by Hypocritical_Midget

If you prefer to learning things in a video format over text, here’s a link to Everything Below In Under 15 Minutes: https://youtu.be/acIyXI6HwEU Time stamps are also embedded throughout the scroll bar so you can skip to which bit(s) are important to you!

ROADHOG SCRAP GUN

Primary Firing: Short range blasts of shrapnel with fall off damage from 15 -30 meters

Secondary Fire: Launching ball of shrapnel dealing 50 damage unless it detonates at 8 meters. (Extending the fall off range to 23-38 meters)

They both deal up to 175 damage (After Experimentals went live) with a 0.85 second RoF, and an ammo capacity of 5

ROADHOG SCRAP GUN TECH + USAGE

Recovery/Animation Cancels

1. Shave about half a second off your reload by using Breather as soon as the ammo is shoved into the gun (Or you can see the ‘5/5’ ammo counter in the bottom right)
2. The above ^ But with hook or melee instead of breather
3. Use either of Hog’s abilities after Hog fires his scrap gun to mitigate the 0.85 recovery time

Shield Break

• This is one of the main uses for Hog’s scrap gun that you’ll be doing unless you’re taking a flank or an off angle
• You can 4 shot either Orisa’s shield or Sigma’s (175*4 = 700) and you can use the above tech to cancel the recovery time of your 4 shot to land a hook on the opposing Sigma, who’d most likely use Kinetic Grasp
• However, despite the damage buff Hog received, his perceived power on live is not due to shield break, but the gap between Sigma and Hog being closed rapidly in terms of how easy it is to get a pick on off angles. Sigma already had the ability to oneshot characters without feeding ult charge himself, but now, his shield has become more brittle, alongside the nerf to grasp which is Hog’s equivalent of Breather.

Undershooting Vs Overshooting

• Especially against mobile targets such as Tracer, it is not uncommon for Hogs to undershoot their first shot, and then overcompensate/overshoot their following shots and/or abilities.
• Solution: Increase sensitivity to prevent undershooting (Which would then prevent the dominos effect of you overshooting) or confidently flick to your target with your current sensitivity. You can practice this on PMA Jellies’ upgraded practice range: Workshop code ‘AJERA’

Oneshotting Utilising Secondary Fire

• Since on Hog’s secondary fire, the detonation begins at 8 meters, one of Hog’s worst fighting distances is between 5-8 meters (Especially the further closer you go to 8 meters) where you are too far away for Hog’s primary fire to deal any meaningful damage due to the wide increase in spread, but too close for your secondary fire to detonate.
• This comes into play (on occassion, up against close range characters such as Reaper in which their spread doesn’t matter due to your large hitbox) on Volskaya Industries 2nd Point attack Right side where your route of retreat (Walking back where you came from) is linear, meaning that you’ll notice this 5-8 meter distance very quickly.
• However, this also means that between 8-10 meters is a great range to potentially oneshot a target; You’ll unfortunately have to learn the hard way of when you’re at 7.5 Meters you get punished, but at 8.5, you get rewarded.

ROADHOG CHAIN HOOK

Hog throws a chain at a target, pulling them in close range. The hook deals 30 damage, moves at 40m/s, takes 0.3 seconds to cast, a cooldown of 8 seconds, and a max. range of 20 meters.

ROADHOG CHAIN HOOK TECH + USAGE

Full Combo

1. Alternate Fire
2. Walk Forward
3. Throw and Land Hook
4. Walk Forward during Hook Cast Time
5. Primary Fire + Melee

This combo can deal upwards of 500 damage if done at the perfect distances, but in most scenarios, you’ll be dealing 225-275 damage if performed well.

Whilst the experimental Hog buffs will make elements of the above less important, it is still a useful habit to get into for hooking targets with higher HP/with armour (Which halves pellet damage to 3.5)

Crosshair Placement

• This is possibly the most overlooked aspect of confirming a kill after hooking a target; This is most likely the reason why sometimes, you land the oneshot on the Ana but other times, she’s still on 1-2 bars of Health left.
• Apart from tanks, you want to be aiming on the upper body/neck in order for some of your pellets to receive added damage from the headshot, but if you just purely aim for the head, too many of your pellets will miss/go around the head hitbox.
• The above applies for small head hit boxes as with large ones (Such as Orisa or Winston) you can comfortably land atleast 23/25 pellets on the head.
• (CONSOLE ONLY) As you can’t really flick your crosshair to the correct position, you’ll need a higher sensitivity on both axis, or just predict where the correct position you should aim for your crosshair to be in before you throw out the hook. On PC, you can just flick accordingly

Walking Forward

There are a few reasons why you want to do this:

1. To land your melee
2. To have a higher probability of landing more, if not all pellets
3. The extra few frames it takes you to walk forward can be enough to adjust your crosshair

However, walking forward can put you at greater risk of taking damage, since your route of retreat will be longer. Simply, if you don’t need to walk forward (IE If you hook a target who’s already at half HP) don’t walk forward.

Turning Camera

You can turn your camera after hooking (Which can drag the enemy up to 45 degrees either side) for:

1. Added damage/follow up by dragging them into the L.O.S. of your teammates
2. Environmental kills (Obvious example being Ilios Well)
3. Increases the time taken for the enemy you’ve hooked to retreat back to their team
4. Very slightly hides your head hitbox by facing it away from the enemy team (Admittedly almost negligible)

Disrupt Ultimates

• Hook is a very effective counter to barrage or Blossom (Ultimates that either you, or your flex support, should be ult tracking). Flux/Coalescence/High Noon which whilst they can be stunned, are obviously harder to do so due to increase in movement speed or they’re out of range respectively

Threaten L.O.S./Holding Space

• Whilst I get more into this in the ‘POSITIONING/PLAYSTYLE’ section of this guide, you can utilise the existence of Hook to threaten areas of the map. Similar with a Sombra who has EMP, the enemy team have to play differently (Whether that’s a Reinhardt playing more passive, your Lucio/Zen hiding to use their defensive ult etc.)
• Hook is also most commonly used (In the lower ranks particularly) to punish bad positioning (Ana’s/Zen’s playing like they’re Moira) or bad cooldown management (E.G. A Reinhardt who has no concept of shield management)

Ammo

• Just make sure you have enough ammo to follow up on your Hook (Especially after the changes). There’s no point hooking a Tracer just as she exits recall for you to realise you have no ammo left. The above combo also consumes double the ammo so be more aware of where and when it’s worth to pull off the combo (E.G. An overextended Zarya)

ROADHOG BREATHER

Hog heals himself for 300 health in 1 second, with a cast time of 2 seconds. The cooldown is 8 seconds, with a damage reduction of 50% when the ability is activated.

ROADHOG BREATHER USAGE

Damage Reduction

• Hog’s damage reduction doesn’t apply when Hog heals himself in the 1 second duration, but as soon as the ability is activated. This means that just before a massive amount of burst damage is about to occur (E.G. A Flux or Bomb) you can activate Breather, and still have the 300 Healing go through whilst also utilising the 50% damage reduction

Defensive Capability

• Similar with Ana Sleep and Orisa fortify, with them being defensive cooldowns, there’s no better tip than to just not use it if you don’t need it.
• One of Breather’s main uses is to help Hog escape tight situations in which the enemy team may attempt to punish Hog for taking an aggressive off angle or a flank and whatnot.
• However, similar with Orisa shield timing, if you take a bit of poke damage, and you can ensure that you’ll have Breather off cooldown when you and your teammates engage, it should be fine to use Breather for the extra bit of ult charge, as you’ll have it by the time you’ll need it
• Be weary that you also want to force out CC abilities and stuns (E.G. Brig bash) before you use Breather. This can be done either by your Hook applying pressure or from your teammates using channeled abilities in which enemy heroes with Crowd Control abilities will attempt to use them to nullify the value from sed abilities

ROADHOG WHOLE HOG

Hog crams a mechanical device onto his scrap gun churning out a horizontal stream of shrapnel at 128 Pellets per second, with each pellet dealing 7 damage, with a duration of 5.5 seconds (0.5 second cast time).

ROADHOG WHOLE TECH + USAGE

Recovery/Animation Cancels

1. Cancel Hook With Whole Hog
2. Cancel Breather With Whole Hog
3. Cancel Scrap Gun Recovery Time With Whole Hog

‘1’ – This is most useful for where you miss the hook, and need to get immediate value from your Whole Hog as the enemy team is playing overtly aggressive

‘2’ – Similar line of reasoning to ‘1’ but to also allow yourself to heal up an extra 200 HP or so and not the full 300 to save you some time whilst adding a decent amount of survivability

‘3’ – This is the most amount of damage you can deal as Roadhog in the shortest amount of time; Used to instakill after hooking a (main) tank

Whole Hog Vs Nanoblade

• Utilise the knockback from Whole Hog to prevent any slashes from the opposing Genji/Force out his dash or his deflect. However, against Necros level Genji’s, they will secure a kill within under half a second similar to why it’s so difficult to Flux a Genji Nanoblade after he dashes in due to his extreme mobility

Whole Against Aggressive Commitments

• A great usage of Whole Hog is to relay pressure off you and your team (Similar to one of Nanoboost’s Uses). Common examples can be when the opposing Brig rallies, the Moira uses coalescence, or when the Mercy uses Valkyrie

Extreme Damage

• Similar to Winston Primal, you can juggle an enemy in a corner (Although keeping them in the corner is much easier with Whole Hog)
• You can also do an extreme amount of shield break (Since these uses aren’t mutually exclusive, you can do thise when the opposing Rein commits aggressively). This can give way for your Zarya to Grav, D.Va to bomb, or Rein to Shatter afterwards or fo your team to gain more value from their cooldowns

Knockback/Displacement

• Boop tanks or DPS beyond/out of their shield/into bad positions if you’re on a hard flank
• Environmental kills can also be effective on certain maps (Junkertown 1st Point Defense is an underrated place to boop enemies off the map)

Refills Ammo

• Keep in mind that Whole Hog refills ammo capacity, so you don’t need to do any reloading animation cancels
• Knowing this, you should unleash all your shots before using Whole Hog or you can use both of your abilities as you’ll have them off cooldown after using Whole Hog (I don’t recommend this if you have a high chance of being stunned out of an aggressive Whole Hog)

ROADHOG POSITIONING/PLAYSTYLE

Hog’s playstyle is often not too dependant upon team composition (He’s considered more of a counterpick than being part of a specific team composition, especially after Sigma was introduced and the shield rework went through nullifying Orisa Hog/Pull Hook Bunker).

However, there are two main trains of thought: Shield Break + Hook to punish anybody who takes too wide of an angle, or to simply play the flanky style of Hog which commonly frustrates players with low awareness of their flanks/stay on autopilot.

Since Hog is mainly picked for his pick potential, I recommend choosing the latter, with the following example to explain why:

With this image here, Hog rolls out onto the right side of Nepal Sanctum, with the enemy Tracer flanking left side to apply pressure onto the Ashe. Simply put, if Hog had pathed left, he could have denied the left side and mega healthpack from the Tracer, discourage her from engaging onto the Ashe (Which, due to dominos effect, would prevent any stress/pressure put onto the Baptiste or Mercy to then heal the Ashe, detracting resources from the frontline). Hog could also potentially secure the Hook onto the Tracer, and sets him up in a nice position to punish anybody who rotates to point or he can flank all the way around to pressure their backline if that was what he desired.

Considering how much defensive utility Orisa has, alongside peeling provided from the Baptiste, the frontline wouldn’t be losing too much if Hog didn’t rollout on the right side.

More examples of off-angles/flanks to take would be on Rialto 1st Point Attack (Either by coast, or into the room with the mini which is what I’d suggest), Kings Row 1st Attack through Hotel or around statue, Junkertown 1st Point Defense/Attack Through the room with the Mega Health Pack.

ROADHOG TANK SYNERGIES

Hog Ball: This comp relies of individual sustainability, and playing spread apart, hence why brawl comps will struggle to find value, alongside decent highground and low ground control, with plenty of stuns and crowd control which adds to their disruption, however, isolating a single target will be this main comp’s weakness.

Hog Winston: This comp does not do much for Winston, as he has much less survivability compared to Ball. His primal may benefit you by booping enemies in bad positions that you can punish, however, he will be stuck posturing around tanks. Winston’s shield also provides some cover, but with no damage mitigation or avoidance, a Reaper will easily pick apart both tanks.

Hog Orisa: This duo is very outdated due to how brittle Orisa’s shield is, and considering that her halt’s radius may be getting nerfed, this will completely nullify the Pull Hook combo. However, as long as your Orisa manages her defensive cooldowns well to apply objective pressure, you should feel free to flank and relay pressure off of her by taking these angles.

Hog Reinhardt: This duo is very aggressive, and serves the primary purpose to deny as much short range aggression onto your Reinhardt as possible by Hog’s scrap gun. This is also more of a counter pick than anything else considering that Zarya is a more efficient pick in case your team lacks shield break or pick potential.

Hog Sigma: This duo could possibly be a sleeper in ladder due to Sigma having Hog’s pick potential, but added defensive utility as well. If you’re Sigma plays overtly aggressive however, you may want to either play more passive to deter any aggression, or to swap to another hero such as Reinhardt or Orissa.

Hog D.Va: This duo provides some damage mitigation and coverage of the low ground and highground. However, both these characters are prone to taking unnecessary damage, alongside Sigma being the better pick simply because he has more types of utility, blurring the lines of main tank and off tank.

Hog Zarya: Whilst this isn’t the worst synergy for Hog, it may be for Zarya. This duo offers a lack of cover, bubbles that easily burst as a result of that, and whilst you can combo whole hog with Grav, Zarya may just be too fragile of an off-tank to allow you to play an aggressive, flanking style of Hog.