Roadhog Nerfs Are Coming to Overwatch
By Derek Nichols 07 January 2017
After promising changes to Roadhog’s hook ability in Overwatch late last year, Blizzard details how the ability is changing and when players can expect to see it.
Just four days into 2017 and Blizzard has been quite active with its very popular team-based shooter, Overwatch. The game just recently wrapped up the Winter Wonderland holiday event which added a new game type focused on the arctic explorer Mei, along with a ton of seasonal content like skins, sprays, emotes, voice lines, and more. After recently launching a brand new map, Blizzard is already looking at making further adjustments to the game such as balancing some of its characters like Roadhog.
Originally mentioned a few months ago as Hook 2.0, Blizzard is finally looking into fixing a number of inconsistencies with Roadhog’s hook ability. According to Geoff Goodman who serves as the principal designer on Overwatch, the team is changing how the hook functions, making it less unfair. The hook victim now moves into the position directly in front of Roadhog when captured, rather than getting pulled in a straight line. Goodman clarified that there is a cap on how far someone is able to move to the side, so players can’t hook someone, spin, and dump a character over a cliff. Blizzard hopes this change makes the hook feel more consistent as to where the victim gets pulled.
The biggest change for many however is the fact that Roadhog is now no longer able to hook someone he can’t see thanks to a new line-of-sight check from Roadhog’s position instead of the hook. In addition, a persistent line-of-sight check back to Roadhog has been added once the hook has landed. If the check fails, the hook will break off its victim if that person is able to move out of his line of sight either by a last minute dash, roll, or fall.
There’s no clear cut date for when this patch will go live, but for PC players on the PTR server, they could be seeing these changes as early as later this week. While the post is focused solely on Roadhog, further down in the topic Goodman admits that Sombra isn’t as strong as the team initially felt and that a boost could be coming her way down the road.
In order news, Overwatch recently received a brand new map called Oasis. The control based map appears to be situated in a technologically advanced city within the Arabian Desert where inhabitants are governed by a mysterious group known only as the Ministries. The free map is the first of many more updates Jeff Kaplan and the team has planned for the rest of 2017 including new heroes, maps, events, and much more.
How do you feel about these upcoming changes to Roadhog?
Overwatch is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
