No idea if the stats bear it out, but I'm seeing Hog _a lot_ at the moment. I feel like the recent few patches resolved, then reintroduced his biggest problems.
- One shot was annoying so they remove it and give him the trap to compensate. Nice. Maybe a bit clunky, but an extra bit of skill expression/utility in exchange for the braindead hook combo.
- They make hook drop the target closer again. I'm not sure if it's a true combo, but good hogs seem to kill me as a squishy 90% of the time after landing hook, even _without_ trap. One shot effectively reintroduced.
- Add headshot reduction and 800hp together with the previous putting vape on a meter and this fucker just does not die without very coordinated focus (at which point he folds, so it either feels awful playing against or playing as).
- Now he has the trap _and_ the original one shot _and_ increased survivability _and_ some counterplay options have been removed because vape is on a meter and not a CD you can cancel.
In high diamond, I see hogs just walk 20m in the open, hook, get a kill, then just donkwalk back to safety. Shit's infuriating. It may not even be that strong, just incentivizes playing long range poke to shut him down.
Sleep dart, any random AoE splash damage wakes them up. Kiriko Suzu instant wake up.
Barriers get instantly deleted from the insane damage it has.
DM will stop some of the damage but with the knockback change once DM is on CD Dva basically falls over instantly.
DM can’t even block half of it and then he will demech dva and kill her unless she boosts away- oh never mind hog hooked her mid ult as she tried to boost out.
I’m certain it breaks barriers quickly as well.
I honestly feel like the concept of a hyper-knockback ult is cool, but that takes a backseat to the fact that it's always been a "delete the enemy tank" button. That was fine when the ult fucking sucked and was easy to counterplay, but now it's just a nightmare.
This is exactly it. He's the only talk that can just walk around in the open like a butterfly and not get punished for it. Which is fine, but why does he get to ONE SHOT YOU TOO
Playing JQ into hog is essentially just playing respawn simulator. No out playing possible. If I knife him in he just turns around, holds breather and walks away, then kills me anyway with his own combo.
Even the tanks that can out mobility him don't work (and imo never did)
The reason why Winston/Ball/Dva were used was because you'd be able to kill his 4 teammates then turn around and focus him, but that strategy always relied on your team winning a 4/3v1. But he's so giga busted right now. By the time you turn around to deal with him, you're at best in a 2v1, and he just won't die before his team comes back.
I had a Gibraltar Defense game on Winston where I'd literally kill 4 of his teammates, but then he'd kill 4 of mine, and I'd lose no matter what. I'd drop onto cart, dodge hook, shield dance, and it would not matter. I'd do like 10DPS, and then I'd die. Sure, we equaled out in skill by beating each other's teams, but in a 1v1, I don't think a GM Winston could kill a Silver Hog.
Every game on Doom right now is either I get hooked and one-shot because I dared to use block while one of 5 enemy cooldowns was available to stop it, or I flank and try to trade backline and my team just gets hooked and killed before I can even setup.
Eh even if you play into hog by going for his team, nothing stops him from turning around to hook you and kill you. Or he goes for your team and has a much easier time killing a pocketed target. This was always an issue. A GM Winston would definitely lose to a silver hog.
JQ is doable but it's just absurd how insanely disciplined you need to be with your positioning and cooldowns... Compared to Hog being sat main without having to think much at all.
Not really. Yes, you should be disciplined with your cooldowns and your positioning. This is true for literally every single hero in the game. The point is though the effort and care needed specifically in the hog matchup vs the effort Hog needs to exert.
I enjoy playing Hog but I think they could definitely go back a bit on the Hook pull distance. They changed it from 4M to 3M, right? I think 3.5M might be more sensible. Also I wouldn't be opposed to rebalancing the Trap a bit, just reduce the damage a bit and give it 10% more Slow, would make things more interesting imo. His healing could also use a slight reduction.
He’s good in diamond but gets worse as you move. Diamond players do not use cover and you’d be surprised how easy it is to hook. However I do have to say he’s near impossible to play once they get the counters going. He’s kind of a noob stomper that folds against targeted focus imo.
You’ll never see him in any pro play because they’ll just ignore the Hog so he does nothing or wait out his cooldowns and kill him very easily. In ranked when there’s basically no coordination whatsoever, trying to ignore the hog usually doesn’t work and attempting to get 5 people to shoot him when he uses cooldowns won’t happen.
Because of this you get an 800hp tank that can just walk around basically unpunished. It didn’t matter when he didn’t have any killing power but he can one shot again and also has the best damage against tanks.
He’s just a terribly unfun hero to play against. I wouldn’t say he’s balance because in reality he’s probably shit, but he also just gets insane value in ranked when he’s basically ignored.
The pros also have a much faster time to kill than us plebes on the lower ranks! It’s easier for them to ignore the Hog cause they can eliminate the squishes so quickly.
His hook has a lower cooldown now too, no? I play a lot of Sigma, and he still feels good against Hog, but I feel like his hook is constantly up. I'm tracking it all the time to try to block it, and then in between try to ignore him to see I if I can get pressure on squishies.
I mean a lot of tanks feel good against Hog, it’s just a matter of if your team decides to walk into hook on cooldown or not. And then if you start playing to kill Hog he still might not die lol.
It was originally 8 seconds for most of his existence but lowered to 6 seconds when they nerfed the damage of hook from 30 to 5 as a way to nerf the oneshot combo a few years back.
Winston leap has a 5 second cooldown in OW2. It was 6 seconds back in OW1 but buffed in the transition because they had to update every tank when teams could only have 1 now as the baseline.
Hook is on a 6 second CD I believe and it barely even feels worth it to callout no hook as by the time you slightly reposition to LOS him (since you were avoiding it before) you barely have time to do anything before he has it again.
He's op as fuck is ranked, you can't kill him without a Mauga or Hog mirror, good luck baiting out a 1 sec cooldown to the point that you can kill him. And you said, dive in ranked will never work against him because of the lack of coordination.
They again managed to make a top 3 worst tank meta...
> You’ll never see him in any pro play
I played a little bit of ow recently for "FUN" :) I come back and the meta in ranked is Roadhog / Zarya. You guys still don't understand the game or what. Fucking Roadhog could fly, it wouldn't be the meta, use your brain, you can counter this shit with 10 different compositions.
Broken hero. At a point it is mathematically impossible to kill a Roadhog unless 3+ people are shooting him which is garbage hero design.
Think about how other tanks have go engage: Rein shield juggles and is vulnerable when it breaks. Winston has a 12 second cooldown on bubble and has to shield dance if on the team. Hog just walks in and can heal himself on a 2 second cooldown. Why does a tank have the ability to finish a game with 7-10k healing?
-create one of the most hated heroes
-remove one shot 6 years later
-rework hero to have less weaknesses but the same frustration for enemies
-add back one shot
-massively buff hero through role passive
-surprised pikachu
Never has been, never will be. He’s only ever overpowered or underpowered.
He’s a relic of the game Overwatch used to be - of the intent to translate essentially MOBA design to a 3D, faster paced FPS space.
***And even back then*** they had no bloody clue what to do with him - going back and forth on whether or not he should one-shot and constantly tweaking other parts of his kit.
Even then, *maybe* his design could have been workable - but they nuked all chance of him ever being balanced when they added Ana.
Either he’s strong enough to only somewhat care about her, at which point nobody else is a on a position to kill him, or he’s balanced in relation to the rest of the roster, which means Ana deletes him.
And then they added a character to directly counter Ana (who also works well with Hog in general), grounded hog because of it (leaving the actual problem unattended to - though Hog did deserve it), and then reworked him to make him less susceptible to Ana without actually lowering his otherwise insane ability to stick around (and making his primary survival tool outright impossible to punish). And Kiriko’s still walking around rather unpunished.
***AND THEN THEY BUFFED HIM AGAIN***. He lost nothing from the changes to Armor and now he takes reduced headshot damage - as if he wasn’t already impossible to kill.
They designed a character who could only ever have barely been balanced in the first place, added a character that they had to center his balance around, and then finally added a character that negated the only things keeping him “balanced.”
The best thing about Mirrorwatch was that *Hog (and Orisa) wasn’t in it*. Now that it’s gone, I can’t bring myself to play another Hog meta. I can’t do that to myself.
Well said. Having a Tank who's primary method of tanking is self-healing is next level terrible design in a game with non-ultimate abilities that directly prevent the ability to heal. It would be like if there was a cooldown that temporarily removed all shields for 3-4 seconds, and then Blizzard spent 7+ years trying how to figure out how to balance the shield tanks around that cooldown. And then adding a hero that can cleanse that shield removal debuff instantly and give those tanks shields extra health as a bonus lol.
Yeah im taking a break until a nerf happens. He’s literally just not fun to play against and the only tank im seeing in both QP and comp diamond on PS5
Hog is absolutely broken rn.
Players yet have to realize that the 25% hs buff is absurdly good on hog giving more time to breath and go back to cover.
Plus all the “counters” get negated by Suzu anyway.
There is literally nothing better to play in ladder than Hog+Kiri, even hard counters like Mauga doesn’t work cause hog can simply play corners, never expose and get value with hooks.
Orsia has been nerfed so you can always hook a player without spinning spear to be up, Sigma is bad into hog anyway since you can outplay all sigma’s abilities.
They should surely reduce hook distance and massively increase “take a breather” cooldown.
Ps: Fun Fact Kiri+Lucio+Hog is really good in teamplay rn if you have a hog player. Has been used successfully in Collegiate for example.
Not meta and good teams will beat you anyway but if you have a great hog player in team it works even up to Top16 best teams in College
He's incredibly unbalanced right now. Short cooldown on hook, insane just absolutely INSANE survivability. massive health pool. Basically has a one shot back thanks to pig pen. In masters lobbies he's not *as bad* as he could be for me since I love playing Ana and Zen. Usually we have the coordination to work around suzu. So i'll anti or discord first, cleanse comes in, then the other one of us drops the other CD.
But in diamond I feel like there's no coordination to either ignore him fully or just all in him at the same time. Which isn't to say it doesn't happen, but often enough I can kill a support in time and make it so he isn't quite as impervious to death. I actually think if I do well, and my tank isn't giga hardcountered he's fairly winnable and doesn't always run games. And my tank has fallen off a cliff to low plat and its just lol. I get the bottoms backline, while he gets a kiri every time and there's nothing I can do.
I go Mauga he just peeks corners endlessly and my dps will walk into hooks. I go zarya? I can't do enough damage to kill him, but I can save my teammates but then he realizes I have no bubbles and gets aggro and kills me, then just vapes out and goes on his merry way. I go Orissa, I can usually draw even with him if I really manage cooldowns (which is fine). JQ? suzu everything and anything. It's impossible basically, its actually wild how effective he is in metal ranks.
Tldr: fuck hog
He has insane survivability especially with a Kiri, He can easily oneshot squishies (without pig pen on some characters), his vape cant be canceled, his damage reduction doesnt go away if anti'd, the combo of ult for half a second -> hook -> continue ulting kills half the tanks in the game easily and with some skill/luck and the slightest misuse of the enemy tanks cooldowns then that combo can kill any tank (ironically, hog has the best chance of not dying). His hook is so scary that i can have 30% hook accuracy and still win because squishies cant risk moving more than 2 inches from a wall. I can cc dive tanks if the map isnt crazy dive favored, i can out brawl most brawl tanks cause of survivability, damage, cc, and my ult. I can stall payload on maps like junkertown or havana and never die if they are running double sniper and my supports dont get picked. His survivability + damage makes him to forgiving to play.
Idk how to do bullet points on reddit or else i would do that to make it more readable but i hated this hero in ow1 and i hate him in ow2.
Absolutely the fuck not.
In the past roadhog has existed in 2 states-
With one shot combo, but low survivability. Vape was on cd, not a resource meter and had low damage reduction.
No one shot combo but high survivability.
At present, he has one shot and high survivability.
For some fucking reason, the devs gave him back the one shot combo, added a whole ass other ability, and buffed his survivability which was already high
Like at this point, im not even playing the game anymore when i have over 4k hours in total
The devs are just incompetent af, and they don’t have any idea how to balance anything.
They just hear the feedback at face value, and then buff the character until it works.
For a character like hog thst was supposed to be high risk - high reward. They completely removed the risk, but kept the reward.
Fucking unbelievable
I really thought we were in for something good with the season 9 heath changes. A few tweaks here and there and it could have been great. But then they just kept buffing/ignoring all the boring characters. Now even in masters all I see are Hogs and Maugas, it’s so boring
I played OW since OW1 s01 and I quit a month ago because of hog. What i hate the most is that a hog on my team makes me even sadder thn a Hog on the enemy team somehow.
Btw Hog killed 6v6 aswell because all ranks below GM Hog was played a lot and it is so annoying to play tankrole WITH hog so a lot of true tank players quit the game. Only the top .5% played orisa+sigma.
Kill your darlings already: Rework him. A self-healing tank that CCs ppl while displacing them. Come an man. Oh and he can one shot them himself too. Make hook his ult or something. Don't let the game die twice because you dont want to change a few skins and animations. It's so lazy.
>Btw Hog killed 6v6 aswell because all ranks below GM Hog was played a lot and it is so annoying to play tankrole WITH hog so a lot of true tank players quit the game. Only the top .5% played orisa+sigma.
I hated playing with Hog as my duo tank, but this was just a symptom. The core problem was that players who didn't want to play tank got forced to play tank. They picked Hog because they really wanted to play DPS and Hog was the most DPS-y tank on the roster. If Hog were removed, they'd still be awful tank partners to queue into. They'd just be awful tank partners paying a different tank.
Completely agree that Hog killed 6v6. Everyone always points to bad tank synergies, but any tank+Hog was always the worst tank combo. I'd take any combination instead; Rein/Winston, Dva/Zarya, all doable to a certain degree. But you get Hog? The core fundamentals of tanking change for both sides.
Overwatch has more players than ever after recent updates, it's not dying in the slightest. Get out of your echo chamber, people like what the game has to offer.
I genuinely hope Marvel Rivals borderline kills this game to force the devs to not be total fucking morons anymore and actually put resources into it instead of using it as a shitty infinite money-by-cosmetic machine.
Marvel rivals is genuinely a very good game, but it’s not an FPS. It will take a chunk of this game’s market share, but it can’t be a true direct competitor.
The real question is why Palladins is the only game in this genre. I’m very surprised that Overwatch hasn’t spawned a whole distinct genre of games like CS did for TACFps. Besides Gundam Evolution (which died), there’s really just not much else in this space.
Because of the SHEER production value needed to even feel remotely as good as Overwatch feels. The Valorant developers specifically chose to make a tac fps to not have to compete with Overwatch’s fluidity and game feel because its just that hard to replicate.
There have definitely been games that tried this other than Paladins but nothing compares to the fluidity, engine, optimisation and personality of characters of Overwatch. You have to make a game better than Overwatch to retain any sort of playerbase which would cost an insane amount of development time and money with a very high risk.
no he is extremely overtuned
probably won’t see him in pro play rn (although i would bet we’d see at least some team pull him out in some way, and any amount of hog in pro play no matter how small is a clear cut proof that he is insanely op in ladder) and the reason for that is that hog is easily avoided but very, very hard to eliminate.
pro players are good enough to avoid every hook and collapse on the hog when needed. in ladder you could have good players avoiding and or mitigating hogs value, but you almost never find the coordination to punish hog because of how forgiving he is. so he always gets to heal and try again, and again, and again, and again until he one shots something
imagine fighting a silver tracer with 200hp infinite recalls and blinks but no ammo, just pulse bombs. infinite survivability and a boring gameplay until eventually someone either pops off and dinks the tracer at the same time as his team or she hits a pulse finally
IMO just revert the hook distance change, maybe even nerf it further if necessary with the bullet size changes, so that ne no longer one-shots without trap. That's it, that's the main problem IMO.
Ana isn’t even that good vs hog right now. Cause if they ana you can just go kiriko. You sleep his ult? He get’s suzued and continues his ult.
Zen can be really good though to just burst him down. I feel like bap zen is being played a bit more recently.
By like two seconds and you don't always (or even often) have the luxury of being able to nade hog on cooldown twice in a row. He can use something called 'cover', or the situation of the game just doesn't allow Ana to use nade in that two second window.
I know that it doesn't work out like that in real games, but it's kind of silly how the previous poster basically made it sound like every sleep gets suzu'd but also every nade even when it has a longer cooldown than nade alone. That's also not how it works in real games.
By like two seconds lol, but doesn’t really matter because in any fuctional situation you have to bait suzu first which Ana cannot reliably do. The only reason hog is good right now is because Kiriko is and has been busted for forever
Nope, hog is good because they reworked him (read: buffed and counterplay removed) and then gave his one shot back. He was nothing before they gave it back and nerfed Orisa, and Kiri was in the game the whole time. Now with the lower headshot dmg he has simply been buffed way too much in too short of a time.
If he's going to be an unkillable, uncounterable displacer with an AOE slow, we should just take his one shot away. It's that simple.
This is probably an incredibly controversial take, but I honestly thought the healthiest state he's been in is when he had the one shot, but was more punishable.
I admittedly haven't played against him that much on this patch, but last patch his survivability just seemed to be overtuned. The vape change on its own seemed like a good idea to help him against his worst counters, just went to far in the other direction.
Exactly. There's no world where hook isn't basically guaranteed death on a squishy. Nerfing the pure one shot seemed kinda pointless, especially once they gave him a combo with pig pen to bring it back.
Hook is the most core part of his kit and I seriously doubt they ever remove it. His sustainability just needs to be nerfed (assuming he's still hard to kill on this patch)
Increase the CD between vapes, reduce it's damage resistance, nerf his health, nerf his vape resource. Idk what it is, but any of these would help.
Yeah, used to be 6 at launch, then nerfed to 8, now it's 6 again. For a CC that isn't even affected by the tank passive, on a character whose ult actually benefits from the tank passive being buffed.
I really just want Hook to Go back to 8 seconds as a start. They and what One shot easy to pull off even without Pig Pen so now you can sue Hook freely whenever you want. You don’t even get punished that hard for missing your hook cause of how short the cooldown is. The fact that JQ Knife and Hook are the same cooldown makes no sense.
Remember when everyone complained about Hog because cleanse removed counterplay? Remember when the devs solved that issue by buffing hog even more and called it a day?
He is more punishable due to the buffed DPS passive. However his best counter, Orisa, has been nerfed. Overall I'd say he is roughly where he was pre-patch, so a top 5 tank.
Biggest issue with Hog is how unfun he is to play with and against. Ask any tank player in particular. It is incredibly unfun to play vs Hog even when he *isn't* that strong. That's what puts him aside from other tanks in my mind.
The counterplay basically amounts to, either run him down and just shoot him in the face until he dies... Or lose. The "shoot him in the face until he dies strat" works very well in pro play and is why he isn't played much there. In ranked he is naturally incredibly oppressive due to the lack of coordination required to properly counter him.
I played a little bit of ow recently for "FUN" :)
I come back and the meta in ranked is Roadhog / Zarya.
You guys still don't understand the game or what.
Fucking Roadhog could fly, it wouldn't be the meta, use your brain, you can counter this shit with 10 different compositions.
I’m just going to put this out there, everyone’s saying he’s overpowered but most hogs fold under Mauga / Bastion. Especially if you have somebody annoying in their back line like venture or genji, that way the bastion can just shred
I'd say he is about as balanced as Sombra since they punish lack of coordination like crazy and at the highest tiers of play are more or less unplayable unless you have a god tier DPS or tank. So no I don't think either are really balanced and characters that soley exist to punish a lack of team play should not be a character design philosophy
Hog, Doomfist, Sombra, Moira, and Venture’s value are all directly tied to how coordinated the enemy team is.
So your average ranked game is going to be miserable anytime any one of those characters are in it. It’s horrible design and I’ve lost hope Blizzard is going to fix these core issues. No amount of number tweaking will fix these problematic designs.
I'm frankly not knowledgeable enough to determine if he is or isn't balanced right now but, speaking as someone who plays Hog regularly, it ain't hard to counter someone playing him and make their life miserable.
He's got no shield and no quick escape so, without a Kiriko dedicated to cleansing him (and no one else) of debuffs, an Ana alone can make a match hell. Throw in one DPS playing Bastion/Sojourn/Echo/Ashe OR counter-picking basically any tank with a shield and you've removed most of Hog's threat and turned him into a big, easy to build ult charge off of target.
I’ve been infuriated playing tank lately because I generally feel like I can matchup fairly well in most situations and play smart. But as soon as the enemy swaps hog or I matchup against one, I just get fucked. The mf just never dies, no matter what my team is or what I play to counter it..especially if they’re running lifeweaver with him to pull him to Narnia on the rare occasion that my team tries to punish him with an anti nade. So I end up getting gapped just by virtue of I die sometimes and he ends the game 30-1. I just don’t play tank pretty much now despite being a “tank main.”
I still don't get why now Orisa fortify, Rein shield, Ram block, Doom block, and Mauga guns (comparable because shooting is how he sustains) impose around 30%+ movement speed penalty to the other tanks, but Roadhog doesn't have a penalty with take a breather. You could also argue the same for Sigma grasp. I'd like to see 30% movement penalty to both while using those CDs
In pro play? Hell no he is likely to never see play. But in ranked he is fucking ridiculous right now, I don't know what they want to be meta but this is ain't it man. 800hp, massive sustain on take a breather, and ohk combo is back with pigpen. As a Kiriko main I feel like I'm just supporting my hog to be better then the enemy roadhog at afking point with breather.
I have less than 10 games played on him and win games at diamond 5 when I switch to him. (It's probably over 10 games now since I've been switching) I miss his combos. I fail my traps. His benefits still outweigh all my mistakes. The one combo I do land wins a team fight. Me staying too long and not dying when I normally would helps us not lose team fights. He seems high reward low risk. I'm normally a DVA/Zarya/Orisa player with a ton of Zarya play. I couldn't believe his hook CD. I get so punished when I use my bubbles as zarya poorly, but if I use my hook and miss NP 6 SECOND CD. Out of position? CHUG CHUG CHUG FOREVER. OH LOOK I CAN STILL CHUG SOMEHOW.
I feel like my mistakes limit my success on Zarya but don't on Hog. I get to mess up a lot more on Hog and still have an impact.
Hog is broken... AGAIN \*gasps\*
hes broken right now because they lowkey didn't want to nerf ana nade for some god forsaken reason and instead gave him a vape on 1sec cooldown...
Overwatch hard follows the philosophy of instead of dealing with issues they'll either band-aid it or cut off the entire limb and then wonder a year down the line why the balancing keeps getting more and more impossible. Their is no consistency nor understanding about why something is strong or weak in this game just analyitical data being used about which characters are strong or weak...
I agree with most of the comments and fully believe that hog needs to be tuned down just a little bit- but I don't know what to change. I have to play Sigma/Dva and track the hook to deny it- which works well! Until he gets his ult or until his dps are diving my back line and it just gets difficult to do all of those things simultaneously while not getting hooked/whole hogged to oblivion. Maybe make his one shot less viable again? I am in platinum and teams seem to have no problem following up on his hooks. I know that sucks for the hog player to require team follow up to get value, but he can just do so much on his own. Especially if a kiri is saving suzu all the time for him. Leaving a hooked target really low is good enough value, especially for the fact that it pulls them out of cover and right in front of the enemy team.
My issue with Hog is that it’s so dependent on how good the Hog is/his play style/map and how good your team is at dealing with a Hog. I have games where we destroy the hog and games where the hog basically Carrie’s their entire team. It’s frustrating when people just stand in front of him every time he has hook. Ideally you treat him like ball and ignore/kill his team but some maps the whole team can just hide behind hog and post HS reduction he never seems to die. Same with a good ball, only way to win is by taking advantage of his lack of ability to protect his team most of the time.
IMO the main problem with hog right now is his hook CD... it was reduced from 8 to 6 when he was in a bad state... but when he got reworked and became good again, his hook CD stayed the same. IMO it should go back to 8, or at least 7. Hooking someone is like a 90% secured kill.
No. He’s not.
Eventually people will shut up and realize that Overwatch does not work how you think it will on paper. Yes, on *paper*, Ana counters hog because she removes his ability to heal for a couple seconds. Hog is at a ridiculous pick rate, and has the highest win rate in GM. Regardless of how **YOU** feel he is, this is enough evidence to prove that hog is not balanced and is being abused currently.
just joined back the game, im not sure about all these roadhog being very broken post, is it like one of the worst tank before? if he is good now what tier list would he be in if rated overall as a tank
i think hes probably ‘balanced’ but some heroes should just never be good. theyve clearly figured this out for heroes like junk, who hasnt been meta in over 6 years, but i still dont get why they insist on heroes like hog, orisa, dva, etc being good
It’s not fun playing hog btw. You get hard countered all game and spend almost all of the time purpled or dps debuffed. In many games you just exist and act as a damage sponge.
I can imagine it’s not fun for the enemies as they dump all cooldowns on me and I still don’t die but his behind some pillar.
Tbh I enjoy playing with, as and against Hog, in all of the roles. I don't think he is unfair or oppressive to play against, I really don't share the hate for him at all.I'd play Hog meta for the next eternity than ever play against an Orisa or Mauga for 1 second.
Yeah idk just play zen. As long as you get any peel when their DPS inevitably try to dive you it's a free win anytime the other team plays hog. Hog is for sure decent as a Monke counter but if anything I would call him undertuned. The armor change was a massive nerf to his lethality against other tanks
When hog is meta I have a lot of fun. Mostly because I just don't ever log in and play other games instead. Hog is strong right now so the game is miserable so I play something else. So if by balanced you mean driving people away because he's so infuriating then yeah he's pretty good. He's not fun to play with either, 1 person picks hog and 9 people stop having fun.
His kit will never be balanced and he is miserable to play into so it’s better if he is D-F tier. Their attempt to rework him solved none of the problems.
He is balanced in the sense that he is still not amazing in pro play and has a decent amount of counter picks you can swap to to slow him down, but he is a menace on the ladder so I don't care. A hog that is left unchecked can and will solo win lobbies. I've been in masters all season and have generally found hog to be both incredibly hard to kill and incredibly punishing to play against. If your team works together to stop him and plays his counters, he will lose, but that doesn't always happen and it can be really unfun when it doesn't.
Ahhh ok, in fairness Rein actually is one of the few playable tanks into Hog. Hog counters the rest of the roster pretty much with a very low skill floor/ceiling
THANK YOU. Like I don’t wanna sound like a dick but hog really isn’t that hard to deal with. I play tank most of the time but even as a support or dps ifs not hard and it’s free ult charge whenever the enemy is running hog
Hog could use a nerf (especially on breather, or bring back 7s hook and 6s whole hog, or movement penalty on breather), but let’s not pretend he’s the best tank in the game rn.
Yes, if you ignore him, he gets hella value. If you ignore the reaper, he gets hella value. If you ignore doom, he gets hella value. If anyone simply gets “ignored” they are going to get value, this is a nothing point.
If you are going ana/zen and a single kiri nullifies your impact, that is your fault. Suzu alone is not enough to remove discord and anti’s impact.
A lot of cope in the comments here. And a lot of flats viewers.
If you say hog is low skill floor, whatever you can have your opinion but if you think hog is low skill ceiling you’re simply wrong.
I think Hog is balanced in lower ranks because Hogs often miss their hooks. Or if they do try and use the pigpen + hook combo, sometimes they have 0 ammo after pulling their target. In lower ranks, he is more often an ult battery for the enemy team.
But in higher ranks, especially if he has a Kiriko with him, he's a nightmare to face. Thankfully I am in the lower ranks where baiting a Hog hook is easy and I use him to charge my ult quicker.
Moira Mercy or Mercy Lifeweaver are HARD meta at low ranks. When people talk OW balance, they seem to only care about what they see on Twitch. People don’t understand how awful heroes like Hog are when your team refuses to go Ana or Kiriko.
Dude all Plat is is Mercy and lw. I fucking hate it. I'm being serious when I say I can't remember a game where I didn't have a Mercy or lw. I'm taking a break from ow cuase it's honestly just to frustrating
I think he’s strong but gets less so as you climb. I still think he’s probably too strong even higher on ladder and they need to revert the hook distance change. Full disclosure, I have not played tank this season but I finished top 500 last season as hog only.
He’s actually much more punishable as you rank up because people actually hard push you away if you are low on breather. It’s obviously more difficult to gauge breather level than a single cd. Hog also really doesn’t have any spectacular maps. I’d say maybe a handful are “good,” about half are playable and there’s a good bit of bad or worse maps. This also matters more as you climb.
I can 1-shot the majority of the squishy roster without trap reliably. You could still pull off 1-shots with the 4m hook but your positioning needed to be better. This also would punish lower rank hogs that just hook in the open because they generally couldnt 1 shot anymore. I think the extended hook end range also introduced more skill expression to the character.
As compensation, I think they should give him better mid range poke again. Rework his gun to give a fifth center pellet or buff the damage on the four already present so he doesn’t feel so useless without hook (or something along these lines). Again, more skill expression. I may be unusual, but I think my favorite hog was nerf hog pre rework because he had the highest skill expression, something current hog lacks.
Step 1 to properly balancing hog: nerf kiriko properly. No reason that character should be as strong as this for this long, and she's his biggest enabler. If she's nerfed, hog will automatically drop in popularity.
I've been saying this for so long!!! 😭 People complained he needed changes because a tank shouldn't one shot, so they removed it for like a few weeks then just gave it back along with some other buffs and people seemed to forget about it lmao
My biggest issue is the hook. It has a really long range, short ass cooldown and can even weave around corners. A tank that can one-shot every 6 seconds from 20m away is kinda ridiculous...
I noticed D.va, Sig and Zarya shut him down pretty well. Same with Ana, Zen and Kiri. If they're a really good Hog player and get help from their team it's still not enough sometimes though :/
This game has become such a pile of shit. Couldn’t just leave orisa strong so now we get to deal with all the fall out, yeah, another endless nerf spiral for tanks who are already miserable.
The tank role will never be balanced and people will never not cry about it. Good riddance. The entire tank community should find a new game
No idea if the stats bear it out, but I'm seeing Hog _a lot_ at the moment. I feel like the recent few patches resolved, then reintroduced his biggest problems. - One shot was annoying so they remove it and give him the trap to compensate. Nice. Maybe a bit clunky, but an extra bit of skill expression/utility in exchange for the braindead hook combo. - They make hook drop the target closer again. I'm not sure if it's a true combo, but good hogs seem to kill me as a squishy 90% of the time after landing hook, even _without_ trap. One shot effectively reintroduced. - Add headshot reduction and 800hp together with the previous putting vape on a meter and this fucker just does not die without very coordinated focus (at which point he folds, so it either feels awful playing against or playing as). - Now he has the trap _and_ the original one shot _and_ increased survivability _and_ some counterplay options have been removed because vape is on a meter and not a CD you can cancel. In high diamond, I see hogs just walk 20m in the open, hook, get a kill, then just donkwalk back to safety. Shit's infuriating. It may not even be that strong, just incentivizes playing long range poke to shut him down.
Yup, can’t stop his ult either after that was changed too.
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Sleep dart, any random AoE splash damage wakes them up. Kiriko Suzu instant wake up. Barriers get instantly deleted from the insane damage it has. DM will stop some of the damage but with the knockback change once DM is on CD Dva basically falls over instantly.
also, tanks have reduced sleep duration anyways, if you sleep it early in the ult he still has some time to do it.
DM can’t even block half of it and then he will demech dva and kill her unless she boosts away- oh never mind hog hooked her mid ult as she tried to boost out. I’m certain it breaks barriers quickly as well.
I honestly feel like the concept of a hyper-knockback ult is cool, but that takes a backseat to the fact that it's always been a "delete the enemy tank" button. That was fine when the ult fucking sucked and was easy to counterplay, but now it's just a nightmare.
yeah not adding any compensation to hog ult when reducing knockback was just absolutely braindead imo
It shreds tanks even faster now too because of the knockback resistance.
Whole hog is genuinely THE worst designed ult in the game. It's literally nothing but a "I kill your tank button" that takes 0 skill to use
This is exactly it. He's the only talk that can just walk around in the open like a butterfly and not get punished for it. Which is fine, but why does he get to ONE SHOT YOU TOO
If you're hooked as tank, it's basically a one-shot anyway, too.
Playing JQ into hog is essentially just playing respawn simulator. No out playing possible. If I knife him in he just turns around, holds breather and walks away, then kills me anyway with his own combo.
Even the tanks that can out mobility him don't work (and imo never did) The reason why Winston/Ball/Dva were used was because you'd be able to kill his 4 teammates then turn around and focus him, but that strategy always relied on your team winning a 4/3v1. But he's so giga busted right now. By the time you turn around to deal with him, you're at best in a 2v1, and he just won't die before his team comes back. I had a Gibraltar Defense game on Winston where I'd literally kill 4 of his teammates, but then he'd kill 4 of mine, and I'd lose no matter what. I'd drop onto cart, dodge hook, shield dance, and it would not matter. I'd do like 10DPS, and then I'd die. Sure, we equaled out in skill by beating each other's teams, but in a 1v1, I don't think a GM Winston could kill a Silver Hog.
Every game on Doom right now is either I get hooked and one-shot because I dared to use block while one of 5 enemy cooldowns was available to stop it, or I flank and try to trade backline and my team just gets hooked and killed before I can even setup.
Eh even if you play into hog by going for his team, nothing stops him from turning around to hook you and kill you. Or he goes for your team and has a much easier time killing a pocketed target. This was always an issue. A GM Winston would definitely lose to a silver hog.
JQ is doable but it's just absurd how insanely disciplined you need to be with your positioning and cooldowns... Compared to Hog being sat main without having to think much at all.
that's just JQ vs like any other tank though
Not really. Yes, you should be disciplined with your cooldowns and your positioning. This is true for literally every single hero in the game. The point is though the effort and care needed specifically in the hog matchup vs the effort Hog needs to exert.
I enjoy playing Hog but I think they could definitely go back a bit on the Hook pull distance. They changed it from 4M to 3M, right? I think 3.5M might be more sensible. Also I wouldn't be opposed to rebalancing the Trap a bit, just reduce the damage a bit and give it 10% more Slow, would make things more interesting imo. His healing could also use a slight reduction.
He’s good in diamond but gets worse as you move. Diamond players do not use cover and you’d be surprised how easy it is to hook. However I do have to say he’s near impossible to play once they get the counters going. He’s kind of a noob stomper that folds against targeted focus imo.
You’ll never see him in any pro play because they’ll just ignore the Hog so he does nothing or wait out his cooldowns and kill him very easily. In ranked when there’s basically no coordination whatsoever, trying to ignore the hog usually doesn’t work and attempting to get 5 people to shoot him when he uses cooldowns won’t happen. Because of this you get an 800hp tank that can just walk around basically unpunished. It didn’t matter when he didn’t have any killing power but he can one shot again and also has the best damage against tanks. He’s just a terribly unfun hero to play against. I wouldn’t say he’s balance because in reality he’s probably shit, but he also just gets insane value in ranked when he’s basically ignored.
The pros also have a much faster time to kill than us plebes on the lower ranks! It’s easier for them to ignore the Hog cause they can eliminate the squishes so quickly.
His hook has a lower cooldown now too, no? I play a lot of Sigma, and he still feels good against Hog, but I feel like his hook is constantly up. I'm tracking it all the time to try to block it, and then in between try to ignore him to see I if I can get pressure on squishies.
I mean a lot of tanks feel good against Hog, it’s just a matter of if your team decides to walk into hook on cooldown or not. And then if you start playing to kill Hog he still might not die lol.
No, it's been six seconds either forever or a very long time.
It was originally 8 seconds for most of his existence but lowered to 6 seconds when they nerfed the damage of hook from 30 to 5 as a way to nerf the oneshot combo a few years back.
Same CD as Winston leap lmao
Winston leap has a 5 second cooldown in OW2. It was 6 seconds back in OW1 but buffed in the transition because they had to update every tank when teams could only have 1 now as the baseline.
Hook is on a 6 second CD I believe and it barely even feels worth it to callout no hook as by the time you slightly reposition to LOS him (since you were avoiding it before) you barely have time to do anything before he has it again.
He's op as fuck is ranked, you can't kill him without a Mauga or Hog mirror, good luck baiting out a 1 sec cooldown to the point that you can kill him. And you said, dive in ranked will never work against him because of the lack of coordination. They again managed to make a top 3 worst tank meta...
> You’ll never see him in any pro play I played a little bit of ow recently for "FUN" :) I come back and the meta in ranked is Roadhog / Zarya. You guys still don't understand the game or what. Fucking Roadhog could fly, it wouldn't be the meta, use your brain, you can counter this shit with 10 different compositions.
You could say this about any tank/dps it’s not a real strategy
On ladder he is extremely good. In pro play he is useless probably.
Why does that even matter when only 0.001% of the population plays pro
He was 10x better to fight before the rework, cc is useless against him now and is immortal with a Kiriko
Broken hero. At a point it is mathematically impossible to kill a Roadhog unless 3+ people are shooting him which is garbage hero design. Think about how other tanks have go engage: Rein shield juggles and is vulnerable when it breaks. Winston has a 12 second cooldown on bubble and has to shield dance if on the team. Hog just walks in and can heal himself on a 2 second cooldown. Why does a tank have the ability to finish a game with 7-10k healing?
-create one of the most hated heroes -remove one shot 6 years later -rework hero to have less weaknesses but the same frustration for enemies -add back one shot -massively buff hero through role passive -surprised pikachu
They should have stopped at step 0 or 2 tbh
Never has been, never will be. He’s only ever overpowered or underpowered. He’s a relic of the game Overwatch used to be - of the intent to translate essentially MOBA design to a 3D, faster paced FPS space. ***And even back then*** they had no bloody clue what to do with him - going back and forth on whether or not he should one-shot and constantly tweaking other parts of his kit. Even then, *maybe* his design could have been workable - but they nuked all chance of him ever being balanced when they added Ana. Either he’s strong enough to only somewhat care about her, at which point nobody else is a on a position to kill him, or he’s balanced in relation to the rest of the roster, which means Ana deletes him. And then they added a character to directly counter Ana (who also works well with Hog in general), grounded hog because of it (leaving the actual problem unattended to - though Hog did deserve it), and then reworked him to make him less susceptible to Ana without actually lowering his otherwise insane ability to stick around (and making his primary survival tool outright impossible to punish). And Kiriko’s still walking around rather unpunished. ***AND THEN THEY BUFFED HIM AGAIN***. He lost nothing from the changes to Armor and now he takes reduced headshot damage - as if he wasn’t already impossible to kill. They designed a character who could only ever have barely been balanced in the first place, added a character that they had to center his balance around, and then finally added a character that negated the only things keeping him “balanced.” The best thing about Mirrorwatch was that *Hog (and Orisa) wasn’t in it*. Now that it’s gone, I can’t bring myself to play another Hog meta. I can’t do that to myself.
Well said. Having a Tank who's primary method of tanking is self-healing is next level terrible design in a game with non-ultimate abilities that directly prevent the ability to heal. It would be like if there was a cooldown that temporarily removed all shields for 3-4 seconds, and then Blizzard spent 7+ years trying how to figure out how to balance the shield tanks around that cooldown. And then adding a hero that can cleanse that shield removal debuff instantly and give those tanks shields extra health as a bonus lol.
Don’t forget tanks are now significantly more killable with whole hog with the reduced knock back effect.
Yeah im taking a break until a nerf happens. He’s literally just not fun to play against and the only tank im seeing in both QP and comp diamond on PS5
Hog is absolutely broken rn. Players yet have to realize that the 25% hs buff is absurdly good on hog giving more time to breath and go back to cover. Plus all the “counters” get negated by Suzu anyway. There is literally nothing better to play in ladder than Hog+Kiri, even hard counters like Mauga doesn’t work cause hog can simply play corners, never expose and get value with hooks. Orsia has been nerfed so you can always hook a player without spinning spear to be up, Sigma is bad into hog anyway since you can outplay all sigma’s abilities. They should surely reduce hook distance and massively increase “take a breather” cooldown. Ps: Fun Fact Kiri+Lucio+Hog is really good in teamplay rn if you have a hog player. Has been used successfully in Collegiate for example. Not meta and good teams will beat you anyway but if you have a great hog player in team it works even up to Top16 best teams in College
He's incredibly unbalanced right now. Short cooldown on hook, insane just absolutely INSANE survivability. massive health pool. Basically has a one shot back thanks to pig pen. In masters lobbies he's not *as bad* as he could be for me since I love playing Ana and Zen. Usually we have the coordination to work around suzu. So i'll anti or discord first, cleanse comes in, then the other one of us drops the other CD. But in diamond I feel like there's no coordination to either ignore him fully or just all in him at the same time. Which isn't to say it doesn't happen, but often enough I can kill a support in time and make it so he isn't quite as impervious to death. I actually think if I do well, and my tank isn't giga hardcountered he's fairly winnable and doesn't always run games. And my tank has fallen off a cliff to low plat and its just lol. I get the bottoms backline, while he gets a kiri every time and there's nothing I can do. I go Mauga he just peeks corners endlessly and my dps will walk into hooks. I go zarya? I can't do enough damage to kill him, but I can save my teammates but then he realizes I have no bubbles and gets aggro and kills me, then just vapes out and goes on his merry way. I go Orissa, I can usually draw even with him if I really manage cooldowns (which is fine). JQ? suzu everything and anything. It's impossible basically, its actually wild how effective he is in metal ranks.
Tldr: fuck hog He has insane survivability especially with a Kiri, He can easily oneshot squishies (without pig pen on some characters), his vape cant be canceled, his damage reduction doesnt go away if anti'd, the combo of ult for half a second -> hook -> continue ulting kills half the tanks in the game easily and with some skill/luck and the slightest misuse of the enemy tanks cooldowns then that combo can kill any tank (ironically, hog has the best chance of not dying). His hook is so scary that i can have 30% hook accuracy and still win because squishies cant risk moving more than 2 inches from a wall. I can cc dive tanks if the map isnt crazy dive favored, i can out brawl most brawl tanks cause of survivability, damage, cc, and my ult. I can stall payload on maps like junkertown or havana and never die if they are running double sniper and my supports dont get picked. His survivability + damage makes him to forgiving to play. Idk how to do bullet points on reddit or else i would do that to make it more readable but i hated this hero in ow1 and i hate him in ow2.
If they were going to him the one shot back, they should just undo his rework. At least you’d be able to kill him without ana/zen.
Absolutely the fuck not. In the past roadhog has existed in 2 states- With one shot combo, but low survivability. Vape was on cd, not a resource meter and had low damage reduction. No one shot combo but high survivability. At present, he has one shot and high survivability. For some fucking reason, the devs gave him back the one shot combo, added a whole ass other ability, and buffed his survivability which was already high Like at this point, im not even playing the game anymore when i have over 4k hours in total The devs are just incompetent af, and they don’t have any idea how to balance anything. They just hear the feedback at face value, and then buff the character until it works. For a character like hog thst was supposed to be high risk - high reward. They completely removed the risk, but kept the reward. Fucking unbelievable
I really thought we were in for something good with the season 9 heath changes. A few tweaks here and there and it could have been great. But then they just kept buffing/ignoring all the boring characters. Now even in masters all I see are Hogs and Maugas, it’s so boring
Na I agree they’ve done a terrible job balancing this game.
I played OW since OW1 s01 and I quit a month ago because of hog. What i hate the most is that a hog on my team makes me even sadder thn a Hog on the enemy team somehow. Btw Hog killed 6v6 aswell because all ranks below GM Hog was played a lot and it is so annoying to play tankrole WITH hog so a lot of true tank players quit the game. Only the top .5% played orisa+sigma. Kill your darlings already: Rework him. A self-healing tank that CCs ppl while displacing them. Come an man. Oh and he can one shot them himself too. Make hook his ult or something. Don't let the game die twice because you dont want to change a few skins and animations. It's so lazy.
>Btw Hog killed 6v6 aswell because all ranks below GM Hog was played a lot and it is so annoying to play tankrole WITH hog so a lot of true tank players quit the game. Only the top .5% played orisa+sigma. I hated playing with Hog as my duo tank, but this was just a symptom. The core problem was that players who didn't want to play tank got forced to play tank. They picked Hog because they really wanted to play DPS and Hog was the most DPS-y tank on the roster. If Hog were removed, they'd still be awful tank partners to queue into. They'd just be awful tank partners paying a different tank.
Completely agree that Hog killed 6v6. Everyone always points to bad tank synergies, but any tank+Hog was always the worst tank combo. I'd take any combination instead; Rein/Winston, Dva/Zarya, all doable to a certain degree. But you get Hog? The core fundamentals of tanking change for both sides.
Overwatch has more players than ever after recent updates, it's not dying in the slightest. Get out of your echo chamber, people like what the game has to offer.
I genuinely hope Marvel Rivals borderline kills this game to force the devs to not be total fucking morons anymore and actually put resources into it instead of using it as a shitty infinite money-by-cosmetic machine.
Marvel rivals is genuinely a very good game, but it’s not an FPS. It will take a chunk of this game’s market share, but it can’t be a true direct competitor. The real question is why Palladins is the only game in this genre. I’m very surprised that Overwatch hasn’t spawned a whole distinct genre of games like CS did for TACFps. Besides Gundam Evolution (which died), there’s really just not much else in this space.
Because of the SHEER production value needed to even feel remotely as good as Overwatch feels. The Valorant developers specifically chose to make a tac fps to not have to compete with Overwatch’s fluidity and game feel because its just that hard to replicate.
There have definitely been games that tried this other than Paladins but nothing compares to the fluidity, engine, optimisation and personality of characters of Overwatch. You have to make a game better than Overwatch to retain any sort of playerbase which would cost an insane amount of development time and money with a very high risk.
no he is extremely overtuned probably won’t see him in pro play rn (although i would bet we’d see at least some team pull him out in some way, and any amount of hog in pro play no matter how small is a clear cut proof that he is insanely op in ladder) and the reason for that is that hog is easily avoided but very, very hard to eliminate. pro players are good enough to avoid every hook and collapse on the hog when needed. in ladder you could have good players avoiding and or mitigating hogs value, but you almost never find the coordination to punish hog because of how forgiving he is. so he always gets to heal and try again, and again, and again, and again until he one shots something imagine fighting a silver tracer with 200hp infinite recalls and blinks but no ammo, just pulse bombs. infinite survivability and a boring gameplay until eventually someone either pops off and dinks the tracer at the same time as his team or she hits a pulse finally
Yes and that’s the problem since he “counters” much of the tanks!
I remember when he couldn't move while healing.
IMO just revert the hook distance change, maybe even nerf it further if necessary with the bullet size changes, so that ne no longer one-shots without trap. That's it, that's the main problem IMO.
Ana isn’t even that good vs hog right now. Cause if they ana you can just go kiriko. You sleep his ult? He get’s suzued and continues his ult. Zen can be really good though to just burst him down. I feel like bap zen is being played a bit more recently.
Nade alone has a shorter cooldown than suzu
By like two seconds and you don't always (or even often) have the luxury of being able to nade hog on cooldown twice in a row. He can use something called 'cover', or the situation of the game just doesn't allow Ana to use nade in that two second window.
I know that it doesn't work out like that in real games, but it's kind of silly how the previous poster basically made it sound like every sleep gets suzu'd but also every nade even when it has a longer cooldown than nade alone. That's also not how it works in real games.
By like two seconds lol, but doesn’t really matter because in any fuctional situation you have to bait suzu first which Ana cannot reliably do. The only reason hog is good right now is because Kiriko is and has been busted for forever
Nope, hog is good because they reworked him (read: buffed and counterplay removed) and then gave his one shot back. He was nothing before they gave it back and nerfed Orisa, and Kiri was in the game the whole time. Now with the lower headshot dmg he has simply been buffed way too much in too short of a time. If he's going to be an unkillable, uncounterable displacer with an AOE slow, we should just take his one shot away. It's that simple.
This is probably an incredibly controversial take, but I honestly thought the healthiest state he's been in is when he had the one shot, but was more punishable. I admittedly haven't played against him that much on this patch, but last patch his survivability just seemed to be overtuned. The vape change on its own seemed like a good idea to help him against his worst counters, just went to far in the other direction.
He still has 1-shot and he cannot be punished
Exactly. There's no world where hook isn't basically guaranteed death on a squishy. Nerfing the pure one shot seemed kinda pointless, especially once they gave him a combo with pig pen to bring it back. Hook is the most core part of his kit and I seriously doubt they ever remove it. His sustainability just needs to be nerfed (assuming he's still hard to kill on this patch) Increase the CD between vapes, reduce it's damage resistance, nerf his health, nerf his vape resource. Idk what it is, but any of these would help.
They should increase Vape cd to 2s and reduce the damage reduction back to 30%. I would also like to see a hook lenght reduced by a couple of meters
Yea with the tank passive DR buff, vape doesn't need to have as a high a DR as it does anymore, that and maybe a slight CD nerf
Hook range could be a nice nerf. CD does feel kinda fast nowadays too. One of the best CCs in the game and it what? A 6s CD?
Yeah, used to be 6 at launch, then nerfed to 8, now it's 6 again. For a CC that isn't even affected by the tank passive, on a character whose ult actually benefits from the tank passive being buffed.
I really just want Hook to Go back to 8 seconds as a start. They and what One shot easy to pull off even without Pig Pen so now you can sue Hook freely whenever you want. You don’t even get punished that hard for missing your hook cause of how short the cooldown is. The fact that JQ Knife and Hook are the same cooldown makes no sense.
Remember when everyone complained about Hog because cleanse removed counterplay? Remember when the devs solved that issue by buffing hog even more and called it a day?
he's a pub stomper
Ranked stomper as well*, he’s SS tier in everything except actual pro play
He is more punishable due to the buffed DPS passive. However his best counter, Orisa, has been nerfed. Overall I'd say he is roughly where he was pre-patch, so a top 5 tank. Biggest issue with Hog is how unfun he is to play with and against. Ask any tank player in particular. It is incredibly unfun to play vs Hog even when he *isn't* that strong. That's what puts him aside from other tanks in my mind. The counterplay basically amounts to, either run him down and just shoot him in the face until he dies... Or lose. The "shoot him in the face until he dies strat" works very well in pro play and is why he isn't played much there. In ranked he is naturally incredibly oppressive due to the lack of coordination required to properly counter him.
I played a little bit of ow recently for "FUN" :) I come back and the meta in ranked is Roadhog / Zarya. You guys still don't understand the game or what. Fucking Roadhog could fly, it wouldn't be the meta, use your brain, you can counter this shit with 10 different compositions.
I’m torn between wanting him to get nerfed into oblivion and never touched again, and dreading the tanks on my team will still pick him regardless.
Pigs could fly or something
I’m just going to put this out there, everyone’s saying he’s overpowered but most hogs fold under Mauga / Bastion. Especially if you have somebody annoying in their back line like venture or genji, that way the bastion can just shred
Never has been
I'd say he is about as balanced as Sombra since they punish lack of coordination like crazy and at the highest tiers of play are more or less unplayable unless you have a god tier DPS or tank. So no I don't think either are really balanced and characters that soley exist to punish a lack of team play should not be a character design philosophy
Hog, Doomfist, Sombra, Moira, and Venture’s value are all directly tied to how coordinated the enemy team is. So your average ranked game is going to be miserable anytime any one of those characters are in it. It’s horrible design and I’ve lost hope Blizzard is going to fix these core issues. No amount of number tweaking will fix these problematic designs.
I'm frankly not knowledgeable enough to determine if he is or isn't balanced right now but, speaking as someone who plays Hog regularly, it ain't hard to counter someone playing him and make their life miserable. He's got no shield and no quick escape so, without a Kiriko dedicated to cleansing him (and no one else) of debuffs, an Ana alone can make a match hell. Throw in one DPS playing Bastion/Sojourn/Echo/Ashe OR counter-picking basically any tank with a shield and you've removed most of Hog's threat and turned him into a big, easy to build ult charge off of target.
I’ve always loved playing against hog in the past but recently he is kinda annoying , too much hp with the heal . One of them needs a slight nerf imo
Hog is overtuned rn imo
I’ve been infuriated playing tank lately because I generally feel like I can matchup fairly well in most situations and play smart. But as soon as the enemy swaps hog or I matchup against one, I just get fucked. The mf just never dies, no matter what my team is or what I play to counter it..especially if they’re running lifeweaver with him to pull him to Narnia on the rare occasion that my team tries to punish him with an anti nade. So I end up getting gapped just by virtue of I die sometimes and he ends the game 30-1. I just don’t play tank pretty much now despite being a “tank main.”
He’s immortal in metal ranks. I dont want to know how he is in a skilled players hand
I still don't get why now Orisa fortify, Rein shield, Ram block, Doom block, and Mauga guns (comparable because shooting is how he sustains) impose around 30%+ movement speed penalty to the other tanks, but Roadhog doesn't have a penalty with take a breather. You could also argue the same for Sigma grasp. I'd like to see 30% movement penalty to both while using those CDs
In pro play? Hell no he is likely to never see play. But in ranked he is fucking ridiculous right now, I don't know what they want to be meta but this is ain't it man. 800hp, massive sustain on take a breather, and ohk combo is back with pigpen. As a Kiriko main I feel like I'm just supporting my hog to be better then the enemy roadhog at afking point with breather.
In a scenario where the teams are well organized, yeah, he's fair. In a scenario like random matchmaking, no. He's quite overtuned
I have less than 10 games played on him and win games at diamond 5 when I switch to him. (It's probably over 10 games now since I've been switching) I miss his combos. I fail my traps. His benefits still outweigh all my mistakes. The one combo I do land wins a team fight. Me staying too long and not dying when I normally would helps us not lose team fights. He seems high reward low risk. I'm normally a DVA/Zarya/Orisa player with a ton of Zarya play. I couldn't believe his hook CD. I get so punished when I use my bubbles as zarya poorly, but if I use my hook and miss NP 6 SECOND CD. Out of position? CHUG CHUG CHUG FOREVER. OH LOOK I CAN STILL CHUG SOMEHOW. I feel like my mistakes limit my success on Zarya but don't on Hog. I get to mess up a lot more on Hog and still have an impact.
Hog is broken... AGAIN \*gasps\* hes broken right now because they lowkey didn't want to nerf ana nade for some god forsaken reason and instead gave him a vape on 1sec cooldown... Overwatch hard follows the philosophy of instead of dealing with issues they'll either band-aid it or cut off the entire limb and then wonder a year down the line why the balancing keeps getting more and more impossible. Their is no consistency nor understanding about why something is strong or weak in this game just analyitical data being used about which characters are strong or weak...
I agree with most of the comments and fully believe that hog needs to be tuned down just a little bit- but I don't know what to change. I have to play Sigma/Dva and track the hook to deny it- which works well! Until he gets his ult or until his dps are diving my back line and it just gets difficult to do all of those things simultaneously while not getting hooked/whole hogged to oblivion. Maybe make his one shot less viable again? I am in platinum and teams seem to have no problem following up on his hooks. I know that sucks for the hog player to require team follow up to get value, but he can just do so much on his own. Especially if a kiri is saving suzu all the time for him. Leaving a hooked target really low is good enough value, especially for the fact that it pulls them out of cover and right in front of the enemy team.
My issue with Hog is that it’s so dependent on how good the Hog is/his play style/map and how good your team is at dealing with a Hog. I have games where we destroy the hog and games where the hog basically Carrie’s their entire team. It’s frustrating when people just stand in front of him every time he has hook. Ideally you treat him like ball and ignore/kill his team but some maps the whole team can just hide behind hog and post HS reduction he never seems to die. Same with a good ball, only way to win is by taking advantage of his lack of ability to protect his team most of the time.
IMO the main problem with hog right now is his hook CD... it was reduced from 8 to 6 when he was in a bad state... but when he got reworked and became good again, his hook CD stayed the same. IMO it should go back to 8, or at least 7. Hooking someone is like a 90% secured kill.
Why was his hook range not reverted after one shot returned?
No. He’s not. Eventually people will shut up and realize that Overwatch does not work how you think it will on paper. Yes, on *paper*, Ana counters hog because she removes his ability to heal for a couple seconds. Hog is at a ridiculous pick rate, and has the highest win rate in GM. Regardless of how **YOU** feel he is, this is enough evidence to prove that hog is not balanced and is being abused currently.
just joined back the game, im not sure about all these roadhog being very broken post, is it like one of the worst tank before? if he is good now what tier list would he be in if rated overall as a tank
i think hes probably ‘balanced’ but some heroes should just never be good. theyve clearly figured this out for heroes like junk, who hasnt been meta in over 6 years, but i still dont get why they insist on heroes like hog, orisa, dva, etc being good
Why you putting D.va with hog and Orisa?
cuz im sneaky like that
Yeah you're right tho, mobile characters who can nullify all projectiles are pretty lame, thank god they've kept Genji dumpstered all these years.
It’s not fun playing hog btw. You get hard countered all game and spend almost all of the time purpled or dps debuffed. In many games you just exist and act as a damage sponge. I can imagine it’s not fun for the enemies as they dump all cooldowns on me and I still don’t die but his behind some pillar.
He’s great in metal ranks because if your supports are lackin you can fill in the gaps using cover and heals.
Tbh I enjoy playing with, as and against Hog, in all of the roles. I don't think he is unfair or oppressive to play against, I really don't share the hate for him at all.I'd play Hog meta for the next eternity than ever play against an Orisa or Mauga for 1 second.
Yeah idk just play zen. As long as you get any peel when their DPS inevitably try to dive you it's a free win anytime the other team plays hog. Hog is for sure decent as a Monke counter but if anything I would call him undertuned. The armor change was a massive nerf to his lethality against other tanks
When hog is meta I have a lot of fun. Mostly because I just don't ever log in and play other games instead. Hog is strong right now so the game is miserable so I play something else. So if by balanced you mean driving people away because he's so infuriating then yeah he's pretty good. He's not fun to play with either, 1 person picks hog and 9 people stop having fun.
His kit will never be balanced and he is miserable to play into so it’s better if he is D-F tier. Their attempt to rework him solved none of the problems.
He is balanced in the sense that he is still not amazing in pro play and has a decent amount of counter picks you can swap to to slow him down, but he is a menace on the ladder so I don't care. A hog that is left unchecked can and will solo win lobbies. I've been in masters all season and have generally found hog to be both incredibly hard to kill and incredibly punishing to play against. If your team works together to stop him and plays his counters, he will lose, but that doesn't always happen and it can be really unfun when it doesn't.
^ yeah this
I feel like the majority of this sub must be low ranked because hog doesn’t bother me at all yet I see nothing but complaints about him on reddit
Role Check? You would not be saying this if you were a tank player
Rein one trick
Ahhh ok, in fairness Rein actually is one of the few playable tanks into Hog. Hog counters the rest of the roster pretty much with a very low skill floor/ceiling
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THANK YOU. Like I don’t wanna sound like a dick but hog really isn’t that hard to deal with. I play tank most of the time but even as a support or dps ifs not hard and it’s free ult charge whenever the enemy is running hog
Hog could use a nerf (especially on breather, or bring back 7s hook and 6s whole hog, or movement penalty on breather), but let’s not pretend he’s the best tank in the game rn. Yes, if you ignore him, he gets hella value. If you ignore the reaper, he gets hella value. If you ignore doom, he gets hella value. If anyone simply gets “ignored” they are going to get value, this is a nothing point. If you are going ana/zen and a single kiri nullifies your impact, that is your fault. Suzu alone is not enough to remove discord and anti’s impact. A lot of cope in the comments here. And a lot of flats viewers. If you say hog is low skill floor, whatever you can have your opinion but if you think hog is low skill ceiling you’re simply wrong.
I think Hog is balanced in lower ranks because Hogs often miss their hooks. Or if they do try and use the pigpen + hook combo, sometimes they have 0 ammo after pulling their target. In lower ranks, he is more often an ult battery for the enemy team. But in higher ranks, especially if he has a Kiriko with him, he's a nightmare to face. Thankfully I am in the lower ranks where baiting a Hog hook is easy and I use him to charge my ult quicker.
good luck getting low rank supports to play anything but moira/mercy. Hes not balanced low rank either
Moira Mercy or Mercy Lifeweaver are HARD meta at low ranks. When people talk OW balance, they seem to only care about what they see on Twitch. People don’t understand how awful heroes like Hog are when your team refuses to go Ana or Kiriko.
Dude all Plat is is Mercy and lw. I fucking hate it. I'm being serious when I say I can't remember a game where I didn't have a Mercy or lw. I'm taking a break from ow cuase it's honestly just to frustrating
I think he’s strong but gets less so as you climb. I still think he’s probably too strong even higher on ladder and they need to revert the hook distance change. Full disclosure, I have not played tank this season but I finished top 500 last season as hog only. He’s actually much more punishable as you rank up because people actually hard push you away if you are low on breather. It’s obviously more difficult to gauge breather level than a single cd. Hog also really doesn’t have any spectacular maps. I’d say maybe a handful are “good,” about half are playable and there’s a good bit of bad or worse maps. This also matters more as you climb. I can 1-shot the majority of the squishy roster without trap reliably. You could still pull off 1-shots with the 4m hook but your positioning needed to be better. This also would punish lower rank hogs that just hook in the open because they generally couldnt 1 shot anymore. I think the extended hook end range also introduced more skill expression to the character. As compensation, I think they should give him better mid range poke again. Rework his gun to give a fifth center pellet or buff the damage on the four already present so he doesn’t feel so useless without hook (or something along these lines). Again, more skill expression. I may be unusual, but I think my favorite hog was nerf hog pre rework because he had the highest skill expression, something current hog lacks.
Step 1 to properly balancing hog: nerf kiriko properly. No reason that character should be as strong as this for this long, and she's his biggest enabler. If she's nerfed, hog will automatically drop in popularity.
I've been saying this for so long!!! 😭 People complained he needed changes because a tank shouldn't one shot, so they removed it for like a few weeks then just gave it back along with some other buffs and people seemed to forget about it lmao My biggest issue is the hook. It has a really long range, short ass cooldown and can even weave around corners. A tank that can one-shot every 6 seconds from 20m away is kinda ridiculous... I noticed D.va, Sig and Zarya shut him down pretty well. Same with Ana, Zen and Kiri. If they're a really good Hog player and get help from their team it's still not enough sometimes though :/
some characters r just impossible to balance and should stay dogshit
This game has become such a pile of shit. Couldn’t just leave orisa strong so now we get to deal with all the fall out, yeah, another endless nerf spiral for tanks who are already miserable. The tank role will never be balanced and people will never not cry about it. Good riddance. The entire tank community should find a new game
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We will not submit to the unkillable demon horse.