For those getting salty over Roadhog’s hook, there’s some good news: major revisions are being made to his attack. His trademark hook n’ pull (instructions are as follows: hook a player, pull them towards you, hit them on the head) has been criticised as being overpowered for a while now. Some players recall getting hooked through walls, thrown off the side of maps, and generally obliterated by his devastating main attack. Geoff Goodman, Overwatch’s principal designer, took to the forums to reveal three big alterations to our rotund masked buddy’s offensive strategy to make him a tad weaker.
To start off, “the hook victim will now move into the position directly in front of Roadhog, rather than just a straight line towards him”. So when you snag someone as Roadhog, they’ll appear under your nose. In the past players who got caught could be dragged to his side, and from there they could escape fairly easily - but now they’ll be ripe for a smack as they’ll pop up face-to-face with the Hogster. Coming hand-in-hand with this change is the “cap on how far 'to the side' you can be pulled, so you can't just hook someone, spin 180, and dump someone off a cliff”. Goodman explains it pretty well. The hook can’t be used to swing players out into the void anymore, which will inevitably be met with delight.
So, onto the next tweak: there’s going to be a “line-of-sight check” when it comes to seeing if a hook connects with its target. In other words, now Roadhog can only hook players he can see. This is a much-needed fix, as in the past the portly renegade could grab characters through walls, which caused quite a bit of fuss.
Finally, this line-of-sight check is sustained the entire time someone has been hooked. Goodman explains that “if this check fails, the hook breaks off and returns to Roadhog. This means if you get hooked and move out of LOS [line-of-sight] quickly (either you dashed, were falling, were pushed, etc), the hook will now break early and not pull the target”. No longer is the attack an overpowered grab, holding onto you even if if you blink out of the way as Tracer or fall far too fast to be caught.
Those who main Roadhog might feel a bit sore, but these changes are sure to make matches a bit fairer. You won’t have to wait long to try the tweaks out either, as Goodman says that it should be on the Public Testing Realm “asap”, possibly even this week. Blizzard’s going to keep an eye on Roadhog too to see if anything else needs editing. So give him a go for yourself to see if you get hooked on the changes to his trademark weapon!
