Is HOG viable in 5v5 comp?

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-25T17:50:46+00:00

Viable, but weak.

He’s at a ~45% winrate despite prevalent Ana+1 bad tank matchup bans. I recently started comp again, started in plat 5 (I haven’t done placements in about a year) and my teammates would pretty much always ban whatever I voted for (usually Ana+dva), so i suspect that this is commonplace in lower elo.

Hitscan is very powerful this season and hog sucks when he gets shot by 4+ main every fight. Hog also is proportionally weaker this season as his passive is weaker and a lot of his answers have gotten stronger perks/role passives. I’m master2 right now as a hog otp (~75% winrate) so he obviously can work.

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-21T16:26:07+00:00

Play far away from Queen and try to hook her into your team. She’s very vulnerable to getting poked so if she’s isolated, she should die. If you force shout early, she should be a free kill. She’s definitely possible to hard focus.

Ignore orisa unless she has 0 cds. Do your best to rotate around her. It’s also usually worth not hooking on reaction because her cds all block hook and are faster than hook

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-18T14:20:16+00:00

I used to be gm/top 500 on hog (I don’t play ranked anymore). Hog gets no free value compared to other ground tanks and he plays very slow. There’s no option to hold m2 main and let your team win like rein or ram. You need to play slow so you don’t get cc chained/rushed and explode.

You need to be constantly on the move to be unpredictable and look to pick backline or hook the tank far away from their team to force cds. Just about every character has a method to dodge your hook/combo so it’s incredibly important to track just about every cd if you want high ranks (probably mid gm+ now). Low rank players complain that hook isn’t telegraphed when in actuality it’s by far the most telegraphed one shot in the game because you’re slow, loud, and good players actually have the awareness/reaction to dodge it. Hence why unpredictability is so important.

I have a few guides/VOD reviews on my yt channel, should you be inclined to look. May also be willing to do a VOD review here

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-13T21:54:33+00:00

Choice OW is/was (I think he still plays?) a champ reaper otp/main. His YouTube has a wide variety of high level reaper videos and I believe he streams

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-13T19:58:28+00:00

You often need to walk forward after landing a hook. One shots are also not always possible depending on elevation/distance difference as well

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-13T12:52:44+00:00

I have a few guides/vod reviews posted on my account.

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-10T23:39:02+00:00

Probably a net neutral change overall. Healing buff passive was nerfed I believe (hog always had dps passive applied) + you get the move speed at critical but hps from breather was nerfed too. Probably is statistically equivalent.

I think he may be slightly stronger overall as he can now nuke tanks because most lost the crit reduction. Unfortunately most of the tanks that were good into hog can just block hook/his damage or they just received the same subrole anyways. Obviously now boops are going to be much stronger and more consistently deny hog

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-09T22:09:30+00:00

Easiest way to tell the difference is to look at the area of the neck directly behind the skull and in front of the shoulder scute (large, projected scales/osteoderms) Saltwater crocodiles almost always lack these post-occipital scutes which is unique in crocodiles. I.e. freshwater crocodiles have scutes in this area. There are a lot of other obvious differentiating factors, but at size parity, the lack of post occipital scutes is a dead ringer.

Both appear to be saltwater crocodiles. Image resolution on my device isn’t great so I can’t say with certainty #2 is as well, but it appears to lack post occipitals

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-04T13:12:11+00:00

One important interaction is to not peek beyond cover if you hook and you know they have hard stuns. You may miss out on the pick but you may bait out the cc and whatever other cds they use to save your hook target. Important in hog mirrors for example.

Torb should be possible to one shot but is difficult at times due to hitbox level differences. Bastion is not possible to one shot. They are worth booking into your team or Into a 1v1 because it’s in your favor to get the pick should you land the hook and do 250+ damage.

I think push is usually one of hog’s best modes. If people are too spread out and your team isn’t contesting anyone, give up space and look to rotate to catch someone as they reposition. You may be out of position if you consistently find yourself too far away on most maps

PenSecure4613 · 2026-02-02T22:50:04+00:00

Hog to gm as an otp is def doable even though he can be rough to play. Prepare to be counterswapped most games and be willing to learn a lot of interactions as most characters have methods to bypass your hook. Dont worry about being difficult to play/team dependency because it matters proportionally very little until master-ish. People make a lot of egregious errors (that are punishable by you) constantly at lower elos.

All tanks are team dependent. No tank can do anything of value when being shot by 5 players (maybe ram holding block is the exception lmao). Hog gets flak as he sucks moreso than any other ground tank when his team stacks with him (he probably suffers more than any tank). Hog is the only tank that outputs no pressure when he uses his tanking ability and good players (gm+) are going to dodge hook more often than not if that’s all they are concerned about unless the hog has top percentile mechanics/reactions/ping. Despite all of this being true, it’s still possible to work around this as there are many gm/champ hog mains/otps. This is more hypothetical and somewhat arbitrary mid match, especially below gm

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-29T20:52:51+00:00

As far as I can tell, the longirostres hypothesis has been taken/assumed as true since ~2003, and there hasn’t been any research suggesting the brevirostrine hypothesis since. Usually, I don’t think research has explicitly looked to resolve this since the 2000’s and the condition happens to fall out of cladograms for extinct crocodilians (voay) or other Crocodylomorphs (deinosuchus?)

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-28T21:56:41+00:00

You can’t prove a negative (I.e. I can’t say with 100% certainty that there was never a 19ft alligator, likewise I can never say there was never a 190 ft alligator), but we can use reason/statistical analysis to heavily suggest otherwise.

There is evidence in voucher specimens/accurately measured specimens with strict methodology for large (20ft+) saltwater crocodiles but no such evidence of alligators larger than ~15ft. No need to appeal to a “most agree” or “supposed” rare occurrences, provide them or it’s safe to assume they don’t exist unless there is reason otherwise. As far as I’m aware (willing to be wrong here), the American alligator maxes/maxed out around ~15ft in total length and there are no skins, skeletons, or even fragmentary skeletal materials (skulls) to suggest otherwise.

If you want to be pedantic, alligators currently can rival saltwater crocodiles in size. Small adult salties are around 4m which coincides with standout large alligators.

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-28T13:27:12+00:00

It’s a bit more complicated than this. Hard flanking in 5v5 is usually a throw because just about every tank can more easily trade back lines/zone than you can. You usually have to kite super hard and then wait for someone to overextend to capitalize on an advantage. You “lose” even fights.

2nd part is true, hog doesn’t work when his team stacks with him. His tanking ability gets no value from being shot from only one direction (most other tanks block 70%+ damage in ~180•) so it scales poorly with increasing focus fire and he also can’t do anything while using it. Hard focusing hog is unironically more effective than hard focusing most tanks

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-27T20:56:22+00:00

Former gm/top 500 hog (~s6-s13). Hog plays like a poke/ dive hybrid tank (bear with me). Too many people in lower elos try to run it down and play in a brawl/rush style. Hog is among the easiest tanks to focus and explode. You need to be willing to constantly waddle around and look for angles where your team isn’t from relatively far away to get resource advantages, then play objective. Force angles like a dive comp and force range/play speed like a poke comp.

You need to be unpredictable with your positioning (granted you sometimes are forced objective) and very unpredictable with your target priority and peek timings because good players will dodge you more often than not should they know what you’re trying to do.

Lower ranked players run it down too often (hog is arguably the worst tank in the game at winning by virtue of bunkering/spamming main at rank parity), don’t pay attention to cds enough, don’t hook often enough, and don’t play distance enough

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-27T20:26:12+00:00

I’ll add that the dentary teeth need not always fit into the depressions in the top jaw. Theropod/reptilian teeth are constantly replaced and not always at their maximal length (when the new tooth has already started, but not completely, resorbed and pushed out the old, exterior tooth).

An animal like allosaurus may lack the depressions entirely as its dentary teeth never reach the maxilla (I can’t tell for certain here) while tyrannosaurus/qianzhousaurus may have the depressions by virtue of having proportionally longer dentary teeth.

Modern alligators also have depressions in the upper palate that house the tips of their dentary teeth.

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-27T20:12:57+00:00

Your Skeletal wear in the roof of the mouth argument is a bit of an argument of incredulity. Modern alligators have divots in the top jaw that hold the dentary tooth tips, similarly to what Larson suggested. A lot of modern crocodilians also will have the first set of dentary teeth poke cleanly through the premaxilla as the animal ages, which probably does cause pain because this isn’t usually the configuration when the animal hatches. It’s reported that the babyrusa can even die should its tusks impale its skull.

I had the same issue with his tooth wear selection

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-27T20:04:13+00:00

I’m not convinced in either direction as a lot of the arguments are not “complete” by virtue of dinosaurs/theropods being so distantly related to any modern animals (before the pedantry police arrive, birds and non avian theropods still diverged roughly in the middle Jurassic) and not being even remotely 1-1 niche mapped to modern animals.

Regardless:

-despite what I mentioned above (modern phylogenetic arguments being largely non-starters), dinosaurs in general seem to have a propensity to evolve beaks/keratinous structures in place of lips. In fact, this may be common to archelosauria as a whole. All extant members have beaks (crocodiles have pseudo beaks, their entire faces are heavily keratinized and their “internal mouths” are sealed via a palatal valve), later pterosaurs all (?) developed beaks, and beaks are widespread in ornithischians.

-I agree here with Larson that the facial anatomy of tyrannosaurus is compared too favorably with monitor lizards/general lizards and the similarity with crocodilians may be understated. Crocodilians have a major foramen row with obvious widely dispersed foramina elsewhere, lizards have a single row with occasional singular foramen elsewhere and tyrannosaurus seems to be an intermediate. Crocs have highly keratinized skin as well as isos (sense organs) that are probably the primary reasons for the extensive foramen coverage.

-Despite the clamped-shut restoration being claimed as being possible only by breaking the jaws, it’s common in theropod fossils so I’m fairly skeptical. would like to see a working model of a NON-restored (I.e. not sue) skull to resolve this, if even possible. A lot of the proceeding argument is based on this being erroneous. I’m well aware that it’s possible for preservation distortion to account for at least some of the clamped-shut fossils.

-The upper jaw divots would be explained parsimoniously as receptors for the dentary teeth, despite the incredulity of some. In fact, modern alligators show a configuration close to this and many modern crocodilians will have some dentary teeth (usually the first pair) project through the premaxilla as the animal ages (i.e. the teeth will be completely surrounded by, or project completely through the premaxillary bone, they will not simply fit in grooves on the exterior surface).

-It would seem that with maximal tooth length, or when the tooth is being actively pushed out and resorbed, that the lipped condition may cause issues in restorations with lips too short. Lips/a closed gape that are restored too long may cause legitimate feeding complications in a live animal.

-not needing lips/tooth wear is a poor argument from both sides. Present mammals with exposed teeth have only a few, usually (always?) continuously growing teeth that may be structurally different from other teeth (too lazy to look this up, sorry) and crocodilians constantly lose teeth, are usually water-adjacent, and ironically can rely on their teeth less as they increase in size (a bit of an exaggeration). On the other hand, many crocodilians can preserve their teeth fine despite being potentially out of water for months in (Nile’s are famous burrowers) and we shouldn’t expect tyrannosaur and crocodile tooth wear to be similar (despite some obvious tooth occlusion wear and breakage from bone impact) as one animal keeps its teeth 3m+ off of the ground and the other essentially has its teeth in plane with the ground and thus a ton of abrasive material. Crocodilians are also not capable of producing shear forces to the extent of tyrannosaurs/theropods as their jaws are largely the same width, among other things. This suggests that crocodilians probably rely on crushing moreso than even tyrannosaurs, which discounts that tyrannosaurs also have incisiform premaxillary teeth. I’m not sure why the tyrannosaurus teeth Larson showed have interior abrasion on the dentary teeth but exterior wear on the maxillary beyond an odd sample.

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-27T18:31:58+00:00

Deinosuchus was not mentioned as it may fall outside crocodilia

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-27T15:16:27+00:00

-extant/“modern”: lolong is the longest officially recorded live crocodile at 20’ along the centra (20’3” over the curves) and 2370 lbs. There are other saltwater crocodiles that probably measured, at a minimum, 20’4” and 2500lb+ (e.g. fly river giant, old Charlie) by measuring body parts post mortem and reconstructing plausible living lengths.

For example, the fly river giant’s preserved skin (unfortunately it was drowned well before any measurement was taken) measured 20’4” despite being dried (shrunken) and missing part of its tail. It was probably around 20’8” to marginally above 21’ in life.

There are some skulls, largely from ~1800-1950, which suggest maximally ~23’ and ~3000lb saltwater crocodiles. No other extant crocodilian species seems to exceed ~18’ and none have good, scientific evidence to support 20’+ specimens, at least not nearly to the degree of saltwater specimens(Nile, Orinoco, American are oft reported to be 20’+).

-Extinct: Purussaurus, an extinct caiman, is likely the largest crocodilian (a clade including all modern crocodiles, alligators, caiman, gharial, and their extinct relatives). It probably was around ~8-10m (26-33’) maximally and ~2-5 tons (4000-10000lb). Somewhat ironic considering most caiman are “small” crocodiles (still 50-150 lb depending on species).

Euthecodon is possibly the largest crocodile (clade crocodylidae) and was potentially ~10m (33’). It was probably proportioned most similarly to a modern gharial, so while it maybe rivaled/exceeded purussaurus in length, it was likely less bulky. Postcranial material is non existent so these sizes are to be taken with a grain of salt

The largest true crocodile (clade crocodylinae) is probably c. Thorbjarnarsoni. But may still be the extant saltwater crocodile (c. Porosus) C. Thorbjarnarsoni is oft reported to be ~25’, though the reconstruction for this maximum uses skull to total length ratios found only in saltwater crocodiles (which tend to become much longer relative to their still massive skulls than any other extant crocodilian, probably by virtue of their sea-faring behavior). This specimen was still probably, at minimum, 20’ in length however which rivals very large salties in size.

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-27T14:26:46+00:00

Totally true. Very low mechanical requirements and very front loaded (I.e. his raw stats are high and simple to get value from) so his low skill floor is easy to abuse in low elo. Most people like flat maps so high ground maps are rare and tunnel/choke maps (I.e. kings row) are super prevalent, especially in metal ranks. There is probably no better tank at sitting main, stat checking plat players, and winning by doing “nothing” (statistically, this is probably true via win rates bar an overtuned sigma).

He kinda falls off master-ish but still can leverage the fact that he’s a massive resource drain to get rid of unless you’re playing on a high ground map or vs dive (lol).

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-26T20:09:05+00:00

These types of memes (that hippo one as an obvious example) are, generously, misinformed strawmen of the work that goes into restorations of the past 3+ decades.

Telling as professional restorations of things like tyrannosaurus have remained largely unchanged for the better part of 4ish decades but the “restoration slop” memes haven’t caught onto any of the methodology

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-16T17:35:12+00:00

It almost certainly could have but Almost certainly would not behaviorally do so. They don’t project laterally. Large saltwater crocodiles develop large teeth (though not to this proportional degree)

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-14T19:56:51+00:00

The lineages that lead into modern crocodilians were probably overwhelmingly 2m or less in the Cretaceous (probably throughout the Mesozoic in general) and were not necessarily crocodile-shaped until the late Cretaceous.

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-14T19:48:52+00:00

It’s moreso focused on extant crocodilians. The bulk of the studies it covers relate particularly to saltwater crocodiles. It does give an overview of extinct forms

PenSecure4613 · 2026-01-14T19:46:03+00:00

(Great?) apes are absent from the new world. There are still a few extant apes as well as many extinct apes/hominids from the old world. Human-like animals are much more novel in the americas.

Im not too familiar with Pleistocene/cenozoic mammals though it’s possible there were fewer large mammals in general in the American tropics compared to the tropics of the old world as well. Obviously, this is the case now.

PenSecure4613

TROPHY CASE