What would change if we lowered Fan the Hammer damage from 50 to 42?
Fan the hammer would deal 252 damage with the full clip of Fan the hammer.
277 damage with Flash.
This still allows McCree to Flash Fan the hammer all heroes with 250HP or less. Even Torb with his Armour.
So what does this remove? What breakpoints are effected?
Well if you have 5 bullets in the chamber or miss even 1 vs 250hp heroes, they will survive. This makes flash fan the hammer less effective against bulkier heroes and they can wait for him to fire until they engage. The flash FTH would leave them with 15HP.
Mei can now Cryo after the combo
Reaper can wraith
Doom may have more than 15hp from shields prior.
Torb will actually be left with 25hp due to armour and can overload. If he had overload active he is left with 140hp.
This increases their chances of winning the match-up if they engage smartly.
If you miss 2 bullets 200HP and 225HP heroes will survive. Even with flash. Again allowing counterplay in waiting for him to fire. Before engaging him.
Even if these scenarios play out, McCree’s target will have suffered significant damage allowing for follow-up from either McCree himself after reload or a teammate. At the very least if McCree does not confirm a kill he baits an ability in return or the enemy player must retreat due to HP disadvantage.
Against tanks this is a massive change since it lowers the damage vs them in general from the combo. They are easy to hit with it and it makes McCree less able to solo winston D.Va and ball in close range. However he will still be decent anti-dive because of his new 25HP which allows him to more frequently survive engagements and buy time for peel to arrive.
I just think 42 damage fan the hammer provides a fair nerf to McCree while achieving a few things. Making the combo less of an Instant kill unless the player lands all their shots and even then this is dependent on the enemy counterpicking McCree with bulkier heroes. It will still likely consistently kill 225HP and less heroes but just provides an edge to the heroes who can’t duel him at midrange like Mei Doom and Reaper who must get close but are punished for doing so.
Ofcourse any lower damage would probably make McCree too weak and make Fan the hammer not worth it. 43 damage might be good too but the extra 6 damage across heroes leaves them on 1 or 2 HP meeting no new thresholds besides making them die to any damage anyways effectively maintaining some more of the strength of the combo but not quite enough to meet those kill thresholds when not at full ammo or missing a shot or 2.
Odd number and the point is not about other heroes breakpoints but his own.
FOTH should do more damage than 2 HS (which is 280), otherwise it would yield no benefit with that spread and recoil.
If you make it less than 280 then FOTH should be stupidly fast, like 0.3 or something, to compensate for not “risking it” and use 2 regular shots and get headshots.
Even then 2 headshots is rare and takes time.
They can start moving as soon as you deal 1 headshot whereas FTH would confirm the kill.
FTH is still the better option here. if you have 5 bullets in your chamber against a flashed 200hp hero. They are dead. That’s assuming they made it that close on full health.
Or a 250hp hero who has taken one bodyshot is in 4 bullet FTH kill range.
Well it’s a key balance. You die every single time unless the stars align to save you currently. All this does is allow for a bit more counterplay.
it stops the extreme burst on tanks.
But also notice how all these scenarios assume the 250hp/200hp squishies made it to McCree while taking 0 damage. if they take damage on their way which they should because there is an enemy team and McCree is more effective at midrange. They are still going to die. But like I said it just doesn’t kill you fully which can allow for more counterplay. Right now it can kill you in abou 4-5 bullets if you omit flash damage and have 50-100 damage to spare.
I think it needs to be tighter. McCree shouldn’t be able to outdamage a 250hp characters entire healthpool in an easy to use combo in their effective range. Even if he doesn’t land the flash because they avoided it, he likely baited their most important cooldowns. I just think the thresholds need to be tighter so in the situations where a character lives they have more opportunity for a teammate to help or for them to survive by being bulky.
Roadhog’s combo (which is his entire threat and tank) has a cast time, travel time both ways, fire and then animation cancel into melee. This gives you opportunity to not only see it, but predict it and react accordingly.
McCreecan flash has little to or no cast time meaning you can be dead in less than a second even with 50 extra hp like reaper. or 50 armour like torb. It should simply just do less damage while still being a threat or McCree’s flash is a bad ability.
So his ability to not only be strong at midrange but have an instakill that has barely any counters in close range is not the reason he is picked? Then what is? Because if it’s how strong he can be at midrange then how would you nerf that? Why would you? He should be strong at midrange but he shouldn’t be a mini easier to use roadhog in close range.
FTH is just an easier, more consistent way of following up than headshots. All nerfing FTH does is raise his skill floor but doesn’t actually address his close range power vs squishies once the Mccree can aim.
Thats the problem, it wont though.
Regular shots are way more precise, FOTH is not. When the enemy walks away 3 meters, the recoil and spread will make you miss at least 3 bullets, specially to anything that is not a tank.
If your target is flashed, then we dont care.
It does. Because you dont use it at 2cm distance, you can use FOTH to destroy barriers too and hit tanks that are 5-6 mt away. If you nerf it that way, it would be worse in general and still worse than 2 headshots close range … zero reason to use FOTH then
Fan the hammer is 99% of the time the better follow-up since the rate of fire nerf.
Fan the hammer can kill enemies within the duration of the stun which is very important as it kills them before they can respond.
a headshot has 0.5s before her can fire again and with the recovery time of the flashbang being 0.35s, that leaves 0.15s for the enemy to begin moving or use an ability (not accounting for latency which makes the window larger.
Even then McCree must realign for the second headshot. Vs anybody with more than 200hp. (even some below 200 are debateable) since ana could nade for extra hp or Brig could have inspire active + her armour.
Less reliable yes. However, what is even less reliable than that is a squishie winning the duel if they get flashbanged regardless of whether or not FTH is used.
FTH relies on the target being stunned. The stun for all intents and purposes acts as a mini roadhog hook where nobody can enter Mccrees space so long as it’s not on cooldown. That would itself be fine except he is also a top 3 mid range duellist meaning that he can only be reliably contested at long range. A range where barely any heroes are effective.
Flash makes his close range far too consistent whenever it’s not on cooldown.
Ok. So nerf the follow up.
The flash is only as good as the follow-up.
His headshot bodyshot is already unreliable because the enemy can respond before the second shot.
Fan the hammer however is 100% reliable and can murder you in 4 hits minimum currently. Not even 250hp heroes can survive. If this reliability is nerfed.
Things are more likely to survive and this means that 250hp heroes would counter him in close range rather than die instantly.
Like other abilities it would be more dependent on your match-ups rather than killing everything in stun range.
The range needs to be generous so it can hit things like tracer and genji. So nerfing the fan the hammer follow-up makes McCree have more counterplay from a bunch of heroes in close range which is healthy.
I like this idea, people are always talking about too much value for no skill with heroes like brig and moira but wont apply the same to mccree? flash fth is one of the easiest ways to get a kill in game on anyone that isnt a tank (and even then it cuts a tanks hps way down), isnt that too much value for no skill? i think so. Nerfing it so its not a terrible ability but has more counter play is a good change, and his extra 25 hp will help him greatly to finish off the reaper or torb with less than a melees worth of hp left over should he miss one shot.
Even if he doesn’t use FTH the target is still very unlikely to survive once flashbanged, unless the Mccree misplays. All you’re doing with this is raising his skill floor but not addressing the underlying power.
The entire roster cant be held hostage just because we still haven’t addressed Tracer yet. If Tracer requires Mccrees flashbang to be an I win button vs everything at close range in order for her to be balanced, she’s broken.
No I am not.
Take Mei for example. Currently if she is flashed fan the hammer WILL kill her.
IF Mcree headshots mei, she can use Cryo before he kills her.
With this nerf she can now use cryo after fan the hammer as well as long as McCree either misses a bullet or does not have all 6 bullets in his chamber.
The same goes for Torb who can now use overload.
The same goes for Doomfist who may have more HP due to his passive blocking some damage and during McCree’s reload he can attack him.
The same goes for Reaper who could now teleport away.
The same goes for Bastion who can heal up.
The same goes for Brig who might live due to armour and inspire healing.
Symmetra might even live with her extra 25HP in more circumstances.
This literally opens up more counterplay, because if Fan the hammer doesnt kill these heroes, the Headshot bodyshot won’t either because THAT COMBO IS ALREADY REACTABLE. You cannot do anything if mcCree uses Fan the hammer currently. nerfing it makes it less reliable and lets so many more characters outduel him.
The reason it is an I win button, is because McCree can kill everybody who isn’t a tank with Stun right click.
If you nerf fan the hammer McCree still kills tracer with stun headshot but everybody else and I mean everybody else has such a bigger chance to duel him.
The disagreement we’re having here is that I dont think that Mccree should keep an I win button vs everything with 200hp. His mid range strength doesn’t allow for such massive close range power. He needs to have one of them nerfed to allow for far less consistency at one of the ranges but not selectively to a very small group of dps heroes.
The potential for 250hp heroes to duel him doesn’t seem like a significant enough nerf.
