Winston buff, Roadhog adjustment hitting Overwatch public test region soon

Say hello to Roadhog’s Hook 3.0.

Overwatch developer Blizzard Entertainment’s recent Roadhog adjustments turned out not to be a nerf to Roadhog’s hook. In fact, he’s more powerful than ever. A new patch coming to Overwatch’s public test region “soon” should adjust that a bit.

It’s not strictly a nerf, however. Blizzard has increased Roadhog’s hook cooldown from six seconds to eight seconds, making the ability a bit more valuable: It’s no longer something players will want to throw out randomly. When the hook does connect, targets will be pulled to a location 3.5 meters away from Roadhog, up from two meters. To balance this, Blizzard will decrease Roadhog’s scrap gun spread by 20 percent. With a more focused spread, Roadhog’s gun will do more damage to targets, making him more powerful in that regard.

Winston’s buff is slight, but it should increase his survivability. For Blizzard, Winston’s “head hit volume” was abnormally large, so he took more damage than he really should have. Reducing his critical hit volume to 15 percent brings him more in line with other Overwatch heroes, Overwatch principal designer Geoff Goodman said on the Blizzard forum.

We’ve seen a lot of Winston in the current competitive Overwatch meta, and should this PTR patch make it to the live server, that trend will likely continue. Winston’s value is in the way he’s able to open up fights and create space for his team to engage.

No exact word on when this build will hit Overwatch’s PTR, but it will likely be within the next month.