It didn’t take long for Blizzard to announce another buff for Roadhog in Overwatch 2 following his massive rework that was released on Tuesday, Nov. 16. In an attempt to improve the shieldless tank’s survivability, Take a Breather was given a second boost.
Overwatch 2 lead hero designer Alec Dawson posted on social media yesterday saying the dev team saw improvements to Roadhog’s performance this week, but they wanted to make Take a Breather even more impactful. With four changes to the ability, it’s safe to say they certainly gave Roadhog a massive survivability buff.
While players may have expected Take a Breather to get a buff to the recharge speed of its new resource bar, Dawson and his team took things a few steps further and gave the ability more damage reduction as well as increasing the amount it heals and the speed of the heal. Here are all of the specs for the Take a Breather changes that went live last night:
- Total healing increased to 500, up from 450.
- Damage reduction increased to 40 percent, up from 30.
- Maximum duration reduced to 2.5 seconds, down from three.
- Recharge time reduced to 10 seconds, down from 12.
In a post on social media announcing that the changes had gone live, Dawson admitted last night that the buff was a bit bigger than players may have anticipated.
“A bigger swing here, so we’ll be looking at his performance through the weekend (already quite the jump up) and see if additional tweaks need to happen,” Dawson said.
Roadhog’s rework comes just a few weeks before Blizzard plans to release another tank with no shield. Mauga is poised to join the game’s roster on Dec. 5 when season eight starts. Roadhog’s changes combined with Mauga’s addition mark a move toward diversifying the tank role from what is a relatively shield-dominant meta.
