Blizzard dev details plans to deal with Roadhog’s huge damage in Overwatch 2

Roadhog’s menacing one-shot capabilities are on the chopping block, as the Overwatch 2 development team admitted last month. But nerfing the Australian juggernaut will require more nuance than one might expect.

In an interview with the British publication NME, Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller explained that Roadhog’s current overperformance stems from changes to other heroes that allowed him to organically rise in prevalence.

But nerfing Roadhog isn’t as simple as liberally taking a knife to his damage. The goal of nerfing him will be to try and find a way for him to be less powerful without making him completely unusable.

“It would be very easy for us to change him so much that he becomes unplayable, or nerfed so hard that people would think he was a throw pick,” Keller told NME. “We’d like to avoid that, so we’re trying to be careful here but at the same time we want to make our change meaningful enough to actually have a real impact on him and the game.”

Related: Best Roadhog counters in Overwatch 2

Overwatch players are often known for hopping from one character to another depending on which are deemed to be the most powerful given the game’s current balancing. For that reason, it’s the goal of the development team to make the power difference between characters as small as possible, making it so players can be effective on as many toons as possible.

“There’s a lot of nuance that goes into balance,” Keller said. “It can feel like there are certain heroes that are allowed to be strong or popular, and others that, when they do become really strong, the community has a pretty adverse reaction to it. I think it’s all very natural. One of the things we’ve been talking about internally is… what happens when heroes that have mechanics that can be frustrating, or stifling to play against, become really powerful?”

As far as Roadhog is concerned, the one-shot potential has always been a cause for frustration by players who dislike the Pachimari-loving hook wielder. But it’s also one of the elements of his kit that has made him so popular with gamers who enjoy using him.

Keller pointed out that Roadhog’s unique power differentiates him from more utilitarian tanks like Orisa and the balancing act required in nerfing Roadhog takes “a lot of nuance.” Roadhog changes were not included in an early January patch that dropped about two weeks ago. The exact timing of Roadhog nerfs wasn’t disclosed in Keller’s interview, but one would expect to see balance changes for him the next time Blizzard patches the game.