Roadhog is one of the most popular characters in Overwatch, but many fans felt that his hook was a bit overpowered, so developers Blizzard decided to give it a nerf to balance things out and to quell the outrage felt by some players on what they feel is a "broken" skill. We are only a few days into the new era of Roadhog and players are already starting to get salty about it.
A report published by Kotaku last October revealed just how broken the skill was because it could go through walls and just seemed to defy the laws of physics. This longer appears to be the case now as Blizzard has made some fixes to it. The announcement regarding the nerf was made by the game's principal designer, Geoff Goodman, last Wednesday.
Blizzard had to do a whole lot of testing before they could finally release what has since been dubbed as "Hook 2.0" by fans. Needless to say, there is plenty of salt being spewed by fans over at the "Overwatch" PTR. According to a post by Geoff Goodman on the Battle.net forums, the hook skill will now undergo a "new persistent line-of-sight check back to Roadhog once the hook has landed."
Goodman also added that if the test fails, then the hook will return to Roadhog after breaking off contact. If there is an object between Roadhog and his intended Hook target, the former will still be able to toss out his hook, but instead of latching on to the target it will simply break off contact instead.
According to Goodman, the Overwatch team will also be working on adding a cap on "how far to the side" a target can be hooked. This means Roadhog players won't be able to simply hook a target, spin 180 degrees, and just throw them off a cliff. The developers are really keen on making Overwatch as balanced as possible, and with a fan base filled with bug-finding players, it may seem like they'll have plenty of things to fix in the future.