After the first wave of nerfs, which affected Widowmaker and McCree, I will discuss these changes after having played with both heroes for quite some time post-nerf. I would then like to go into my thoughts for further balance of other heroes who may be slipping through but may also potentially need a nerf.

The Widow & McCree Nerf

To start my assessment of the nerf to these heroes, I want to start by saying that prior to the patch I believed both heroes to be over-powered and that they needed a nerf. As we all know, McCree could destroy pretty much every hero in the right player’s hands. Widow could body shot and kill heroes such as Tracer and Zenyatta.

So let’s start with the McCree nerf, where his damage output from the Fan the Hammer ability has been reduced, as the developers felt that he could deal too much damage to tank heroes when his role was to take out heroes such as Tracer. Overall, I believe the McCree nerf has been a great addition to Overwatch and the developers have achieved their aim in making McCree an offensive hero, whose main aim is to take out squishy heroes such as Tracer.

Widowmaker has had a huge nerf, not only has her damage output been decreased but her charge time for 100% shot has been extended. This means that it takes a little bit longer to get that 100% charge for the finishing blow. In my personal opinion, I feel that out of the two, Widow has been affected the most. Now, a lot of people will say that it comes down to aim to be a good Widow player as she still gets her 2x damage with a headshot, which will one shot kill all heroes bar tanks. With Overwatch being a fast paced game and heroes having fast movement rate, it can be difficult for players to hit those headshots. Especially if your aiming at a Tracer who will blink past you and take you out very quickly if you miss. The reason I think Widow has been affected the most is the charge time. As Widow, if you miss the headshot most heroes will have around ¼ of their health left, for example Mercy. With the charge time being increased most players will run for cover after being hit by a Widow shot. This means you have a small amount of time before that enemy has disappeared from your vision. Most likely, you will not be able to get a decent charge amount for the second shot before the enemy has found cover, resulting in no elimination.

To conclude my discussion of the current nerfs, I feel the McCree nerf has got it 100% right and McCree fits the description the developers wanted. The Widow nerf however, is more of stepping stone to further balance changes, which is what I’m going to discuss next!

Further Balance Changes?

So this is my view on things at the moment after the patch: Widow has now become the second class sniper in the game with more players picking up Hanzo as their preferred choice. Maybe due to the amount of damage a single arrow can do and the scatter arrow ability which I like to call “the skill arrow,” which can destroy many heroes at once. So does Hanzo need a nerf? I think not, as there is enough skill in judging the flight of the arrow from this standard fire. The only nerf I can see as potentially is either lowering the damage of scatter arrow or how many bounces it has off of the solid environment within the game.

The big call for nerf from myself is Pharah. Although she is easy to pick out of the sky, a skilled Pharah can literally float like a butterfly and has a huge amount of damage. The issue I have is the amount of splash damage her rockets do. Now hear me out Pharah lovers; I play mostly 200 or less health point heroes. Now I understand that Pharah has to have some form of splash damage, but currently is it too much? I’ve been at full health and gone down to 80 health points, so even without decent aim a Pharah can two shot a lot of heroes. Now in terms of nerfing Pharah, I have been considering ways in which to implement a change to her without her being dropped from team rotations. The only way I could think of reducing her effectiveness is either her damage is slightly reduced if the hit is not direct hit, her firing rate is slightly extended or her overall ammo count is reduced.

Finally, the other change I personally would like to see implemented is Roadhog having a delay between his hook, fire & melee combo. Also the hook seems to be slightly broken with dragging players from behind walls etc. I have discussed this with others and they believe it to be down to the tick rate of servers or lag between players, however, I don’t know for sure, but it seems to be happening a lot more!

These are all my own opinion and I am looking forward to reading comments concerning the changes I have discussed, whether you agree or you think I’m crazy and need to go to the doctor!

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