It’s High Nerf – Possible McCree Changes Coming
by JR Cook - 8 years ago show comments
We’re a week out now since Overwatch released to the wild and like you, we’ve also been playing the heck out of this game since early last week. However, like any team based PVP style game, balance complaints are sure to be rampant. While most people have been whining a bit about turrets and Bastion’s taking over the Play of the Game, at least there are some pretty hard counters for them (Genji, Tracer, Roadhog, Pharah, and even McCree for example). One hero though is getting what I see as some pretty legit complaints and is becoming an almost have to run 2 of in several competitive builds.
We’re talking about the cowboy named McCree. We’re not necessarily talking about his ultimate ability either, while High Noon is a powerful ultimate ability, it’s pretty on par with all the other ultimates in the game. The real problem with McCree is his ability to Flash Bang an opponent to stun them, and then right click for Fan the Hammer to nearly one shot any character in the game, including tanks.
That’s rough because the only real counter to that much power, is to have your team also run McCree so it’s just a Flash Bang good time.
Blizzard has taken some notice to McCree’s power though and Principal Designer Geoff Goodman has taken to the battle.net forums to let them know that he agrees with the complaints. His damage is a little too high for Fan the Hammer and he’s exploring some new options for McCree. He also reiterates that Fan the Hammer is the real issue here as Flash Bang is an extremely useful tool to counter very fast and agile teams with Tracer and Genji.
I’ve been watching McCree carefully since we’ve released. McCree’s flashbang plays an important role in being a strong option against very fast/agile teams (tracers/genjis/etc). It is also a nice tool to prevent close range devastating abilities and ultimates such as Reaper’s Death Blossom.
That said, its probably a bit too good at dealing damage to higher health targets such as Tanks and barriers. I don’t have any concrete changes yet, but I’m going to be testing some things internally to see how he plays.
When told that fans believe the problem isn’t the Flash Bang but is indeed Fan the Hammer, Geoff responded:
Right. I think I wasn’t clear enough. By saying ‘its probably a bit too good at dealing damage to higher health targets’ I mean his flash/fan combo, not the flash itself. Fan is more likely to see changes than flash at this point.
So what do you think? Is a McCree nerf needed? How would you balance McCree at this point? Is there any other hero you think is currently a problem in the game? Let us know in the comments!
I think other heroes need nerfing before McCree, and I’m not even a McCree player.
Mccree is my main and fan the hammer is too slow to re up to be a real issue. I don’t find myself being overpowered and frankly I’ve seen that when blizzard nerfs something they do it to the point of it being useless. If mccree sees a hard nerf then I won’t be playing anymore overwatch.
chances are they are just gonna make it like if you use flash you cant fan for 2 secs
not that big an overall nerf exept against higher health targets
So eliminate the flash fan combo entirely? Don’t know if you’ve played mccree but that would be a hefty nerf.
if you play McCree as a Main you should know his roll instantly reloads
a Stun fan roll fan combo does 940 dmg if all hits connects and more if any of them are headshots… Nothing survives that… nothing
See all how the pros play and you will get how disgustingly good this combo is and not anyway slow
This is misinformed. Fan the hammer doesn’t do additional damage on headshots.
I figured it was fine the way it was. If he has already used his roll or whiffed/used grenade, he’s dead. Any team with a Hanzo or Widow should be able to see him coming at any rate. I think people should be more worried about figuring out why they are in the situations they are in causing them to get hit by the combo as opposed to complaining about the character.
There is a 10 second cool down on flash and an 8 second cool down on roll. That means I can do that combo once every 10 seconds at best. It only works 1v1 or 1v2 if the others heros are low health health. Easy way to counter is just to not get close alone. And chaotix is correct in his reply.
I think this Nerf is needed. There isn’t any character I feel safe in to get close to McCree as Genji is te only one who can reflect his flashbang and you need to be a seer or an awesome pro with him to predict when the cowboy will throw the flash. Nerf the fan damage a bit and raise the flashbang effect with one second maybe to have a balance.
If you don’t feel safe getting close then don’t get close. Mei is the same way. Stay farther away.
They are rushing to nerf this char, there are going to be other chars soon, we need a cowboy to protect us from those.
We need this nerf soon.