Reduced fan the hammer damage
Overwatch‘s director Jeff Kaplan was very forthcoming in regards to my questions about the game pre-launch, and it seems like he’s continuing that mentality in a recent interview with Eurogamer.
Despite all of the contention with the tick rate, he repeats a lot of what’s already been said in this helpful video here, and notes that a 60hz update rate is currently available in custom games, but isn’t fully implemented because it would break the game for “20%” of players. It won’t be out until it’s perfected.
But the most interesting part of the interview was definitely the balance change bits. As you’ve likely heard, McCree and D.Va will be getting a nerf and buff respectively, and Jeff details exactly what that entails. McCree’s “fan the hammer” (right-click) will be altered, and will have its damaged reduced. While Blizzard loves the flashbang combo for killing off characters like Tracer, they dislike how it can “shred” tanks — so he will be more of a situational duelist rather than a 1v1 powerhouse after the change. I never really thought this combo was that powerful as it can be countered by roughly half the cast (you can anticipate the flashbang pretty easily and time its cooldown in your head), but it doesn’t sound like it will cripple him, which is good.
As for D.Va they’re still “exploring” options, but they are looking at her damage output and survivability. It’s a common observation that she isn’t a true “Tank” in the traditional sense in that she can’t take nearly as much damage as her competition, so these avenues are on the right track. The McCree fixes will come “sooner” though as they think D.Va is “not in a horrible place.”
Addressing the age old question of separate balancing on PC and consoles, Kaplan states that he expects the fixes to hit all three platforms at the same time. The McCree patch is actually already in certification and is expected to pass as we speak. As for new content, the plan is to introduce characters “one at a time for a while,” until the team feels like the game “stabilizes.” No timeline was given, however.
There’s a bunch more info in the interview like tweaks to the Play of the Game system (there’s hints of having better camera angles for Widowmaker snipes and Torbjörn turret kills) and details for the competitive mode coming this month, so I suggest giving it a read if you’ve been playing it a ton.
Overwatch: Blizzard answers the big questions [Eurogamer]
