The nerf to the Overwatch gunfighter McCree that Blizzard talked about a couple weeks ago is now official. Patch notes posted today on the Battle.net forums say that McCree’s alt-fire damage has been decreased from 70 to 45. Interestingly, his time before reloading has been decreased as well, from .75 seconds to .3 seconds, so unless I’m misunderstanding how this works, he’ll doing less damage per attack but can pull off more attacks in the same window of time than he used to—an interesting bit of balancing.
“McCree was performing too well against all targets, making him feel like a must-pick in many situations,” Blizzard wrote. “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 has also been changed: Her sniper fire base damage has been reduced from 15 to 12, the headshot multiplier bumped from 2 to 2.5, her ultimate charge cost has been increased by ten percent, and players will no longer be able to re-enter sniping mode until after the “exit sniping mode” animation has completed.
Blizzard explained that Widowmaker was toned down because she can sometimes feel “unstoppable,” even if she’s only landing body shots. “The changes to her alternate fire weaken body shot damage while leaving her headshot damage unchanged,” Blizzard wrote. “Additionally, we felt her Ultimate ability, Infra-Sight, was coming up a little too frequently, especially considering its impact on the game.”
The patch will also improve “High Bandwidth Mode” stability in custom games, keep Mercy from charging her ultimate if her target is firing a shield or ice wall, prevent Reaper from teleporting to “unintended locations,” and fix some line-of-sight bugs in Dorado.
