Fans: “BUFF ANA! NERF MCCREE (AGAIN)!” Blizzard: “OK.” McCree: “Does this mean it is no longer high noon?”
People asked, and Blizzard delivered. The latest Overwatch PC patch makes some slight alterations to Ana and McCree that will (hopefully) put them back in line with people’s expectations. Here are the relevant bits of the patch notes:
Ana
Biotic Rifle
-Rate of fire increased by 20%
-Magazine size increased from 8 to 10
Developer Comments: While Ana has been very well received, she was showing to be a little bit weaker overall. In addition to helping her feel better to play, these changes should also increase her healing and damage output.
McCreePeacemaker
Primary Fire
-Damage falloff range decreased by 10 meters
-Damage falloff amount is unchanged
-As a result, even with this change, McCree’s effective range is still higher than it was at launch
Alternate Fire
-Rate of fire increased by 15%
Flashbang
-Recovery time (i.e. the amount of time before McCree can fire again) decreased from 0.5 seconds to 0.35 seconds
Developer Comments: McCree’s latest range increase helped him quite a bit, but it was a bit too much in the right hands. This change weakens his long range damage somewhat, but still keeps it stronger than it has been in the recent past. The other changes combine to allow him to land more alternate fire shots on targets that he has hit with Flashbang.
Also worth noting: You no longer instantly recover from Ana’s sleep darts after taking damage. There’s now a 0.5 second recovery time.
Taken at face value, these seem like smart, needed changes. Much as I love playing as Ana, she — unlike other healers — has to reload. Over time, this can cause a pretty steep drop-off in her healing compared to folks like Mercy and Lucio. McCree, meanwhile, found a new way to be (slightly) OP after the big patch that introduced Ana, but it seems like Blizzard’s yanked him back down to this mortal cowboy plane.
What do you think? Are there any other big balance changes you feel like Blizzard needs to be making?
Comments
30 responses to “Overwatch Update Buffs Ana, Nerfs McCree”
Brilliant about McCree, he didnt need the latest buff. the only reason people weren’t playing him was because he was no longer overpowered to take down tanks. So there became a risk vs reward attached him like so many other characters. To have his pistol have better capabilities to take down enemies at range than widowmaker was ridiculous. Both in a gameplay sense and logic.
Oh, great news about McCree. I play a lot of Pharah and no matter how far away I was, or how far up, McCrees were absolutely wrecking me. Plus I was seeing a lot of 2-3 McCrees a game in Quick Play, so obviously the player base know what’s up.
Buff to Ana seems good, though it still won’t stop players picking her just to snipe enemies…
Oh my god. I was on defend at the temple of Anubis the other night, and our Ana set themselves up on the VERY front lines (like, beyond the archways) away from everyone else to try and snipe the other team as they came out of the spawn. They were instantly killed -__-
I know that feel brother
Bastion still needs a spray element added to his turret form. He’s more effective then snipers at range
There already is a spray pattern, but he’s an immobile tank, play soldier or pharah to move him off point if your having trouble at range.
He’s still too effective at range. He should be a mid range character
I don’t agree. Bastion is weak to any long range characters. He has a massive drop in accuracy at long range. The issue is too many people play this as call of duty, pick soldier, reaper and genji and refuse to change characters the entire map.
I usually play as support or D.Va and I can deal with generally, but Bastion can still take down an entire team if placed well
This means you either have no hanzo/widow or are not communicating enough. He is balanced man, maybe a little low on skill when it comes to aiming, but low or mid bastions are all the prison bitch of widow, hanzo, soldier or ana.
The only change I would like to see (that would effect bastion) would be some kind of small buff to winston so that he can play his role of destroying the enemy back line.
Bastion is probably the best balanced so far.
Long range kills does take a degree of skill, to most it would seem like a continuous stream of bullets however good bastion players are correcting bullet spray by shooting in quick successions (bursts/no macro)
Bad bastions are the ones that camp.
Good bastions move around a lot.
Source: I main bastion in competitive 😀 For attack and defend!
I once played competitive with 3 camping Bastions. It made me hate life.
haha can imagine, luckily they have since patched that and you can only be one character per team
I don’t see any issue with Bastion. He’s good at ambush killing unprepared players, but as soon as you know he’s on the field he’s easy. Just gotta adjust your team to counter him.
What’s the worst is when you have a Pharah on your team who goes off and does their own thing, rather than takes down the Bastion -___-
I will usually use D.Va to counter him. I find that Pharah is great for turrets, not so great for Bastions
She’s a little squishy for bastion, but if she can fire rockets at an angle bastion isn’t covering, it’ll take bastion down, and if not, will still make bastion move off point.
So when does this patch hit consoles?
Would’ve been appreciated if the article above included this bit of important information. Not everyone plays the game on PC y’know.
So like it was fairly obvious from the start console was going to be the ugly stepchild, just like tf2, battlefield and Diablo.
haha I forgot Overwatch was on console :
PC and Console are receiving separate patches as they play differently. While this could potentially also go to console, you can’t initially assume it will at all.
For example, Bastion already received damage nerfs on console, but didn’t on pc at all.
Mcree needs to be taken back to the drawing board. The problem is in his original incarnation was he was a tank killer that could also kill agility characters. In his current form, he’s just squishy that doesn’t really threaten anyone except Pharah and Tracer (any competent genji will reflect a fb with ease).
Wouldn’t mind seeing him either become a character that can deal with agility heroes with ease and become a hard counter for those (unblockable FB maybe?), or return to being a tank killer with FB replaced by another skill.
This exactly. I’m late to the party so never got to play early OP McCree, and now, he’s just not in my line up at all. Maybe, 1 in every 5 competitive games you come up against a god tier McCree who will devastate everyone, but by and large, he’s either not played or not competitive. If you have a Pharah running riot, there are more versatile counters, like a Bastion, if there is a Tracer behind your lines – there are strategic counters that don’t necessitate someone switching to a less viable character.
I was actually in a game last night where someone was raging about a Tracer looping around us and said he was going to switch to McCree and we were like, ‘dude, why not just RUN TO THE OBJECTIVE’. Kinda highlights the pointlessness of McCree at the moment.
Lol? He still beats just about every squishy, the only characters with even a slight chance are reaper and gengi. The guy is still really strong, just not hard counters every character strong. He may have lost his no skill ez tank kill combo, but he still beats rein so long as you dont get pinned and if you catch winston with his pants down he has nothing.
The guy has some really short cooldowns (in comparison to a lot of characters he is meant to be going up against), he isnt too far from where he needs to be.
Need moar Bastion buffs.
You mean nerfs, right?
Buffs.
You don’t even play.
Some men just want to watch the world burn. 😀
I reckon they need to take another look at Dva. Ever since they changed her E it has been frustrating to play any character that fires projectiles. Which is most of the roster. I liked the careful timing required pre patch, now its almost always available. Considering it can delete ults as well its a tad ridiculous.
This is my own opinion though. I have enjoyed the game far less and have been less inclined to play it because theres always Dvas involved. Just slows the game down.
I disagree d.va is in a good spot atm. She’s also quite easy to deal with if you have good flankers (reaper, tracer, genjii). IMO she is a much needed alternative to reinheart (both have thier pro’s or cons with their shield depending on the oppositions comp – eg zenyatta debuff is blocked by rein whereas d.va can eat a suped up ult like phara or roadhog).
IMO they need to look at roadhog who has been indirectly nerfed due to the buffs/addition of zenyatta and ana (both hard counters imo).