Overwatch Patch Aims To Balance McCree And Widowmaker

June 14, 2016 Sean Sullivan Comments

Blizzard has released patch 1.0.4 for Overwatch, aiming to balance McCree and Widowmaker.

McCree's recovery time has been reduced and so has his alternate fire bullet damage. While Widowmaker's sniper fire base damage has been reduced from 15 to 12 and her headshot multiplier has been buffed from 2X to 2.5. It's no surprise. It seemed like McCree and Widowmaker showed up in every match because of their superior viability.

For now the patch only applies to PC players.

Read the official announcement by visiting the Battle.net forums.

HERO BALANCE CHANGES

McCree

Peacekeeper
- Alternate Fire
  - Recovery time (i.e. the amount of time before McCree starts reloading) decreased from 0.75 seconds to 0.3 seconds
  - Bullet damage decreased from 70 to 45

Developer Comments: McCree was performing too well against all targets, making him feel like a must-pick in many situations. 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

Widow’s Kiss
- Alternate Fire (Scoped Shot)
  - Base damage decreased from 15 to 12
    - Note: Scoped shot damage multiplier remains unchanged
  - Headshot damage multiplier increased from 2x to 2.5x
  - Players must now wait for the unscoping animation to completely finish before scoping

Infra-Sight
- Ultimate cost increased by 10%

Developer Comments: In the right hands, Widowmaker can often feel unstoppable—even when just landing body shots instead of critical heads shots. 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.

BUG FIXES

General

Improved stability of the High Bandwidth option in Custom Games

Heroes

Fixed a bug that allowed Mercy to gain Ultimate charge whenever damage boosting an ally who was attacking a barrier or Ice Wall
Fixed a bug that allowed Reaper to Shadow Step to unintended locations on a certain maps

Maps