Highlights
- Roadhog's rework in Overwatch 2 includes a buff to his Take a Breather ability, which now constantly recharges and provides 450 health.
- The Overwatch 2 team plans to make additional tweaks to Roadhog's Take a Breather ability to increase its impact overall.
- Fans speculate on possible changes to Roadhog's new Pig Pen trap and eagerly await the arrival of the new Tank hero, Mauga, in Season 8.
Just days after his rework has gone live, the Overwatch 2 team is set on giving Roadhog another buff to one of his more important abilities. Season 7 of Overwatch 2, which brought a highly requested rework to hacker DPS Sombra, is in its home stretch as players look forward to the next hero, a Samoan Tank named Mauga, set to arrive in early December as part of Season 8.
Roadhog's rework has finally arrived after first being announced near the beginning of 2023. His scrap gun's primary and secondary fire have been combined into one so that every shot has short and mid-range effectiveness. Roadhog's self-healing Take a Breather ability saw a huge change as part of the rework as well. Instead of a single-use ability, it's now on a meter similar to Moira's primary healing or D.Va's Defense Matrix, but with a one-second cooldown. With this change, Roadhog players now have a constantly recharging pool of 450 health in their pocket ready to be used at any time. Additionally, the Overwatch 2 team gave Roadhog a brand-new ability, a device called the Pig Pen, which damages and slows trapped targets and makes for a dastardly combo when used in tandem with Roadhog's hook.
On Twitter, Overwatch 2's Lead Hero Designer Alec Dawson revealed that Roadhog's freshly altered Take a Breather ability will be the subject of some additional tweaks, specifying that the change will arrive in Overwatch 2 before the weekend. Responding to a reply under the tweet, Dawson confirmed that it would indeed be a buff, though the exact nature of the improvement is unknown.
Some may be surprised to see the Overwatch 2 team looking to give the controversial self-healing ability a boost. It'll be interesting to see if they eliminate the ability's one-second cooldown entirely and have it function just like Moira's healing. In doing so, the team would likely have to nerf the recharge rate as well as the penalty for emptying the meter. However, it's more probable that instead of touching the cooldown, the Overwatch 2 team may simply increase the amount of total healing from 450, or tweak Take a Breather's recharge rate.
Roadhog has jumped up in viability across all rank thresholds, but there's room here to increase Take a Breather's impact overall. - Alec Dawson
Other fans under the tweet inquired about changes to Roadhog's new Pig Pen trap, asking for increased deployment range or even the ability to remotely trigger it. Time will tell whether any other aspects of Roadhog's rework will see further tuning after this Take a Breather buff. Overwatch 2 Tank players won't have long to wait for the next Tank coming to the game, as Mauga's arrival in Season 8 is only weeks away.
Overwatch 2
Overwatch 2 is Blizzard's free-to-play team-based first-person shooter. The title features some new heroes like Junker Queen and Sojourn, as well as returning favorites.
