Blizzard made massive changes to Roadhog in the Overwatch public test region patch that went live on May 31, and players aren’t happy about the adjustments.
On paper, Roadhog’s changes are explicitly a buff or a nerf. The Aussie big boy had his head hitbox reduced by 20 percent, while his Scrap Gun’s bullet damage was reduced by 33 percent. To make up for that, the fire rate of the Scrap Gun was increased by 30 percent and the clip size was increased from four to five.
“Changing the fire rate of a character is a really big deal,” Redditor maleouf said in a comment on a long thread debating about the changes. “It completely changes the ‘feel’ or the ‘rhythm’ of a hero.” Roadhog’s rhythm on the live server is slow, but according to maleouf, on the PTR, you might as well be playing Tracer or Genji.
“Roadhog felt like a big slow fat dude with a big fat shotgun that fires super slowly and does a buttload of damage,” maleouf added. “On the PTR, not so much. You just feel like a fat Reaper or Torbjorn. It may be more balanced but it doesn’t feel like the same character.”
Plenty of other Overwatch players agree: Roadhog on the PTR just isn’t Roadhog anymore.
“The Scrap Gun changes reduce the power of [Roadhog’s] hook combo and alternate fire burst damage potential while still keeping his [damage per second] roughly the same,” Blizzard said in the patch notes. Despite that, the change feels like a nerf to a large portion of the Reddit Overwatch community.
Should these changes make it to Overwatch’s live server, certain players are going to be very unhappy.
