Again landing in the midst of a tournament (as if Blizzard could dodge them), a new patch has been pushed which buffs Ana quite considerably whilst toning down McCree's crazy long range damage.

At a time where teams are experimenting with Ana and wondering in which situations she could be utilised, the rate of fire increase will encourage more use and could push her into a range of more viable compositions. Thankfully we also get a slight reduction to the long-range efficacy of McCree. And there we were anticipating another buff to everybody's McJack of all trades!

We'll see whether the patch has any direct influence on team's hero usage, or is just another application of polish, over the coming hours, days, and weeks.

HERO BALANCE UPDATES

Ana

  • Biotic Rifle
    • Rate of fire increased by 20%
    • Magazine size increased from 8 to 10

Developer Comments: While Ana has been very well received, she was showing to be a little bit weaker overall. In addition to helping her feel better to play, these changes should also increase her healing and damage output.

McCree

  • Peacemaker
    • Primary Fire
      • Damage falloff range decreased by 10 meters
        • Damage falloff amount is unchanged
        • As a result, even with this change, McCree’s effective range is still higher than it was at launch
    • Alternate Fire
      • Rate of fire increased by 15%
  • Flashbang
    • Recovery time (i.e. the amount of time before McCree can fire again) decreased from 0.5 seconds to 0.35 seconds

Developer Comments: McCree’s latest range increase helped him quite a bit, but it was a bit too much in the right hands. This change weakens his long range damage somewhat, but still keeps it stronger than it has been in the recent past. The other changes combine to allow him to land more alternate fire shots on targets that he has hit with Flashbang.

BUG FIXES

Heroes

  • Targets of Ana’s Sleep Dart will no longer instantly recover when damaged (recovery time is now 0.5 seconds)

User Interface

  • Fixed UI compatibility issues for ATI cards
  • Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Lúcio, Mei, and other models to only partially render (or disappear)