If you’ve played any match in Blizzard’s Overwatch and encountered the hero Roadhog, you’ve probably noticed two things: (1) His hook travels far, and (2) That hook is the spawn of Satan and will find you anywhere, regardless of how many walls before you. Considering the hook can lead to a follow-up one hit kill attack, the ludicrousness of its targeting is an issue.
Blizzard promised that changes would be coming to Roadhog’s hook, dubbed “Hook 2.0”, and principal designer Geoff Goodman finally provided an update on the same in the official forums. Goodman said that the changes would be up on the Public Test Realm “ASAP”, which means it “might be this week”.
He further outlined the changes that would be coming. “Firstly, the hook victim will now move in to the position directly in front of Roadhog, rather than just a straight line towards him. There is a 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. This part (along with some other bug fixes) should generally make the hook feel more consistent as to where the victims get pulled.
“Secondly, the line-of-sight check to see if a hook should connect or not is now checked from Roadhog’s position, instead of the hook’s position. This basically means the hook can’t connect to targets that Roadhog himself can’t see.
“Lastly, there is a new persistent line-of-sight check back to Roadhog once the hook has landed. If this check fails, the hook breaks off and returns to Roadhog. This means if you get hooked and move out of LOS quickly (either you dashed, were falling, were pushed, etc), the hook will now break early and not pull the target.”
Of course, it’s likely that things won’t work as intended and could likely “make Roadhog a bit weaker.” Goodman noted that the development would “evaluate his performance once we get people playing him and make adjustments as necessary.”
What are your thoughts on the changes? Let us know in the comments below and whether this will help make Roadhog less of a pain.
