UPDATE
In an interview with Eurogamer, director Jeff Kaplan had mentioned in the story below that the plan was to decrease the Fan the Hammer damage for Overwatch hero McCree.
“The goal there is to make it so that McCree can still use his combo that we love, which is Flashbang and Fan the Hammer on somebody like Tracer. McCree should absolutely kill that Tracer. We want McCree to be a counter to people like Tracer, Genji and Reaper.”
“What we’re not crazy about, right now, is the way in which McCree can absolutely shred tanks. It’s a little too easy, so we want to bring the Fan the Hammer damage down, so he’s still killing the squishies and the medium strength heroes, but he’s less effective against the tanks.”
“If he times everything perfectly and gets every single shot off, he’s got a shot against a tank, but it’s not the instant ‘I win’ button that it is right now.”
ORIGINAL STORY
D.Va and McCree are in Blizzard’s balancing cross-hair at the moment as players have started to feedback the strengths and weaknesses of the tank and offensive characters.
In a battle.net forum thread, Principal designer Geoff Goodman made suggestions regarding possible nerfs to offensive hero McCree as he has a very lethal flashbang and Fan the Hammer combo – this is the alt-fire on his six shooter that unloads all bullets in the blink of an eye.
This win combo according to Goodman’s statement is likely to be adjusted, speaking on behalf of the studio in a thread called ‘Please Nerf McCree’:
“I’ve been watching McCree carefully since we’ve released. McCree’s flashbang plays an important role in being strong option against very fast/agile teams (Tracerrs, 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.”
“By saying it’s probably a bit too good at dealing damage to higher health targets’ I meant his Flash/Fan combo, not the Flash itself. Fan is more likely to see changes than Flash at this point.”
In another thread regarding D.Va, Goodman also made various hints regarding the hero’s relatively low damage output:
“D.Va’s damage is definitely on the lower side, much like Winston’s. They are this way for a similar reason; They are both very mobile and hard to kill. Every character in the game has strengths and weaknesses, it’s part of what makes the team-play work well.”
“That said, I do think there is some room for some D.Va improvements, but these are unlikely to take the shape of increasing her damage output significantly.”
“Yes she gets taken down quickly if she is fighting multiple targets, unlike Winston/Reinhardt because of their barriers. When I said she is difficult to kill it’s speaking for a smaller skirmish standpoint standpoint, which can usually set up due to her Flight ability.”
“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 her mobility.”
“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 isn’t anything concrete at the moment if Blizzard actually will be implementing these tweaks, however such is the life of any games similar to Overwatch that has any sort of competitive PvP like Destiny or Tom Clancy’s: The Division. The inevitability of imbalances where certain characters are overpowered compared to others as players will always find lethal combos.
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