Overwatch - How OP McCree Used To Be

Hello, everybody!
Disciple here with Overwatch Curios!
The Overwatch closed beta was a time of fun, sorrow, craziness, and an immense amount of
player feedback since it was the first time the public got ahold of the title.
There were bugs, map imbalances, over or underpowered abilities; things you’d expect to see in
a Blizzard beta.
However for a solid month, one giant, ridiculously overpowered entity dominated the game’s
first beta phase and started an insane amount of uproar on social media, reddit, and the
official forums.
Out of all of the initial heroes in the game, McCree stood atop the charts as the hero with
the best damage, range, and ultimate use far outshining anyone else on the roster.
From October 8th to November 9th of 2015, the techno cowboy reigned supreme and today,
we’re going to reminisce about why and how he was the best, and what happened to his
power once the game crawled closer to release.
For those of you who weren’t involved in the closed beta and the subsequent patches
up until release, consider yourself lucky… let’s check out why!
Let’s take a trip back to 2015 when Overwatch was finally dropped into our laps in the form
of the limited closed beta.
Thousands of players were given the opportunity to test the game, provide feedback and show
off all the hard work Blizzard threw into the game over the previous few years.
Of course, the game had only seen limited internal testing and couldn’t really progress
balance-wise until a good number of players that weren't neck-deep in its development
were able to judge the title for themselves and tell Blizzard all about it.
So, match after match, test after test players started to slowly figure out all the little
nuances, niches, and imbalances in the game and tell everyone with eyes and ears how they
felt about it via forums, videos, articles, and social media.
One of the primary heroes under fire was Jesse McCree, who, at the time, was constantly called
the cowboy sniper.
At the start of the beta McCree was far and away the best hero in the game.
He had no direct counters in the roster and trying to counterplay a McCree was near impossible
if the McCree player had even half an idea what he was doing.
At this point in time, quickplay was the only mode available and there were no hero restrictions.
So, a team could stack McCrees and just win.
If you DID manage to get a team with a viable comp, which was 2-2-2 at the time, a single
McCree on the enemy team was still terrifying and hard to deal with.
Remember, this was just before D.Va, Mei, and Genji, so there were no real mitigation
abilities to deal with McCree like Defense Matrix, Deflect, or just freezing him in place.
So what WAS available to go up against McCree?
Well, you could try counter-sniping him with another McCree but that was all up to chance
and what cooldowns you had available when you went toe to toe.
Other snipers would work, but only if you could get the drop on him.
You can’t tank him because of his mobility and stopping power, so Reinhardt, Hog, and
winston were pretty much out of the picture in direct combat.
Every other hero could be picked at range by even a half-decent McCree, so that pretty
much sums up the roster.
Maybe a lucky Junkrat nade, Pharah rocket from above, or well-placed turret could deal
with him.
But that was hit or miss.
McCree was pretty much god-like at the beginning.
He had massive range and could one-shot low & medium health targets with a well-placed
headshot.
The trick was getting in close to the McCree AFTER he used his flashbang and roll to maneuver
or just flanking him without him knowing.
These were very difficult ideas though considering he could murder you from pretty much any range
with 0% damage drop off.
That’s right, he had huge damage whether you were in his face or a billion miles away.
To top that off, the peacekeeper pistol fired relatively quickly and didn’t have any of
the drawbacks that actual snipers in the game had, namely lack of situational awareness
or mobility issues.
For example, Widowmaker had to be scoped for the damage increase which slowed her movement
considerably and dropped her situational awareness because of the narrowed scope vision.
Hanzo, on the other hand, had to deal with reduced movement speed when his bow was drawn
as well as mastering arcs for higher accuracy and a slower rate of fire.
McCree didn’t suffer from either of those issues.
He was unmatched at short range as well with his flashbang ability stopping any hero in
their tracks giving him a solid second to put up to 6 point-blank shots into the target.
So, he could snipe and see what's going on around him while moving around fluidly and
quickly.
He could even melt tanks with the McCree combo of fan the hammer, roll, flashbang, fan the
hammer again.
It was an insane amount of damage in a very short period of time that was nearly unavoidable.
All that and we haven’t even gotten to Dead Eye, which was a super OP ultimate at the
time for a couple of reasons.
First, it had an insane duration.
For 20 whole seconds, a McCree player could walk around slowly with his gun ready to annihilate
anyone who was in line of sight.
Secondly, even if they all ran for cover, that was 20 seconds that your team had complete
zone control unless someone was lucky enough to pop the McCree before he was able to let
deadeye loose.
It didn’t take the community long to figure all of this out and
within days the “bug” reports of how broken McCree was in every conceivable way started
to flood the internet.
Now, we’ve got this debate going on between not only beta testers and blizzard, but non-beta
testers who had been watching players via streams and YouTube as well as crunching numbers
in theorycrafting simulations and conversations.
Some were pushing to keep McCree as he was stating he’s a high skill hero just like
any other sniper.
Others who were on the receiving end of the peacekeeper shouted about how hard it was
to deal with the hero on just about any level and how he needed a nerf.
McCree even became the target of several memes about how overpowered he was and how he needs
to be nerfed; it was that loud and large of an issue around the community.
So for a month straight, both sides of the argument progressed and McCree players focused
on honing their lethality skills and non-McCrees focused on trying to find new ways to beat
the cowboy back and save the day.
Even though these players got better and better at their prospective roles, the argument raged
on for nearly a month.
It got so bad, that there were players that refused to play in matches that had a McCree
on the enemy team, or matches that didn’t have 6 McCrees on their team to ensure the
win.
He’s one of the only heroes that has gotten the entire community up-in-arms about the
gameplay to the point where entire posts and conversations revolved around how to build
a comp to nullify the McCree player on the enemy team, instead of how to capture a point
or push a payload.
Blizzard remained relatively quiet on the whole thing, chiming in every once in awhile
with assurances that they heard the communities cry and were working toward balance changes
not only for McCree, but for many other heroes as well.
However that took an entire month to propagate, so McCree players dominated the game for an
entire month, and never again have we seen a hero take the entire roster in terms of
power.
There have been some sick comps and overpowered ult combos, but not a sole game-breaking hero
kit.
The patch dropped shortly after Blizzcon 2015 and was actually a one-two punch to McCree’s
dominance and a welcome breath of fresh air to everyone in the community.
The direct nerf to McCree came in 2 very specific changes in his kit.
First, his peacekeeper’s damage was reduced at long ranges.
As we talked about before, he had 0 damage drop off effectively making him a sniper,
which Blizzard admitted wasn’t the vision they had for him.
So at medium and long ranges, McCree could still do some damage, just not one-shot heroes
from a mile away.
Next, Blizzard brought down the duration of Deadeye from 20 seconds to 10.
This was a massive change in the way the ability worked as well as how allied and enemy players
dealt with things while Dead Eye was active.
The zoning ability was severely reduced and forced the McCree player to make a decision
much faster as to when to pull the trigger.
This gave McCree players and their allies a sense of urgency to combo or position themselves
properly instead of taking their sweet time with a 20s duration.
This also gave the enemy team a chance to properly counter attack after Dead Eye was
used in much quicker fashion instead of hiding away from a point or objective for what seemed
like an eternity.
These two direct changes to McCree’s kit helped reel him in a lot and put him firmly
as a mid-range skirmisher and high-damage flanker as intended instead of a sniper.
Secondly, Blizzard released a few heroes that we talked about before that had direct counterplay
to McCree.
D.Va had Defense Matrix, which at the time, completely negated MCrees normal shot, fan
the hammer, flash bang, AND his ultimate.
This made D.Va a fantastic tank choice for a McCree heavy team.
Defense Matrix also had a huge conal arc in front of D.Va as well.
So it was pretty hard to NOT make McCree useless with it while looking in his general direction.
Mei was also a good choice as she could get in close to the McCree, negating his kit with
ice walls, Deep Freeze, and of course, putting him on ice making him an easy target, negating
his mobility.
Genji was also an anti-McCree in a couple of ways; Deflect could simply help genji use
the McCree’s kit against him with decent frequency, and of course Genji’s mobility
could get him in close and confuse the McCree lining him up for the kill.
These two major factors dropping at once put McCree firmly in his place and brought him
in line with the rest of the roster.
McCree used to be a nearly unstoppable force in the early days of beta and while he’s
still a great hero who can do loads of damage and really help a team, he will never quite
be as ridiculous as he once was for that magical month in 2015.
Alright guys, that’s it for me, I hope you enjoyed the video and thanks for watching!
Drop us a like and sub if you haven't already and let me know what you think of this kind
of video where we take a look back at heroes from before and how they used to be!
If we get enough likes and positivity, we’ll make more in the future!
See you all next time!

Overwatch - How OP McCree Used To Be

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