person who’s played Hog in the experimental and actually thinks this is okay (notice the emphasis there, if you haven’t played hog in the experimental, you can’t say the changes are fine).
The spread changes are barely noticeable at all. The low damage mixed with the lower rate of fire and the 5 ammo, however, feels utterly terrible.
If they want to revert the buff, fine, revert it. But revert the ammo + rate of fire nerfs it came with, Hog was underperforming before he got buffed. Nerfing him to worse than before is a great way to show tanks that no one at Blizzard cares about them.
I know it’s probably an unpopular opinion, but I do hope they at the very least try something similar to my suggested version of hog. Which is essentially the old version of hog (4 shots), but toned down a bit.
Right now, hog on experimental doesn’t have a niche and is all over the place on where his role is.
They said after the fact that they were never planning on releasing the Moira changes live, they just wanted to see what they looked like stats wise
1/3/2 was never really on the table
Power creep has nothing do with them actually listening to the community on the experimentals.
Now, the other side of the coin:
When Genji received four buffs in a row on the experimental, the community almost universally called it over the top and begged them not to. It went through anyway and we had genji lock for a month.
When Brig hit her most recent experimental, the community begged them not to, but here she is now, sitting at abysmal pick and win rates.
When Orisa/Sig’s changes hit, the community said that the Halt changes were way, way too harsh and that the changes over all were too harsh. They still went through, and we’ve got Orisa who hit a literal 30% win rate in Masters and both Orisa/Sig sitting at awful win/pick rates.
The community led a pretty huge outcry against nerfing Symmetra in particular in the last experimental, but that still went through too, causing her already-low win rate to drop by another 3%.
The community also said it was a terrible idea to buff hog in the experimental where shields were being nerfed. They did it anyway.
The last 5 major experimentals on balance have gone through without revision regardless of what the community says. The only main change we saw in the experimentals was that Symmetra didn’t receive her buff in the “meta shifting” one (which was one change the community actually loved). That doesn’t show an attitude of receptiveness from Blizzard.
If you mean his old state with the 6 shots, then that and what’s on experimental doesn’t really change anything. Sure he was better before with six shots, but he’s still going to be low tier either way. If you mean the very old roadhog with the 4 shots, then on that I agree with you completely because he’ll actually have a niche.
Uhm… Let’s keep score, shall we? Here’s comparing Hog on EXP to hog before they messed with him at all:
Buff: His shotgun pattern is more consistent
Nerfs:
Ammo reduced from 6 to 5
Recovery increased from 0.7 to 0.85 seconds
How on earth is this a buff? I’ve played with the pattern changes and barely noticed any difference. It’s totally negligable, which is why D.va and Reaper aren’t getting touched, and Torb is even getting a buff on top of this. It’s because the changes are more about QoL than power.
You have to really play Roadhog to actually understand how he works, just one shotting some ana bots in the practice range doesn’t show any real one shot consistency in an actual game. The enemy isn’t always going to be on flat ground whilst standing still with your crosshair pointed at them.
Hog iynt a real tank though… and with useless barriers it was a mistake even thinking that he needs a buff.
I rly want this 123-experimental hog witha few changes back in experimental…
You literally can’t one shot certain heros when hooking from different angles, it’s not about aim. You can’t shoot a valking mercy’s head and chest when you hook her out of the air, thus making the hook one shots just inconsistent in general, because you need to have an angle that favors you most of the time. Hooks from high ground won’t one shot either.
A less random pellet pattern means you consistently deal the same amount of damage instead of inconsistently dealing more or less. This means that in any given game, the shotgun might give you more pellets than it should or less than it should.
However (and this is a big one) the impact this has decreases the more the target is within the reticle. If the target is under 85% of the reticle, for instance, the odds are it will only differ in 1-2 pellets for the shot because of the statistical probability of all the pellets hitting the main target.
For hooking, then, this means that the damage done is statistically very similar in both instances. Hog’s over all DPS is still very much going down. For reference to the exact numbers, see this impartial analysis: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/so-does-shotguns-have-patterns-now-similar-to-shotguns-in-apex-legends/546454/2
Actually a lot of the community was overjoyed with these changes and almost all of the top players were vocally in approval too
This is literally false, no one expected Hog to be such a must pick until after the patch went live, he wasn’t even picked that much for the first 3-4 days after it went live
And you have a very clear lack of understanding of why certain heroes have such bad pickrates right now …
If I aim good? What if I’m unable to aim at their head and chest hitbox because of the angle I hooked them from and where they got placed? And this results in a missed hook kill. Should I just accept that I can only one shot from one angle then? This makes the hook inconsistent in general because you can only one shot consistently by hooking the enemy on flat ground.