Overwatch Overwatch Roadhog Guide and Overview

Roadhog Rework for Season 5!

Roadhog’s Season 5 rework will shift him away from being entirely defined by seasons of one-shot Chain Hook combos, and instead move him towards holding a team-oriented role with more traditional frontline capabilities.

The new Trash Compactor lets him absorb incoming projectiles like Kinetic Grasp, and convert them into an explosive ball of scrap, giving Hog real damage mitigation that can protect his team or negate enemy attacks. Currently, the ending explosion is not particularly valuable as he is locked into the animation and timing, which makes it extremely predictable and easy for the enemy to avoid.

Chain Hook and Take a Breather remain at the core of his kit, so he still plays like the durable close-range bruiser players are familiar with, but he now has more ways to contribute between Hooks instead of simply being a bullet sponge and farming self-healing. Hogdrogen Exposure will remain as a crucial Major Perk to grant his allies healing, but it fits even better into his new archetype.

Overall, expect Roadhog to retain the threat of Hook in the mid to close range, but he'll need more follow up from his team to make it lethal. He'll have more emphasis on absorbing pressure, playing coordinated with his allies, disrupting enemy attacks, and slowly creating space instead of a single and sudden hook pick, followed by almost no value until he gets another one-shot play.

Players who like to take offense and defense into their own hands find Roadhog to be a great fit. Play forward, pull enemies out of position, and convert those early picks into fight wins.

TLDR

Play As

• Landing Chain Hook on a DPS or Support is higher value than on Tanks. Be on the hunt for squishies in range of Chain Hook.
• Take a Breather to heal whenever your Supports are preoccupied or out of LoS. You can also absorb more damage during Breather.
• Hook can be used before or during Whole Hog to keep the enemy close. Try to aim Whole Hog towards a wall so your target gets stuck instead of being knocked away. 

Play Against

• If you react to successful Hooks quickly with healing or damage mitigation for your ally, or CC on Hog you can save your teammate's life.
• When Hook misses or gets blocked, press the attack for a few seconds because Roadhog is not very lethal without Chain Hook.
• If you have a damage mitigation ability, let Whole Hog push you back so you get out of its optimal range before activating your barrier or damage absorption. Save Barriers to block his followup Chain Hook during his ultimate.

Strengths

Displacement abilities

Chain Hook is one of the most dangerous Tank cooldowns in all of Overwatch. Pulling someone around a corner and away from their team is almost always enough to get the kill. Additionally, Whole Roadhog can be used for environmental KOs or to push enemies off the objective. His ult is also incredible for countering enemy ults like Dragonblade, Primal Rage, and Tree of Life.

Burst damage

His shotgun deals high burst damage at close-range to mid range. The standard primary fire --> Chain Hook --> primary --> melee still packs enough punch to eliminate squishies who don't receive any healing. Hog trades low consistent poke damage for less frequent but high bursts of damage.

High self-sustain

Roadhog is the only Tank who can heal himself anytime he needs health (granted, he has Breather resources). He can heal himself and reduce damage taken. While he waits for Take a Breather to refill, he can always stall with Trash Compactor. After the rework, Trash Compactor is also a great tool to negate abilities like Biotic Grenade which used to be an easy hard counter to hog. These abilites allow Roadhog to survive on his own and makes him difficult to kill.

Weaknesses

Bullet sponge

Because he is large, slow, and has limited damage mitigation from Trash Compactor Roadhog is always taking a ton of damage and feeding enemy ultimates. Because he also heals himself so much, all that dmaage taken doesn't convert into powerful Support ultimates for his team. Ult economy is always a major concern when playing as Roadhog. Although he is very difficult to eliminate, the enemy team can often gain the advantage through quicker ult generation.

Poor mobility

Roadhog is the only Tank without any movement abilities. Even other stationary Tanks like Sigma or Orisa have some movement tools. Most heroes can easily play keep away with Roadhog, and maps with lots of high ground are especially challenging for him to find value on. Without the ability to rush down enemies, many games will feel difficult for Hog to create opportunities for Chain Hook.

Limited range

Scrap Gun's slow projectile speed and wide bullet spread make it terrible at longer ranges. The rework gives him a small burst in the center but it is much less consistent than his old Right-Click shot. Enemies who can position outside of his Hook range are nearly impossible for Roadhog to contest.

Primary Fire: Scrap Gun

Tips for Scrap Gun

• Primarily for close range. While you can farm a bit of ultimate charge by poking at long range, the traded damage is in the favor of almost every enemy hero. Best practice is to path behind barriers or flank routes until you get into Chain Hook range.
  • Every shot has a longer range projectile in the center. So Hog does have the potential to output meaningful damage from longer ranges. Try to finish off low HP targets with your primary fire whenever the opportunity arises.
• Play with cover. The slow fire rate makes it optimal for Roadhog to constantly peek out from cover. Even at close range, try to minimize how much damage you take by briefly dipping behind cover between the two-round bursts.

Secondary Fire: Trash Compactor

Tips for Trash Compactor

Trash Compactor is the tool Hog has which enables him to play around his hero counters. Garbage abilities like Sleep Dart, Biotic Grenade, Orb of Discord's amplified damage, Configuration: Assault, and Cardiac Overdrive can all be dealt with by compating that trash.

All standard projectiles are absorbed. If you are famililar with what gets absorbed by Kinetic Grasp or Defense Matrix, Trash Compactor works the same.

Be cautious of beams like Particle Cannon, Photon Projector, and Tesla Cannon becuase beams ignore Trash Compactor and will still deal full damage. Additionally, Sigma’s Accretion will still rock you.

Also, always keep in mind that you are animation locked for 2 long seconds. There is no way to fire early and you can’t Chain Hook.

Imagine you are facing an enemy Reinhardt. When he sees Trash Compactor activate, he knows he can freely swing or use Earthshatter without fear of getting his ult cancled by Chain Hook. In scenarios like this, it can be better to simply not use Trash compator.

Against absorption abilities such as Particle Barrier or Kinetic Grasp, after absorbing damage be careful to aim the explosive projectile away from that enemy or else you’ll feed them sheilds/energy.

[SHIFT]: Chain Hook

Tips for Chain Hook

• Hook & turn
  • The best Hooks are done near a wall or structure so Roadhog can pull the enemy in, flick his aim to the side, and preposition the enemy behind the wall.
  • Their team won’t be able to provide healing, and they’ll need to navigate around the wall to escape. This is generally not possible and will almost guarantee a KO.
• Combo: Secondary Fire > Hook > Primary Fire > Melee
  • Performed in rapid succession, this is Roadhog's bread and butter. Hitting headshots with this combo deletes most DPS and Supports.
• Target DPS and Supports
  • Chain Hook reaches 20m. Abuse its range and pull in the DPS and Supports who think they are safe behind their Tank. Compared to high-HP Tanks, DPS and Supports can’t survive a Hook unless their team saves them with something like Life Grip.
• Prevent Tank disengage
  • Against Dive Tanks like D.Va, don’t pull them in until they are using their mobility ability. If you Chain Hook them before, they can just fly away. If you Chain Hook them during flight, they are trapped.

E: Take a Breather 

Tips for Take a Breather

• Anytime your Supports are busy healing another teammate, use Take a Breather before spamming “I need healing.” The whole point is to have the agency to manage your own health.
• Be careful not to feed. Just because you can heal yourself doesn’t mean you should constantly take spam damage.
• Use Take a Breather to reduce damage from high-damage attacks such as Doomfist's Meteor Strike.

Ultimate: Whole Hog

Tips for Whole Hog

• Hook an enemy into you before using Whole Hog. You can also start Whole Hog, Hook, then continue firing. 
• Environmental KOs are the best. On maps with ledges, position yourself to get the opponent’s back to the edge, then blast them off.
• Walls are your best friend when ulting. Trapping an enemy Tank into a wall, corner, or room guarantees you keep blasting them with max damage.

Minor Perks

Scrap Hook

• Save yourself from embarrassment
  • The worst feeling every Roadhog player has experienced is Hooking an enemy and finding you have no ammo, so you just stand there reloading with the enemy in your face.
  • Scrap Hook guarantees you’ll always have the ammo necessary for your Hook combos. 
• Increase shotgun uptime
  • The extra 2 ammo effectively decreases the time Roadhog spends reloading by 30%

Here, Piggy Piggy

• The main reason an enemy survives Whole Hog is becuase it pushes them too far away where the damage becomes very low. Being able to hook over and over enables you to keep pulling an eney Tank back into your optimal range. Moreover, if you Hook → ult for a KO, you’ll have Hook available again to go for another Hook → ult KO on an additional enemy.

Major Perks

Hogdrogen Exposure

• Good team utility. There are two scenarios where you’ll should consider Hogdrogen. First is when your team is plaing closely grouped up and brawly, especially in 6v6 mode with a 2nd Tank. Second would be if your Supports have low AoE healing, or limited single target healing and your team needs help with sustain. 

Toxic Exhaust

• Best used as a coordinated attack. When attempting to use Trash offensivley, wait until the enemy has low resources or low HP. Slowing them, eating enemy damage so your team can all out attack for 2s, and absorbing enemy healing projectiles is a lethal combo.
• Follow up Hook with Toxic Trash, and allow your teammates to confirm the elim as you eat up all the incoming healing projectiles the enemy team uses in an attempt to save their ally. The slow effect and DoT also makes it less likely the enemy escapes and survives. 

The best maps for Roadhog are those that encourage close-range fights, like most Control and Flashpoint maps.

Maps with long sightlines and lots of highground are the worst picks for Hog. Although most maps have been reworked to give walkable access to highground, Hog is still oging to waste a ton of time having to constatnly path the long way around. Because Roadhog has poor mobility, he doesn't like high-ground maps like Watchpoint: Gibraltar, and with limited range, he doesn't want long-sightline maps like Circuit Royal.

No matter what map, the main thing Hog needs to use is corners to pull enemies around. Look to play in areas with plenty of tight corridors and corners. Walls or ledges are your best friend during Whole Hog. Blasting the enemy into a wall keeps them close and let’s you delete their health bars. Ledges give you the opportunity for enviormental KOs.

Always positon near corners and walls becuase Hooking and turning to move an enemy around a coner is the best way to convert a KO.

His absolute best map is Illios Well because the encitre objective area is a death zone for everyone who can’t easily fly out of the well after being Hooked and pull into the well. Hog just standing on the point threatening to pull you into the hole is a major threat that forces the enemy to reposition off the objective.

Roadhog doesn't need much healing since he can heal himself more than any other hero. What he needs is allies who can fill the gaps in his kit. Heroes with long-range damage and those who can contest high ground for him make his life much easier.

For Supports, Zenyatta’s Orb of Discord makes every Chain Hook even more lethal. Protection Suzu is pretty much required for Hog to survive if the enemy has anti-heal like Biotic Grenade or Rampage.

To counter Hog, all you really need to do is stop his hook from killing people.

If you are a barrier Tank, watch for Chain Hook patterns and his start up animation to reactively block as many hooks as possible. Closer to the max Hook distance you have time to visually react and block hook with shields such as Barrier Field, Experimental Barrierr, and Barrier Projector.

If you are a DPS or Support with a burst mobility tool like Flight or Swift Step you can dodge to avoid getting hooked.

The other important component is protecting allies who do get hooked. You can use abilities like Defense Matrix, Energy Javelin, and Life Grip to save your teammate from death after they get hooked.

Anti-healing is also extremely strong against Hog since his main form of survivability is Take a Breather. This makes Anarchic Zeal his best counter and Junker Queen a worthwhile consideration. Queen has a much smaller hit box, great close range damage and similar levels of self sustain, so they trade well in the 1v1. The winner comes down to who has the better Hook / Jagged Blade pulls, and if Queen successfully lands Rampage on Hog.

When none of these apply, just exploit the fact that he can only protect his team with Trash Compactor and struggles to contest range and high ground. Farm as much damage and Ult charge as you want off a him, but this is generally bait. Blasting Hog relentlessly generally leads to extremely long fights and trading Support ults. It may feel more difficult but the best way to defeat a Hog team is to take full advantage of his lack of shield and peel, and focus on the rest of his team first.