Overwatch 2 Season 7 Roadhog Rework: New Ability, Hero Changes, More

The community is excited about the upcoming Overwatch 2 Season 8 which is scheduled to release on 5^th December. However, to keep them occupied in the weeks leading up to that update the Roadhog rework has been taken live by the developers.

Following Sombra, the first character to undergo a rework at the start of Season 7, even Roadhog has finally received his set of changes after a slight delay.

Roadhog's frontline presence has been improved so that he can actually justify his role and be played as a proper tank while simultaneously nerfing his deadly hook combo which has been a cause of frustration for many players.

Here is everything you need to know about the Overwatch 2 Season 7 Roadhog Rework.

Overwatch 2 Season 7 Roadhog Rework: Complete Details

To give a quick preview, Roadhog has received a new ability called 'Pig Pen' while some of his existing abilities have also undergone some changes and a few tweaks.

This has deen done to mainly keep his gameplay more or less the same while providing the necessary environment for the character to be actually played like a tank and contribute more to the team rather then going for solo hunts.

Roadhog Rework: Abilities

Take A Breather (Right Click)

• The ability has undergone a massive change and is now activated by holding the Secondary Fire (Right Click).

• Take a Breather will now remain active as long as its assigned hotkey is held.

• A new resource meter has been added which will deplete while the ability is active and then recharge when it is not in use.

• The cooldown for each use has been decreased from eight to one second.

• Take a Breather requires 10 seconds to reach full charge from empty.

• At full charge, Take a Breather can heal up to 500 health over 2.5 seconds.

• Damage reduction decreased from 50% to 40%.

• No longer amplifies healing received upon ending.

• An option to "Toggle Take a Breather" has been added under Options > Controls > Roadhog.

Chain Hook (Left Shift)

• This ability has not undergone the slightest of change or tweak and will be functioning as usual, keeping the core weaponry and gameplay of the character unchanged.

Pig Pen (E)

• This is a new ability assigned to Ability 2 (E) by default.

• Launch a trap that slows and damages nearby enemies.

• Deals 60 damage when triggered and 30 damage per second in an area.

• The trap has a three-second duration after being activated.

• Enemy movement speed slowed by 40%.

• The cooldown of this ability is 12 seconds.

Roadhog Rework: Weapons

Scrap Gun (Left Click)

• The previous secondary fire functionality has been removed.

• The total damage per shot increased from 150 to 160.

• The shotgun pellet count reduced from 25 to 16.

• The shotgun pellet damage increased from 6 to 6.25.

• Now fires a shrapnel volley of 4 large projectiles in the center of the shot.

• Each shrapnel projectile deals 15 damage.

• Critical damage multiplier reduced from 2x to 1.5x.

As per the developers, the broad goal of the Roadhog rework was to improve his frontline presence on the battlefield as a tank hero and reduce the frustration enemy players had with how consistently deadly his hook combo has been in the past.

• Scrap Gun's primary and secondary fire was reworked into one primary fire shot that is focussed on close-range combat with reliable damage at mid to long range.

• Take A Breather has been changed to a resource-based ability and is the new secondary fire ability.

• Pig Pen is the new ability which is a deployable trap that activates when enemies are nearby, damaging and slowing them.

The updates were applied to Roadhog immediately upon release on 14^th October across unranked and competitive. This rework was initially supposed to be released along with the Overwatch 2 Season 7 mid-season update but was slightly delayed.

The developers will continue to watch how he performs going forward and will make balance changes when the time is right. Already some buffs were made to Take A Breater, just two days after the rework went live on 16^th November.

It will be interesting to see how the character plays out now with a slew of buffs and changes.