Why Roadhog's Hooked to Distance Change is not a good path forward

So, a LOT of people will disagree with me on what I am going to say, but here are my thoughts on Roadhog’s nerf.

First I would like to talk about the current live state of Roadhog. There is already plenty of counter play against Roadhog such as flashbang, Zarya barrier, Lucio Soundwave, Mei wall, D.VA defense matrix (which is more consistent now), Roadhog hook, Pharah concussion blast, Junkrat mine, Genji deflect for an ally, Ana sleep dart, and Symmetra shield and shield generator. People can bait out the hook and hooked victims have multiple ways of being saved. Roadhog encourages people to play as a team in a team oriented game and not to get out of position. It pushes teammates to look out for each other in case they do get hooked. If someone died from a hook combo, not to sound rude, but it is that person’s and that person’s teammates' fault. The hooked person should not have gotten out of position and stayed with the team and the person’s teammates should have reacted properly to save the person from the hook, almost all the tanks have a way to save a hooked person and Reinhardt’s shield prevents people from getting hooked in the first place. If your teammate dies from a hook combo, you should take responsibility for not paying attention. Roadhog can only get a hook if you are out of position, if you were behind cover, behind the Reinhardt shield, or behind the Symmetra shield, you will not be hooked and if you do get hooked your team still has a chance to save you. Plus it is hard to consistently get a target with the hook at 20m.

Increasing the hooked to distance is not a good decision by Blizzard in my opinion. It will only allow make teams sloppier and allow teams to make more mistakes because the hook distance will make killing targets more inconsistent like a RNG. If a person out of position gets hooked and the person's teammates aren't paying attention, the hooked person should be punished, not just be slapped on the wrist, and then proceed to kill Roadhog's team. It’s hard for a Roadhog to kill a flying Pharah, a floating Mercy, a flanking Tracer, and a flanking Genji as is, but with the increased hooked to distance, Roadhog will have a harder time to follow through with what should have been a rewarding hook and he will seemingly never be able to kill Mercy. Furthermore, the hooked to distance change is bad for flankers, it allows them to be more careless because now they more or less have one less counter to worry about. When I get a good hook on a difficult target and do not properly follow through, it should be my fault, but now there is a RNG that plays a role and that almost never makes a game fun. If I hook a Tracer, I should be able to kill her and not depend on a RNG to determine whether she lives or dies because the lives of my supports depend on whether I can kill that Tracer. In addition, with the hooked to distance increased, Roadhog’s skill ceiling is lowered because now there is no way for him to overcome Symmetra’s shield generator, one of the things that separated a good Roadhog from a great Roadhog is be able to consistently kill targets even when there was a shield generator.

Sidenote: Before Roadhog mains get mad at me for having a Sombra flair instead of a Roadhog flair, it’s because I love Sombra’s character and backstory and find it the most interesting.