Nerf Imminent For OVERWATCH’s McCree Says Designer

Principal Designer Geoff Goodman told PC Gamer that there could be a big change coming for the “overpowered” Overwatch gunsliger, McCree. In a Battle.net forum Goodman wrote, “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.”

After players started buzzing about his comment, Goodman added a followup message to assure everyone that McCree’s flashbang/fan-the-hammer combo would not disappear entirely. “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.”

Like any new shooter that’s focused on multiplayer, Overwatch will have some updates that may shift the stats a bit. These changes come on the tails of numerous player complaints that McCree is just ‘too powerful’ in specific scenarios, but he’s not the only character getting tweaked. In response to concerns that D. Va’s damage is just too weak, Goodman wrote in another thread, “There was a time, when she was first implemented, where she had more damage than she does now. The way that played out is that she would fly into someone’s face, destroy them, and fly away. There was little that person could do because [of] her mobility. As I said I think she can use some help in other areas, but I don’t have anything concrete yet. The goal is that she should be a viable aggressive initiation tank, much like Winston can be right now, rather than some sort of beefy flying assassin. So any changes will likely be helping her in that direction.” 

There’s no word yet on when these changes will arrive, but it sounds like we can expect them sooner rather than later.