At some point in the future.
Tag: McCree
Nerf The Hammer: McCree/Widowmaker Downgraded In Today’s Patch
It was nice of Blizzard to provide us with this PR snapshot of McCree and Widowmaker side by side, because the two are the focal point of the first big balance patch for Overwatch. Launched on PC today and coming to consoles as part of a larger patch on a later date, players will either be crying foul or rubbing their hands in glee at the knowledge that two of Overwatch’s more problematic characters have been chained back a bit.
McCree’s balance brings his pistol damage from 70 to 45, while reducing the wait before he reloads by more than half (.75 seconds to .3 seconds).
McCree was performing too well against all targets, making him feel like a must-pick in many situations. By reducing the damage of his alternate fire, McCree is now significantly weaker against tanks like Roadhog and Reinhardt, but still maintains his lethality against smaller targets like Tracer and Genji.
Widowmaker, on the other hand, has been equally buffed/debuffed in various areas. While the base damage of her scoped shot has been reduced by a fifth (15 to 12), the damage multiplier on headshots has been boosted from 2x to 2.5x. Additionally, players must now wait for the unscoping animation to finish before scoping again. Finally, her ultimate now costs 10% more.
In the right hands, Widowmaker can often feel unstoppable—even when just landing body shots instead of critical heads shots. The changes to her alternate fire weaken body shot damage while leaving her headshot damage unchanged. Additionally, we felt her Ultimate ability, Infra-Sight, was coming up a little too frequently, especially considering its impact on the game.
In short: McCree can’t take down tanks as easily and Widowmaker can no longer one-shot even characters like Tracer with a hit to the body, preventing her from dominating the battlefield as she was before. Also on the block for a balance is D.Va, although she will be made more powerful. Unlike McCree or Widowmaker, D.Va’s balancing patch is going to take a bit more time to iron out the specifics.
(Source: Blizzard)
McCree Is Getting Nerfed In Overwatch’s Next Patch
It might be high noon somewhere, but McCree is about to see his anti-tank capabilities heavily reduced. In an interview with Eurogamer, Blizzard’s own Jeff Kaplan got in touch to discuss issues like server tick, competitive, matchmaking, and more. He also discusses two heroes about to get a once over thwack with the balance board.
As Kaplan explains in his response, McCree is supposed to be a counter to fast-moving characters like Tracer, Genji, and Reaper. His moves allow him to flashbang an enemy to stun them, then quickly ‘fan the hammer’ to unload his entire clip in a split second. Make no mistake, McCree’s counter works great as designed, too great. What the design team didn’t want was for McCree’s combo to be an instant win button against tanks.
So McCree’s fan the hammer move will have its damaged lessened, making it still lethal against small to mid tier enemies while being less lethal against tanks. In the hands of the right player, McCree will still be a threat against tanks, just not as much as he is now.
D.Va, on the other hand, is proving to be more of a difficult character to balance. Heroes in Overwatch are generally defined either by their damage output or survivability, and D.Va right now isn’t very good at either. As she stands right now, D.Va needs to be very close in order to pile on any damage, but has neither the maneuverability of an offense hero (say Tracer or Soldier: 76) or the survivability of a tank (Roadhog, Bastion) to survive those encounters.
As a result, the team is going to take longer than McCree to roll out D.Va’s balance. Current ideas revolve around buffing one of those two factors of damage output or survivability.
You can read the entire interview at Eurogamer.
MMO Fallout 