Roadhog from Overwatch hooking Zenyatta

If you were hoping beyond hope for the triple/quad tank meta to go away, you might just get your wish fulfilled in the next couple of weeks. In a recently updated PTR patch the Overwatch team has redesigned (read nerfed) Roadhog's hook, slightly nerfed Ana's grenade, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, significantly nerfed D.Va's durability despite buffing it the previous patch.

There's also a few more changes in there, things such as a minor Sombra buff and the new and improved chat wheel, so if you're interested in the brief version allow me to show you what's happening. On the other hand, if you want the full list of bug fixes and quality of life changes, you'll find the patch notes over here. Anyway, here's the most important stuff:

Emote Wheel

Players can now equip up to 4 emotes, sprays, and voice lines from within the hero gallery

Voice line and emote submenus can be accessed using the left and right mouse buttons from within the Communication wheel

Players can now bind individual sprays, emotes, and voice lines to unique keys or mouse buttons

Ana

Biotic Grenade

Healing boost on allies has been decreased by 50%

Developer Comments: The healing boost from Ana’s Biotic Grenade was providing too much healing, especially when used on targets with large health pools.

D.Va

Health increased from 200 to 400

Armor decreased from 400 to 200

Fusion Cannons

Bullet damage decreased from 3 to 2

Number of bullets per shot has been increased from 8 to 11

Developer Comments: D.Va’s armor often made her feel like she had no weaknesses, even against heroes that are often effective against bigger targets (like Reaper). The changes to her Fusion Cannons will result in a small overall decrease in damage, but they should feel more consistent now.

Roadhog

Chain Hook

Targets are now pulled directly in front of Roadhog (rather than straight to him), except in cases where Roadhog drastically rotates

Hooked targets are now released if they leave Roadhog’s line-of-sight before being pulled

Line-of-sight checks (which detect if targets should be initially hit by the hook) are now done from Roadhog’s position, rather than the hook’s position

Developer Comments: The hook should now feel more consistent for Roadhog players, but it should also feel more reasonable to his enemies, as they cannot be hooked or pulled around corners anymore.

Sombra

Hack

The time it takes to hack a target has been decreased from 1 second to 0.8 seconds

Developer Comments: Sombra often had difficulty hacking enemies, even when she surprised the target. This change should help her execute hacks more easily.

I haven't had much of a chance to try these new changes just yet, but from my brief stint with Roadhog I can't help but go "whelp, he's ruined". Trying to hook anyone that's below or above you doesn't work properly, trying to hook people 'around corners' doesn't work properly, and most embarrassingly of all, trying to hook people behind a thin pole doesn't work properly because the game thinks there is no line of sight. 

I'd imagine most of these cases are currently bugged, because it just doesn't make sense to have the hook go straight through people you can quite clearly see. Hopefully this will get fixed in the next couple of days so that we can properly get to assess the damage and see whether the hook changes will end up being a nerf... or something else entirely. Until then, make sure to send Blizzard your feedback via the official forums.

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