Here's how the latest Overwatch patch changes Ana and McCree
Take your medicine.
Overwatch saw a couple of balance changes land on the PC last night (via Metabomb), whilst the console versions are expected to see them rolled into a larger patch later down the line.
Let's have a butchers.
Ana
- Biotic Rifle: Rate of fire increased by 20%.
- Biotic Rifle: Magazine size increased from 8 to 10.
McCree
- Primary Fire: Damage falloff range decreased by 10 meters.
- Primary Fire: 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.
Bug Fixes
- Targets of Ana's Sleep Dart will no longer instantly recover when damaged (recovery time is now 0.5 seconds).
- Fixed UI compatibility issues for ATI cards.
- Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Lúcio, Mei, and other models to only partially render (or disappear).
So the Ana tweaks are the most straightforward here. Overwatch's newest hero has seen both her damage and healing capabilities buffed, which feels about right given our experience with the character over the last couple of weeks.
The Sleep Dart fix is especially welcome, giving some much needed breathing room between landing the dart and having a teammate immediately cancel its effect. Even in a worst case scenario this ability now offers a brief stun during a firefight. As it should, I think, given the accuracy required to actually hit someone with the damned thing.
There's perhaps a little more going on with McCree. The alternate fire and flashbang buffs are simple enough, but his primary fire damage falloff is the big change here.
As the patch notes explain, McCree's effective range is still marginally better than it was at launch, but it's taken a big hit compared to the buff he received in the previous update.
The appropriately-named Reddit user, Bullzeye2448, has been testing how this works in the game's practice range. They report that while, for example, you can expect to destroy a target dummy with two headshots or three bodyshots at 20m, this more than doubles at 40m - at which point you'll need to land four headshots or nine bodyshots.
Damage falloff is one of the most important things to consider for your man McCree, and so Blizzard's decision to reduce his effective range by 10m is a fairly substantial nerf.
Pharah players rejoice.