Roadhog - From Flanker to True Tank

"Roadhog Rides Again!" - One of Roadhog's popular voice lines, perfectly fits his re-emergence in the current meta. Once hailed as the king of flanking, Roadhog now finds himself as more of a true tank that can work out of the core of a deathball formation. In this post, I want to take a look at how Roadhog has evolved as a character and how his player base has had to change their play styles.


At one point in time, Roadhog could run vogue, away from his teammates, hooking enemies from around corners and eliminating squishy characters with a simple hook and shoot combo. He was one of the most picked characters in the game. As a primary Roadhog player, he was fantastic to play. As a squishy character that played against him? Not so much. There were times I would get hooked as tracer or Soldier:76 behind a wall or around a corner, and just feel cheated. I remember pouring my emotions into the mic to my teammates for every bogus hook that connected and my teammates would echo my concerns. Something had to be done, no doubt about it. Blizzard's fixes started with making his hook more realistic, changing line of sight issues, however, it wasn't enough. Blizzard then increased his hook cooldown to make Roadhog characters more conservative with hook usage. Players still felt cheated. "How can a tank one-shot characters?!" - a common phrase i would hear in competitive chat. Does any other tank have this type of power? Absolutely not. A new patch update dropped on June 20th of this year, involving major changes to Roadhog's scrap gun. Blizzard decreased bullet damage, while increasing fire rate and clip size. What seemed like a minor change, collapsed Roadhog's usage all together. He went from a primary center-piece in most compositions, to an after-thought in the competitive scene, sitting alongside characters like Windowmaker and Torbjorn. His one-shot ability was gone.

How could such a slight reduction make such an impact on a powerful character like Roadhog? Well, to find the answer you have to take a look at the rest of his skill set. Here in lies the problem with Roadhog: without his ability to finish off squishy characters, the remainder of his skill set is completely underwhelming. He's a large, slow moving target that cannot act like a true tank. All remaining tanks have a shield of some sort to absorb damage without allowing the enemy to build ultimate charge. Roadhog is the ulitmate ult-charge battery (see what i did there?). Now, enemy heroes can risk getting up close and personal with Roadhog without the repercussions of death. Can Roadhog flee? Not very quickly, and to heal himself, he becomes a stationary target. The truth is, when you take away Roadhog's one-shot ability, he's simply good at breaking shields and pulling enemies closer for teammates to take care of. Why take him into a team composition, when you could take a much more viable tank?

How was Blizzard going to get Roadhog to a place of viability, while maintaining a fairness to his skill set? The answer was simply to make him more of a tank. The new set changes allow him to heal (take a breather) on the move, as well as take less damage (50%) while doing it. These changes increase Roadhog's mobility and survivability, and ultimately his viability. Being able to move while healing and taking less damage allows him to do two things: Get out of sticky situations and act as a meat shield. With the one-shot ability, it was worth getting yourself into sticky situations, since you usually ended up with a kill and had a short cooldown time on your hook. Enemies feared you and would escape for cover. After the scrap gun patch, it was not worth getting into these types of situations. In most cases you didn't get the kill, you had to wait eight-seconds for your hook and because the the enemies knew about your newfound weaknesses, they didn't fear you. Now, you can pop in and disrupt the enemy team, forcing the enemies to focus on you and then heal your way out, back to your teammates. With the update, he can afford to absorb much more damage, while gaining much of it back through his breather. As a meat shield, he can now step in front of his team and take damage for them.  Furthermore, since he takes 50% less damage, he also isn't providing enemies with ultimate charge as quickly as he did before. In my mind, this Roadhog is a much more complete tank and I have enjoyed playing with him.

So the question is, how do these changes affect the way you should play Roadhog? The way Roadhog used to be played was more offensively. He would flank on his own and pick off enemy squishy characters. The enemy team would be forced to focus Roadhog and protect their smaller characters. However, when the enemy team would turn their backs to face Roadhog, the rest of the team would be on the other side to follow up. Once you got that first pick with Roadhog, your team now has a six versus five man edge. Before the major changes, Roadhog's survivability came from the fear of being hooked and killed. Now that his kit has been reworked, you have to play him very differently. He now needs to be within the team deathball. The hooks you throw need to be timely and in most cases their needs to be some teammates to help you follow up, since you can't always kill enemies on your own. I like to connect on a hook, primary fire and then as the enemy is running away i will use my alternate fire to try and get as much scrap to connect as possible. Take a breather also changes how you play the character. It allows you to be more aggressive, especially against enemy tanks. When we have the advantage, I like to get right up in an tank enemy's face and absorb damage while pumping damage into them. When I get to about half health, I'll take a breather to heal and start moving backwards. Being aggressive forces the enemy to prioritize you, but you can almost negate the damage they have dished out by using your heal and walking away. Finally, one gameplay feature of Roadhog's skill set that hasn't changed is target prioritization. The biggest issue I see with Roadhog players at my level is that players don't use their hooks on the correct targets. It's easy to spend hooks on the largest target, since they are the easiest to hit, but in most cases that's not the smartest move unless you are trying to protect one of your own characters. Focus your hooks on their supports or key offensive characters. And do not forget that the hook can interrupt certain ultimates, such as an enemy Roadhog's or Soldier:76 ultimate. Speaking of Solider:76's ultimate, a great way to counter it as Roadhog is to use take a breather to absorb a majority of it and protect your team.

Although Roadhog plays differently now, I think the changes led to better version of one of the most colorful characters in the game. I hope you all found this post informative and let me know if you are a fan of the newest Roadhog in the comments!