I see a lot of confusion/incorrect information in your responses.
What ?
Have you never played against deathball or triple tank before ? Because these comps can smash straight through most defenses.
Either way even in a 2/2/2 vs 2/2/2 scenario, roadhog has enough HP to walk up to a Reinhardt and hook him (at least when someone is defending him like a D.va or Reinhardt).
I don’t understand your confusion - you are aware that Rein’s shield blocks the hook, right? What organised game are you playing in which a fat ult battery roadhog walks all the way up to and THROUGH a Rein’s shield with the full enemy team behind, who do not retaliate and destroy the hog before he could possibly get in any possition to hook the Rein? Roadhog slowly lumbering in front of a team poised behind a Rein is their wet dream. One ult battery, get it while it’s hot! A good hog would NEVER do this!
Far more sensible for hog to alt fire the shield down or ult it down with support from the team. Then sure, he deserves kills on the enemy team squishies since they are then without a tank. And if you look at hog’s pickrate, let’s not pretend hog is an integral part of storming a point and dealing with the (inevitable) Rein right now.
He still does that.
So why nerf his damage? If he can still do something but badly (and unreliably), then ultimately they are saying he is ok to do that thing. I recall Jeff stating that they wanted to make heroes feel powerful. This was a needless nerf.
No, apparantly the devs themselves thought that Roadhog’s hook was too strong even months after the fix came out
I’m sorry…what?! That’s just a patch note summary of the changes!
I’m going to say this now and it might sound rude, but I think it needs saying. You don’t seem to have suffficient knowledge of the past situation to properly add to this debate.
Roadhog’s damage nerf was a reaction to the community’s complainers. Here is what Jeff had to say:
Players think that every change we make to hero has the intent of buffing or nerfing that hero. Changes to heroes are usually made to make the game better. That’s what we were trying to do with Roadhog. Our goal wasn’t a nerf – our intent wasn’t a nerf. Our intent was to try to remove a behavior that had become “not ok” with our player base – the one shot combo.
What was particularly absurd about this justification about “one hit combo not being ok with community” was that they added doomfist right after hog’s damage nerf. Not only would old roadhog have destroyed doomfist, but doomfist could one hit KO 18 out of the then 25 heroes in the game, while Hanzo could one hit 22 (one being baby Dva).
No doubt you will have some things to say about why roadhog deserves different treatment but that is not the point being made here. The points are as follows - Jeff’s post proves hog’s damage nerf WAS a reaction to the community, and not THEIR intention, it’s in black and white in the quoted passage above. Which is the opposite of what you’re arguing. Second, their excuse that one hit combo is not acceptable was a joke given they added a character with one hit ability at the same time, and took a very long time to patch Hanzo’s scatter (which is odd if they found one hit such a problematic game mechanic). In short, the damage nerf was NOT needed and was a knee jerk reaction to vocal complainers.
No, once again, the prominence of dive came about because the tank meta died with Ana’s, Dva’s and lucio’s nerf (though mainly Ana’s).
You are deliberately missing a large piece of the pie - Roadhog’s nerf was a big part of dive’s proliferation. Hog could CONSISTENTLY deal with characters like Winston before. Roadhog would very easily counter Winston before with his high hook and shot damage combo.
You’ll notice that a lot of my responses come from the viewpoint that despite Roadhog’s hook fix he was still more powerful than intended.
How Roadhog was originally designed in terms of damage at least was how he was intended to be, else you are arguing Roadhog was a randomly generated hero. Again, as Jeff’s above quote shows, he was damage nerfed in reaction to a sect of the complaining community. You should know this history if you’re going to try debate about it.
As someone who heavily played Roadhog (still do) during the earliest seasons of the game, that’s just blatant lying, a quote from someone on the us forums which I’ll probably get wrong since it’s been two years ‘’ currently any position that you can be in is being out of position’’.
I’m BLATANTLY lying? What part exactly? I am correct in stating three conditions that pre-nerfed damage roadhog needed to kill you, no? You needed to be in a position he could hook you (e.g. NOT behind a shield or tank, or not in a high place/near a door with achievable line or sight break, AND within medium range or closer), your team FAILED to react (e.g. zarya bubble, boop, heal, enemy hog hook, McCree stun…list goes on). And…finally, CRUCIALLY…hog NEEDS to land his hook, which after hitbox patch was by no means guaranteed and is still an action of skill. Consider characters like genji - this can be hard enough in itself. And if you look at average hook accuracy it is NOWHERE near 100%. So for Blizzard to implement a damage nerf that allows Genji to escape for instance due to roadhog’s hook and damage inconsistency is pure, unfettered garbage. I’m sorry, but it’s true. All these conditions must be met, so a kill is justly deserved. All the while there are plenty of one hit kill characters who need no such conditions fullfilled.
And your comments about any position being out of position are not well received. I just gave you some examples above of relatively safe positions. But even then, when I face off against Roadhog I am rarely hooked and killed due to having a grasp of positioning. It is not difficult to position yourself to avoid being hooked while still being effective. But In cases where a Roadhog does seriously dunk you, then credit to the very skilled Roadhog. Admittedly I have clocked hundreds of hours on hog from the very beginning and he is my main, but it’s really not difficult to grasp positioning to avoid him.
His original design made it better for you as a player to flank your enemies and get a quick kill, instead of trying to use your hook as utility tool for the team.
I’m sorry but you can’t argue he now has more of a team utility. He could still hook into his team before the larger characters who he could not finish. Now he is just less consistent at killing which allows the enemy team to return fire, thus labelling hog an ult battery.
A good hog would have hung around with the team anyway prior to nerfing, especially with characters like Zarya who he paired well with.
Eh, no ?
I mean anecdotally speaking that’s just not true.
Statement is completely true and as such I’m left doubting your knowledge on the issue. You could google any of those things I said (ult battery, shield breaker) along with “roadhog” and return plenty of results. Hog’s nerf into a bad place following his damage decrease was widely acknowledged, even if not absolutely universally. And yeah, of course he is a shield buster.
You seem to have misread what I wrote down
‘‘Roadhog has one of the most consistent win rates in the game at about 50% in all the ranks above gold.’’
I didn’t say that he had the best win rate, I said he had consistent win rates. Admittedly not the best but he’s consistent at around 50%.
You can probably figure out why I misinterpreted you - because your intended statement now that you have explained it has no meaning, and if anything strengthens my point.
Roadhog is in the bottom third for winrate generally and rock bottom at higher tiers. So if you’re going to say he has consistently had this winrate - all you are saying to me is that he has consistently been a low performer. So, why would Blizzard want to nerf a low performer?
I don’t recall what exact slice of time or format I looked at this stat on way back when, but I fondly remember that hog was the 6th most picked character in comp at higher tiers prior to his damage nerf. And now…not even close. That tells you far more than your win rate statistics. Because 1 in 6 pick rate means both teams probably had one, so one team with hog would always lose. So yeah, don’t trust win rate statistics…look at pick rate!
Once again, at the time Roadhog was the only character making Reaper a bad pick. You seem to be mixing his current state with what he used to be which isn’t a good idea.
Current examples would be Doomfist and Brigitti, two characters who were nerfed because they made other characters pointless.
You made a fatal mistake in naming roadhog the one hero making reaper a bad pick. The one making Reaper a bad pick (and still to this day) is quite simply…Reaper!
And this is why he should have been redesigned. Brigitte and Doomfist still have a place, but reaper does not. He still does basically what he always has. Which is not that much during organised play. So themsolution should not have been to nerf one hero to make way for someone to be a bit less garbage and redundant, but to redesign said garbage in a similar manner to what they did with Tjorb/symmetra. And believe me, I have factored in all the intricacies of the time rather when making this point rather than focusing on the modern day, as I remember those days very well. It was a dark time for roadhog.
I don’t disagree with you but at the time that wasn’t the issue at hand.
It absolutely was the issue at hand. They could have reworked reaper and not introduced a character like Doomfist that would have been easily countered by pre-nerfed hog. It’s a bit ridiculous when you think about it - they had the idea of Doomfist and they damn well knew hog would counter him. So just in time for Doomfist, hog’s damage gets nerfed. This is not sensible character design - nerfing existing characters to make way for new ones!
No, he wasn’t. I played him during the 3 months after his nerfs and he was fine, I had to switch up my playstyle a lot but that was about it and while it’s true that sometimes I couldn’t pull off certain combo’s that’s mostly because of old habits that should’ve died with the nerfs.
Wow…
…really? I am dumbfounded that anyone could claim that Roadhog was in a good place after this nerf, even if trying to win an internet argument. I feel like you could very easily educate yourself on the stats and general thoughts of people about this nerf at the time (see Reddit for instance). Roadhog is my main who I have played more than every other hero combined, for hundreds of hours, and I have played him from day 1 to now.
He was in a TERRIBLE place after his damage nerf. I noticed it immediately, as did the community, and importantly, the stats confirmed this sentiment.
Don’t just take my word for it - this site won’t let me link others but I can quote Game Revolution:
With the hash tag #RIPRoadhog becoming more and more popular, we now have numbers to back up that sentiment, thanks to Overbuff, a website that compiles Overwatch stats for both players and heroes. In Competitive Play, since the patch on June 20, Roadhog’s Pick Rate has dropped from 6.87 percent to 2.76 percent, putting him near the bottom of Overwatch‘s roster (right down there with heroes such as Hanzo, Symmetra and Junkrat).
Similarly Roadhog’s win rate has declined from 48.92 percent on June 20 to a dismal 43.02 percent today. That may not seem like a huge drop, and it may not look like it on the graphs, but, if that win rate holds steady, it would make Roadhog the second-worst hero in terms of win rate in competitive play, ahead of only Sombra (at 42.55 percent).
You are most definitely an anomaly for not feeling the change. Both the stats and the community show a very different story.
Pick rates sure, terrible to play not so much.
Though keeping that in mind there is an argument to make for changing all these characters because their pick rates are either lower or barely above that of RH.
Pick rate is always a more accurate determinant or a hero’s effectiveness in organised play, far more than win rate stats that you just tried to pull. If you look at win rate you will always see Symm and Tjorb at the top despite hardly ever been picked form comp (due to the quirk of people switching off them when they lose the point). Additionally, win rate is brought down by the fact popular characters are often on both teams and one team always loses, knocking the stats.
Why is pick rate a good stat to evaluate? Because if a character is not as effective in organised play, they are less likely to be picked. When Roadhog got damage nerfed, his pick rate tanked (see above quote). It just so happens that his nerf was strong enough that it affected win rate too. Most importantly, pick rates show trends - see how unpopular Mercy is? Well, that’s because she’s far less effective now.
Show me.
The fact a major gaming site documents a twitter movement about Roadhog’s death at the time (along with the roadhog stats showing his popularity and winrate drop) in my above Game Revolution quote above says enough to support my statement. But really, the fact you’re asking me to “show you” again tells me you don’t have a sufficient level of knowledge of this to be having a debate. I shouldn’t have to show you as you should already know this, or should be willing to verify this yourself with searches, if you’re going to somewhat bluntly try to challenge me during this debate. This forum won’t let me post links but it really would not be difficult for you to google this and see very strong support for this sentiment on various outlets, along with the above stats I provided.
If his damage was nerfed it was clearly not intended was it ?
As above, as shown by Jeff’s tweet Roadhog’s nerf was a reaction to a vocal community. The original roadhog was the one designed by Blizzard.
He has only been buffed since ? Those buffs are due to the rest of the cast changing.
That was clearly a typo and should have been “buffs” rather than “nerfs”. Very plainly a typo, and also, he has also has some nerfs since (reduced alt fire distance, whole hog nerf…).
What ?
Roadhog
Head hitbox size reduced by 20%
Bullet damage decreased by 33%
Fire rate increased by 30%
Clip size increased from 4 to 5
If I’m not mistaken those are buffs.
I am sorry but again when you type things like this I am frustratingly aware that I am not debating with someone well versed in the subject matter.
Aside from head hitbox these are not buffs. And even the head hitbox reduction means little due to the other changes I will now discuss.
Roadhog’s gun was straight up nerfed here. He does less damage per shot now but has more shots per second. For a character who is primarily effective in the one shot following the hook, to nerf the damage of each shot, and specifically that one shot at perfect closeness, is devastating. The head hitbox reduction meant little given than roadhog took much more fire due to less frequently securing kills. If the enemy is more often alive, they easily make up for that reduced head hitbox size by being alive to take more shots. And still, roadhog has a damn big head to hit quite easily.
It seems you fell prey to Blizzard’s cover up statement that this nerf had no meaningful effect on his overall damage. Despite the fact it quite clearly did, since the shot after a hook does so much more damage than most other shots in almost all situations other than firing at massive shields. Blizzard’s statement was as follows:
The Scrap Gun changes reduce the power of his hook combo and alternate fire burst damage potential while still keeping his DPS roughly the same.
And you can very easily search for maths breakdowns and discussions of how bogus a statement this is. As I say, his real damage to anything other than shields comes in in the shot right after the hook. That’s when their juicy body is right I’m front of you. It’s a lot less reliable damage on your other shots.
Put it this way, DPS resulting in kills far more often happens in the shot right after a hook than any other shots. And it is THAT single shot that was nerfed.
Sorry, that was D.va. They could’ve said something like that with RH but I don’t recall. I do however remember them decreasing his spray pattern size after the above nerf.
Nope, they did it with hog. Lucky for you it’s in the above quote.
Not really, it’s all just conjecture ‘‘imagination’’ means jack if there isn’t any data to prove either case.
You seem to have given an answer with no meaning/sense here - what are you trying to say? Or is it that you have no response?
You said to me that no matter the reaper rework, hog would always have rendered reaper useless. This is a very senseless statement as there are near infinite levels of rework that could have happened to reaper (that you did not seem to be able to imagine) that would have both stopped hog treading on reaper’s toes whilst also rendering reaper a more useful character. I even gave some examples. It seems incredible (read: ludicrous) to me that you could immediately assimilate every possible rework that reaper could EVER receive in order to dismiss each one and state that hog would always render him useless. Indeed, incredible!
This comment is basically about you not being able to kill Reaper, which was the intended purpose and not about game design.
Again not true, as stated again, the hog damage nerf was a reaction (Jeff’s words). Reaper’s sudden immunity to being reliably killed was a novel concept when it happened and certainly not present during the design of the characters.
You seem to have misunderstood so I’ll rephrase ‘‘Instead of Roadhog being a character that could flank easily, he was turned into a character who sits in his team’s back line to oppress flankers himself’’
This suggests lack of hog familiarity - hog is now usually best placed up front destroying the shield and then capturing the point with his high sustain. Although he could flank before, good hogs still patrolled for flankers and hung out with the team. It’s just now he is far less effective and less satisfying to play, and far less a deterrent to dive. It’s sad.
As for your last part, I see this as a failed attempt at pointing out contradiction. I say failed as both statements are true. Hog still can combo many attack characters yet this is unreliable and inconsistent. And with inconsistency comes frustration.
