The newest Overwatch patch includes the promised nerf to McCree, as well as some tweaks to Widowmaker.
If you’re one of the Overwatch players who’s been waiting for Blizzard to nerf McCree, your wait ends today. Blizzard has rolled out a brand-new patch to their multiplayer shooter, and it not only scales back McCree’s Fan the Hammer damage, it also tweaks Widowmaker’s abilities as well.
For McCree, the changes center around his Fan the Hammer alternate attack. Each bullet will now do 45 damage, down from 70 before the patch. However, they have also sped up his reload after using the skill. He will now start reloading 0.3 seconds after firing the final round, down from 0.75 seconds. Blizzard said of the change, “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’s changes are a bit less drastic. Her scoped shot alternate fire base damage has been decreased from 15 to 12, with no change made to the scoped multiplier. Headshots are more valuable now, as Blizzard increased the headshot multipler from 2x to 2.5x. Another subtle change: when you unscope, you will now have to wait for the animation to complete before you can scope again. Finally, the cost of her Ultimate ability has been increased 10 percent. Blizzard’s comments say, “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.”
The patch also brings a few minor bug fixes, but the main focus here is on the character changes. If you want to check out all the patch notes, you can find them here. For now, the patch is only live on PC. It will be coming to consoles in a larger patch at a later date.
