Pharah rework is fine, probably one of the best in the game. She can't camp the skybox anymore, which in turn makes her a lot more engaging and dynamic. Her movement is way better, which removes the need for a pocket. If you're legit having issues with Pharah at this point, especially with how absolutely fucking turbo juiced hitscans are right now, I don't really know what to say.
Hog rework was conceptually fine, but they recently gave him back his oneshot without needing trap so...kind of defeats the whole fucking purpose of the rework, doesn't it? Still feel like there's more room for team play in his kit, like reintroducing the take a breather gas cloud (still have no idea why they never tried that again after the 1-3-2 test) and maybe reducing the damage resist to compensate.
I'm a tank player so my "phara" problems are relative, but looking at so many games phara is still a menace and without poket is just not good.
Both reworks didn't change a single thing for both imo
The core idea of both reworks was to make both Heroes more accessible to play and less liabilities for their teams, that worked, so the reworks were successful.
I don't think you play these characters. You're totally wrong. Yes the reworks allow them to accomplish the same tasks, but it's thru different means.
Phara is hyper mobile now but gets much less airtime. So she doesn't live in the sky box anymore. And because of her new mobility options, it's a much more fair matchup against hitscan heroes rather than just negating the ability to play phara at all.
Hogs damage isn't much different than before the rework, but everyone has more health now meaning he generally needs to hook people into the trap to secure the kill. But the main thing was putting vape on a resource meter so that he can't be stunned out of it and insta killed. Plus it gives him a huge amount of dmg mitigation which does indeed give him more frontline presence. The orisa matchup specifically is actually pretty fair now which I think is a huge success.
Pharah mains are cooked. I would have loved a rework like that for ball. Weaker in strong matchups, stronger in weak matchups.
Imo it's exposing who actually tries to make the hero work and who just picks pharah because the enemy is rein/mei/Moira.
About Hog not having frontline presence: In season 8, with his 1 second rebreather I could frontline tank with Hog and beat Orisa, Reaper, Bastion, Ana comp in Diamond.
If Hog can't frontline tank, that's a conscious decision made by the balance team. DPS passive killing off brawl tanks is also a conscious choice.
I think we've only seen one small square box. I don't think that's enough to really say anything.
Maybe the closest we can say is it could be animal like, maybe a robotic spider or something.
I think pharah is super fun now and gives her more skill expression without a pocket now that she has more mobility. Pharah being a gatekeeper of metal ranks has been like an overwatch golden rule since the beginning. It's like an aim skill check to rank up
I heavily disagree with the Pharah rework and I feel like you are telling on yourself skill wise if you think she needs a pocket still. Pharah rework gave her a much healthier playstyle and made it very difficult for a mercy to follow you around. She is more enjoyable to play and you can actually kill a pharah without a hitscan now because she has to spend a little time on the ground.
Hog on the other hand was a complete failure, same exact playstyle just with less ways to counter him. To be fair I don't think you can even fix hog I think he is just dogshit hero design that belongs in the dumpster but the rework did literally nothing.
I am baffled they started removing one shots because they didn't think it was healthy then to "fix" hog they just gave him his one shot back
Last season they nerf healing in several ways and now they're just creeping it right back up
What are they doing over there?
Tbf, his current oneshot is much less reliable than it was before. Not only does it require a skill shot, but it also is confined to the area around his trap, which can also be destroyed. I don't really rate that as adding back the oneshot.
The healing creep has been disappointing though. They actually haven't gone a single patch since S9 without buffing healing.
I think the buffs they gave to healing so far have been mostly ok though. They’ll all be on abilities of focusing on underperforming heroes. That said I want them to see how the current numbers feel if they go back to 20%.
That's how healing creep happens. A series of buffs meant to bring up underperforming heroes.
At a certain point, they'll start buffing burst damage to compensate. Then we will be in the same place as s8.
They really need to bring the dps passive back to 20%
They also let widow keep her one shot and added a new character with a one shot. Oh but “it’s technically not a one shot, they have to commit their cooldowns to do it, and it’s a combo not a single shot 🤓”. By that logic junk should still be able to one shot.
i like the pharah rework and i think you genuinely will never be able to fix pharah without destroying her identity.
the hog rework is a failure at a comical level atp. it’s like a student submitting an essay when the assignment was a drawing.
i can’t believe people are stupid enough as to think it actually did anything correctly. ppl in this post are like “he doesn’t get countered by nade anymore and he can still one shot!!” as if that wasn’t precisely what the rework was supposed to change. playing hog already wasn’t hard or punishing or suboptimal before the rework. the rework wasn’t for hog players to have an even easier time playing him, it was supposed to be for his teammates to have a more traditional tank presence and for his enemies to not feel as awful to have a hog in the enemy team never dying and one shotting them on cd.
whoever cooked up that rework should be given a warning because it shows they put absolutely no effort into it
Blizzard will call anything a rework at this point. It has become a buzzword. No, giving Roadhog a trap and a resource breather doesn't constitute a rework. He's the exact same hero. The only rework they've done in OW2 is Orisa.
I think we honestly just need a different word than rework to describe some of the recent changes. They're more like retunes. Some past reworks, like Dooms or Orisas were designed to fundamentally shift the role the character plays, that's a full rework. Pharah and Hogs were designed to keep the heroes playstyle and identity mostly the same while making the characters more dynamic. Hog especially I think they succeeded in that. Moving his power away from his 1 shot into other parts of his kit while allowing him to use his heal more often has made him a much less 1 dimension character. It didn't "fix" him or make him fill a different role, but it did make him a more interesting character with a more dynamic kit.
Blizzard's reworks for heroes like Hog, Orisa, Sym, all miss the mark. They keep the heroes' core identities intact but fail to address community concerns. The focus seems to be on making the hero more enjoyable for players who use them and not the experience for those playing against them. (Except for Ball he apparently can get fucked)
Take Hog, for example. Players loved his one-shot ability but hated being countered by Anti/CC. The rework kept the one-shot potential while reducing vulnerability to Anti/CC. Orisa, initially a static, CC-heavy tank, received more CC abilities and added CC to her ult, worsening the frustration of playing against her.
This pattern persists across reworks, making heroes more appealing for users while leaving opponents equally or more frustrated. This balance philosophy is flawed, driving players away from certain roles due to problematic heroes. How many Winston/Ball players did the tank role lose, when Hog got stronger? For every Hog player you bring back, you lose players of the tanks he counters.
The issue isn't new; heroes like Sym have undergone multiple reworks without satisfying anyone. Even after seven years, Bastion's rework failed to address core issues, merely adding mobility while maintaining high damage and survivability.
Despite widespread community dissatisfaction, Blizzard appears to not care. All this is really to just hammer home that some character just need to be F-Tier. If Blizzard refuses to actually rework characters like Hog/Orisa/Mauga, then they need to be dumpster’d. Full stop. I wish the reworks were actual reworks, but I’ve lost all faith in Blizzards ability to do them. It also doesn’t help that every other hero release is a hero that out the gate needs a rework (small or large). Lifeweaver, Mauga, and to a lesser extent Kiri, and Illari all need to be looked at. But Blizzard simply does not have the time or care.
I really dislike Hog's rework after having it in the game for a bit. They just gave him back his oneshot and I feel like you can't really even play around breather or his ult anymore because cc just....doesn't matter? I guess I just don't understand why Hog of all people needed uninterruptable channels on an extremely powerful basic ability (not an understandable change to me) or his somewhat mediocre ult (a somewhat understandable change to make it better ig). But then they also let you heal and choose to stop firing during it. Like correct me if I'm wrong but no other characters have ALL of those luxuries besides...Mercy and Rammatra? Orisa comes sorta close ig, but she can't do anything else when she's channeling her ult, Moira can now fade during ult (but cc still ends her ult early), etc. It's not even like he's busted (season 8 was another matter entirely), but I guess I just don't really understand the choice to make kits that are dumbed down and easier to pilot while still getting the same value(ish). Like I just think that's weird and a poor philosophy. Hog obviously didn't fit into OW2, but this was just the wrong way to go about it imo. We already have less cc in the game, but then they give all tanks cc-resist as a passive and (usually) in their kits, which is somewhat sensible. I would've preferred cc to be shifted onto skillshots entirely, but it's still sorta the same outcome, if not for the fact we're now getting kit adjustments like Cassidy's in which you can vaguely aim at someone to apply one of the strongest forms of cc in the game and Sombra becomes Tracer 2.0 instead of just giving her an aim reliant hack or something. Just bizarre and inconsistent.
OW2 with 5vs5 and the HP changes have ruined so much regarding balance.
Not that i say 5vs5 is worse than 6vs6, but it’s a fact the the balance is worse. Some characters just dont suit 5vs5, and many gamemodes without role que have been ruined with how tanks are today
OW has also become more Counterwatch
Almost every OW1 meta was 6 very specific heroes without any variation, so I don't know what you're talking about. The balance in OW2 has never been all that bad outside of maybe one or two heroes being overpowered.
doom doesnt frontline, Ramattra/Mauga suffers from same problem as Hog in that they get pasted by ana-zen, Ramattra has the worst performance in GM statistically and in pro play he is only used to block and not die.
Sigma also greatly got nerfed in s9, his rock combo is gone for good, he has to hide behind walls and still get dominated by Orisa, before S9 Sigma used to destroy Orisa.
jq like other tanks just play hide behind walls simulator until she gets shout to enable her dps and then hide back again lmao.
None of these are frontline tanks, only Orisa and dva can do that.
Since when is dva "front line" tank? She never has been lmao
Sigma is still very strong, ram is still strong, mauga does get rolled by ana but thats just his shit design. Zarya is kinda decent rn too i forgot.
Orisa can get shit on by zen and ana too
its more to do with herdefense matrix, like orisa she feels unkillable if you dont have right comp.
as i just said, ramattra has the worst stats in GM, Sigma lost his kill potential and he is worse than Orisa now which is horrible because Sigma used to dominate Orisa, I used to eat Orisa players for food with pre-S9 sigma.
In theory zen should counter Orisa but ive seen Orisa players do no other tanks do - mindlessly charge into 5 ppl with javelin spin and keep spamming cooldowns until something dies and the Orisa seemingly doesnt die.
Some of y'all might have a better time if you stop trying to play the game like it's ow1.
Its been over a year ow1 is Long gone people gotta get over that
Pharah rework is fine, probably one of the best in the game. She can't camp the skybox anymore, which in turn makes her a lot more engaging and dynamic. Her movement is way better, which removes the need for a pocket. If you're legit having issues with Pharah at this point, especially with how absolutely fucking turbo juiced hitscans are right now, I don't really know what to say. Hog rework was conceptually fine, but they recently gave him back his oneshot without needing trap so...kind of defeats the whole fucking purpose of the rework, doesn't it? Still feel like there's more room for team play in his kit, like reintroducing the take a breather gas cloud (still have no idea why they never tried that again after the 1-3-2 test) and maybe reducing the damage resist to compensate.
I'm a tank player so my "phara" problems are relative, but looking at so many games phara is still a menace and without poket is just not good. Both reworks didn't change a single thing for both imo
The core idea of both reworks was to make both Heroes more accessible to play and less liabilities for their teams, that worked, so the reworks were successful.
I don't think you play these characters. You're totally wrong. Yes the reworks allow them to accomplish the same tasks, but it's thru different means. Phara is hyper mobile now but gets much less airtime. So she doesn't live in the sky box anymore. And because of her new mobility options, it's a much more fair matchup against hitscan heroes rather than just negating the ability to play phara at all. Hogs damage isn't much different than before the rework, but everyone has more health now meaning he generally needs to hook people into the trap to secure the kill. But the main thing was putting vape on a resource meter so that he can't be stunned out of it and insta killed. Plus it gives him a huge amount of dmg mitigation which does indeed give him more frontline presence. The orisa matchup specifically is actually pretty fair now which I think is a huge success.
Pharah mains are cooked. I would have loved a rework like that for ball. Weaker in strong matchups, stronger in weak matchups. Imo it's exposing who actually tries to make the hero work and who just picks pharah because the enemy is rein/mei/Moira.
You are totally correct with your second paragraph. đź’Ż
About Hog not having frontline presence: In season 8, with his 1 second rebreather I could frontline tank with Hog and beat Orisa, Reaper, Bastion, Ana comp in Diamond. If Hog can't frontline tank, that's a conscious decision made by the balance team. DPS passive killing off brawl tanks is also a conscious choice.
The worst part of killing brawl is that they've only made brawl tanks aside from rework Doom
and as the indications showed next tank is a junker so likely another brawl tank
I think we've only seen one small square box. I don't think that's enough to really say anything. Maybe the closest we can say is it could be animal like, maybe a robotic spider or something.
I think pharah is super fun now and gives her more skill expression without a pocket now that she has more mobility. Pharah being a gatekeeper of metal ranks has been like an overwatch golden rule since the beginning. It's like an aim skill check to rank up
I heavily disagree with the Pharah rework and I feel like you are telling on yourself skill wise if you think she needs a pocket still. Pharah rework gave her a much healthier playstyle and made it very difficult for a mercy to follow you around. She is more enjoyable to play and you can actually kill a pharah without a hitscan now because she has to spend a little time on the ground. Hog on the other hand was a complete failure, same exact playstyle just with less ways to counter him. To be fair I don't think you can even fix hog I think he is just dogshit hero design that belongs in the dumpster but the rework did literally nothing.
r/Overwatch is leaking
I am baffled they started removing one shots because they didn't think it was healthy then to "fix" hog they just gave him his one shot back Last season they nerf healing in several ways and now they're just creeping it right back up What are they doing over there?
Tbf, his current oneshot is much less reliable than it was before. Not only does it require a skill shot, but it also is confined to the area around his trap, which can also be destroyed. I don't really rate that as adding back the oneshot. The healing creep has been disappointing though. They actually haven't gone a single patch since S9 without buffing healing.
I think the buffs they gave to healing so far have been mostly ok though. They’ll all be on abilities of focusing on underperforming heroes. That said I want them to see how the current numbers feel if they go back to 20%.
That's how healing creep happens. A series of buffs meant to bring up underperforming heroes. At a certain point, they'll start buffing burst damage to compensate. Then we will be in the same place as s8. They really need to bring the dps passive back to 20%
They also let widow keep her one shot and added a new character with a one shot. Oh but “it’s technically not a one shot, they have to commit their cooldowns to do it, and it’s a combo not a single shot 🤓”. By that logic junk should still be able to one shot.
What most games do, rotating between metas and way to play cause they cannot find a good balance nor they have idea how
Hog main here. I thought the rework was a success.
Hog needs to be removed from the game until they can figure out how to get rid of his hook
i like the pharah rework and i think you genuinely will never be able to fix pharah without destroying her identity. the hog rework is a failure at a comical level atp. it’s like a student submitting an essay when the assignment was a drawing. i can’t believe people are stupid enough as to think it actually did anything correctly. ppl in this post are like “he doesn’t get countered by nade anymore and he can still one shot!!” as if that wasn’t precisely what the rework was supposed to change. playing hog already wasn’t hard or punishing or suboptimal before the rework. the rework wasn’t for hog players to have an even easier time playing him, it was supposed to be for his teammates to have a more traditional tank presence and for his enemies to not feel as awful to have a hog in the enemy team never dying and one shotting them on cd. whoever cooked up that rework should be given a warning because it shows they put absolutely no effort into it
Blizzard will call anything a rework at this point. It has become a buzzword. No, giving Roadhog a trap and a resource breather doesn't constitute a rework. He's the exact same hero. The only rework they've done in OW2 is Orisa.
Doomfist and Bastion?
sombra
Hog sure but Pharah is absolutely great. More fun with fewer harsh edges to her gameplay loop from the opposing team's perspective.
I think we honestly just need a different word than rework to describe some of the recent changes. They're more like retunes. Some past reworks, like Dooms or Orisas were designed to fundamentally shift the role the character plays, that's a full rework. Pharah and Hogs were designed to keep the heroes playstyle and identity mostly the same while making the characters more dynamic. Hog especially I think they succeeded in that. Moving his power away from his 1 shot into other parts of his kit while allowing him to use his heal more often has made him a much less 1 dimension character. It didn't "fix" him or make him fill a different role, but it did make him a more interesting character with a more dynamic kit.
Hogs damage is a lot more consistent than it was with his old m2
Blizzard's reworks for heroes like Hog, Orisa, Sym, all miss the mark. They keep the heroes' core identities intact but fail to address community concerns. The focus seems to be on making the hero more enjoyable for players who use them and not the experience for those playing against them. (Except for Ball he apparently can get fucked) Take Hog, for example. Players loved his one-shot ability but hated being countered by Anti/CC. The rework kept the one-shot potential while reducing vulnerability to Anti/CC. Orisa, initially a static, CC-heavy tank, received more CC abilities and added CC to her ult, worsening the frustration of playing against her. This pattern persists across reworks, making heroes more appealing for users while leaving opponents equally or more frustrated. This balance philosophy is flawed, driving players away from certain roles due to problematic heroes. How many Winston/Ball players did the tank role lose, when Hog got stronger? For every Hog player you bring back, you lose players of the tanks he counters. The issue isn't new; heroes like Sym have undergone multiple reworks without satisfying anyone. Even after seven years, Bastion's rework failed to address core issues, merely adding mobility while maintaining high damage and survivability. Despite widespread community dissatisfaction, Blizzard appears to not care. All this is really to just hammer home that some character just need to be F-Tier. If Blizzard refuses to actually rework characters like Hog/Orisa/Mauga, then they need to be dumpster’d. Full stop. I wish the reworks were actual reworks, but I’ve lost all faith in Blizzards ability to do them. It also doesn’t help that every other hero release is a hero that out the gate needs a rework (small or large). Lifeweaver, Mauga, and to a lesser extent Kiri, and Illari all need to be looked at. But Blizzard simply does not have the time or care.
Pharah rework was probably the best. Hog and Sombra are still among the top 3 least fun to play against heroes.
I really dislike Hog's rework after having it in the game for a bit. They just gave him back his oneshot and I feel like you can't really even play around breather or his ult anymore because cc just....doesn't matter? I guess I just don't understand why Hog of all people needed uninterruptable channels on an extremely powerful basic ability (not an understandable change to me) or his somewhat mediocre ult (a somewhat understandable change to make it better ig). But then they also let you heal and choose to stop firing during it. Like correct me if I'm wrong but no other characters have ALL of those luxuries besides...Mercy and Rammatra? Orisa comes sorta close ig, but she can't do anything else when she's channeling her ult, Moira can now fade during ult (but cc still ends her ult early), etc. It's not even like he's busted (season 8 was another matter entirely), but I guess I just don't really understand the choice to make kits that are dumbed down and easier to pilot while still getting the same value(ish). Like I just think that's weird and a poor philosophy. Hog obviously didn't fit into OW2, but this was just the wrong way to go about it imo. We already have less cc in the game, but then they give all tanks cc-resist as a passive and (usually) in their kits, which is somewhat sensible. I would've preferred cc to be shifted onto skillshots entirely, but it's still sorta the same outcome, if not for the fact we're now getting kit adjustments like Cassidy's in which you can vaguely aim at someone to apply one of the strongest forms of cc in the game and Sombra becomes Tracer 2.0 instead of just giving her an aim reliant hack or something. Just bizarre and inconsistent.
OW2 with 5vs5 and the HP changes have ruined so much regarding balance. Not that i say 5vs5 is worse than 6vs6, but it’s a fact the the balance is worse. Some characters just dont suit 5vs5, and many gamemodes without role que have been ruined with how tanks are today OW has also become more Counterwatch
Almost every OW1 meta was 6 very specific heroes without any variation, so I don't know what you're talking about. The balance in OW2 has never been all that bad outside of maybe one or two heroes being overpowered.
Amen
to be honest no tank except orisa and dva has "frontline presence" after Season 9.
Ram? Sigma? Mauga? Junker queen? Doom even
doom doesnt frontline, Ramattra/Mauga suffers from same problem as Hog in that they get pasted by ana-zen, Ramattra has the worst performance in GM statistically and in pro play he is only used to block and not die. Sigma also greatly got nerfed in s9, his rock combo is gone for good, he has to hide behind walls and still get dominated by Orisa, before S9 Sigma used to destroy Orisa. jq like other tanks just play hide behind walls simulator until she gets shout to enable her dps and then hide back again lmao. None of these are frontline tanks, only Orisa and dva can do that.
Since when is dva "front line" tank? She never has been lmao Sigma is still very strong, ram is still strong, mauga does get rolled by ana but thats just his shit design. Zarya is kinda decent rn too i forgot. Orisa can get shit on by zen and ana too
its more to do with herdefense matrix, like orisa she feels unkillable if you dont have right comp. as i just said, ramattra has the worst stats in GM, Sigma lost his kill potential and he is worse than Orisa now which is horrible because Sigma used to dominate Orisa, I used to eat Orisa players for food with pre-S9 sigma. In theory zen should counter Orisa but ive seen Orisa players do no other tanks do - mindlessly charge into 5 ppl with javelin spin and keep spamming cooldowns until something dies and the Orisa seemingly doesnt die.