Overwatch 2’s Roadhog Rework Has Me Skeptical

Like Sombra earlier than him, Roadhog is getting a rework in Overwatch 2’s seventh season. And very similar to Sombra’s, it highlights an issue I’ve with Blizzard’s strategy to reworks and stability adjustments, giving him a capability fairly analogous to 1 utilized by different tanks within the sport. Over time, this strategy is making the sport much less attention-grabbing, additional sanding down characters into comparable archetypes versus letting them every serve distinct roles.

Blizzard has introduced that Roadhog’s rework will give him a brand new capacity referred to as Pig Pen, which has him put down a entice that may gradual and injury close by enemies. The truth that it says enemies, plural, makes it sound like a shake-up from Roadhog’s typical loop, which is commonly very laser-focused. His hook is his major software, because it drags an enemy into his shotgun’s vary, however which means his equipment helps him create house simply by advantage of enemies feeling the looming risk of the flexibility and giving him a large berth. Whereas Blizzard hasn’t launched footage of Pig Pen, the outline feels like it should give Roadhog a window to extra exactly make these performs, but it surely additionally sounds similar to skills like Ramattra’s Ravenous Vortex, which slows down and damages enemies.

I’ll say that regardless of my preliminary hesitations with Sombra rework and normal dislike of the Tracer-fication of her equipment, I’ve come round on how good it feels to play. So Roadhog’s rework might show to be simply as enjoyable, and doesn’t appear to vary the character an excessive amount of, but it surely does really feel like Overwatch 2’s stability philosophy tends to lean into ensuring different heroes have comparable toolsets to 1 one other, fairly than being what makes every of them distinct. If Roadhog goes to get a brand new capacity, I personally would fairly have seen him get one thing to assist bolster his teammates to push on an goal; crowd management wasn’t actually what he was lacking. Proper now, he’s nonetheless a little bit of a lone wolf off-tank in a sport that solely has one tank now, and that was the place his equipment has been missing, for my part.

I’m prepared to offer the group the good thing about the doubt till we see extra, however Overwatch 2’s transforming of outdated characters has typically felt like sanding down heroes to parallel utility, fairly than retaining to the very particular archetypes that made completely different heroes stand out. Roadhog nonetheless appears to have all his outdated instruments in place, however I’m curious to see how including Pig Pen will change his play model, if in any respect.