Hot take: D.va Counters new hog

After almost a week of playing against him (in all manner of power levels), I can safely say d.va is a good RPS offensive check to new roadhog. What truly makes her a counter is her relationship with Ana, which we all know absolutely owns the poor pig, and the fact that you can simultaneously make space for even the crappiest Ana to land a nade, but also frustrate great Anas by completely denying her entire kit.

Even though d.va’s new play style in 5v5 is being way more aggressive and less ‘backline superhero’, that isn’t the case in the hog matchup. Babying Ana and keeping your cooldowns for tanking hooks is essential, you can 1v1 him for a long time if you can get into his shooting rhythm with DM. A lot like doomfist, he can bursted down by the whole team, especially when he’s purple. Keep his attention on you, and DM anyone who gets hooked (obviously).

I’m not gonna beat around the bush, killing new hog as 90% of the cast is hard. Even with his massive head, d.va just really doesn’t have the damage to stop him from getting back to his team. It’s not enough to make it an unwinnable 1v1, but it’s enough that he could go on some off flank and grab random kills, then just breather back to his team.

This is where that babysitting ‘backline superhero’ dva comes into play. This comp really puts a lot of faith in your DPS, you’re basically turning the match into a 2v2 Kaiju battle between you and your ana, and the hog and his, to see who can kill Ana first. I’ve had games lose because I tried this to no avail, and some be pub stomps because a widow main has free reign of the healers. If you have faith that your team can back you up, this feels almost foolproof.

Now this is a 5/5 matchup for sure, it really comes down to who’s the better player. Dva can kinda deal with whole hog, but hog cannot save his team at all from nuke. Dva eats every hook you land, but you can crush mech in few good hits. Hog can run from dva, but dva can’t run from hog. Just know these facts going into fighting him.

The real moral of this story is Ana is super fkn overturned rn, and before we do something stupid like make mega hog, we deal with his relationship to anti nade. Also Junker Queen smokes his pack every day lol.

Tl;Dr: Dva can kinda counter hog, but maybe we just deal with Ana before we buff him more lol