After being announced about a week ago the first update for Overwatch has suddenly appeared, even though it was originally slated for late "June". I can only imagine how lopsided Widowmaker's stats were in the hands of good players for this patch to get pushed out so quickly.

As you can probably guess from the title, the unnamed update brings with it nerfs to both McCree and Widowmaker, but also some rather important bugfixes that will definitely have an effect on gameplay as well. Since the patch notes are rather small, here they are in their entirety:

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

Note: Players must now wait for the unscoping animation to completely finish before scoping

• Infra-Sight 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. 

 

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 certain maps

Maps:

• Fixed an issue with collision on certain areas of Dorado not blocking line of sight

The changes to McCree are rather simple, he is no longer capable of blasting tanks away. For example, in order to kill Reinhardt McCree will now need to land his flashbang and every single shot in order to oh-so-slightly overkill Reinhard's massive health pool. Things are even worse for our gunslinger when we take Roadhog as an example, given that Roadhog will be left standing even after a flashbang + two Fan the Hammer rotations - ouch! This doesn't mean McCree is useless, however, and anyone that has learned to use his left click will find themselves just as adept to each situation as before, though without the absurd damage to serve as a crutch.

Widowmaker on the other hand, I'm not so sure about. These nerfs are most welcome, and you certainly won't see me complain about them, but she's still going to be oppressively strong in the hands of skilled players. Her thin frame, incredibly damaging assault rifle with no swap time, and a poison mine that doubles as a grenade all are a bit too much when you consider how hard it is to even get a drop on a skilled Widowmaker. Whether these nerfs end up producing the desired results or not, I'm still glad Blizzard is taking a cautious approach with things, because I don't think anyone wants to see the World of Warcraft balance roller-coaster ported over to Overwatch. For now let's celebrate this small victory against our sniper overlords!

The final change I wanted to discuss is Mercy's big "nerf", ie. the fact that you can no longer fill up your entire ultimate charge by letting McCree smack against Reinhardt's shield for a couple of seconds. This is one of those changes that sounds irrelevant on first glance, but I have a feeling will make a modest impact given how powerful the resurrect ability is in the hands of a skilled Mercy. Delaying that thing 10-15 seconds might just be enough to shift the direction of a fight, so who knows, this change might be bigger than anyone expected.

As a final note, allow me to just clarify that this isn't the "June patch" that is scheduled to come at the end of the month along with the competitive mode. While the details are still a bit sketchy and absolutely nothing is confirmed, Blizzard is currently looking into buffing D.VA's survivability, and the reliability of Roadhog's silly hook, so those are the two possible changes you can potentially look forward to seeing later this month.

If you're wondering whether Overwatch is worth your time, and have somehow made it all the way to the very end of this article, I welcome you to check out the review I've done after 50 hours of play.

Buff this!