The Big Problems With McCree

General Discussion
1

Hello there!

Welcome to another post from me complaining about a hero, did you miss me ;)

Today im going to tackle the huckleberry himself, Mccree
This post is going to be a tad bit different than my Brig post, because this
is going to be more so tackling all his issues, small or big, as the brig
post was more so tackling only the abilities/assets of her kit that make her weaker

But lets get into it!

Heres the section thing again, just in case you want to skip through stuff

Sections

His Gun

Combat Roll

Flashbang

Deadeye

Conclusion

His Gun

So, the issues with his gun arent directly on the primary fire, although i will talk about it as well. I could try to go around the thing, and use subliminal meanings to explain it, but im just gonna be direct. Its underwhelming now. After the Fan The Hammer buff, trying to land headshots and bodyshots on enemies hasnt been the same, as its more rewarding in a lot of situations to just spam Fan The Hammer.

So, lets do some math and see why it is like it is.

  • Primary Fire
    • Damage 35-70
    • Spread=Pinpoint accuracy at all range
    • Can headshot
    • Rate of fire=2 rounds per second
  • Secondary Fire
    • Damage 27-55
    • Spread=Constant 6.50 degrees, but accurate at short range
    • Cannot headshot
    • Rate of fire= 1 shot per 0.13seconds
They look fine on paper, right? well, lets do calculations.

lets say youre a good mccree player and you land a lot of headshots, lets say you flashed a roadhog and then aimed for the head. And you get 3 headshots before he turns away from you.

  • 70 damage at short range, times 3 is 210, and that doubled because of headshot damage thats 420.

That seems good, you get roadhog to a very low HP from just 3 shots, and it only took you about 1.5seconds to do so, what about if you do it by using Fan The Hammer, lets check how much damage you can do with the normal combo of flash, FTH, roll, FTH.

  • 55 damage at short range right next to the roadhog, so no shots miss thats 330 from the first set, then roll, and 330 from the second set. So 660 damage.

Thats odd, you do so so much more damage, at almost the same time. It takes you 1.56seconds to fan the hammer twice, plus an additional 0.4seconds for roll so it takes about 1.9seconds to perform. For a lot more damage and adding in the additional possible reload from High noon, you can do up to 990 damage inside 3 seconds. You can kill any single hero in the game, with fan the hammer.

What would be my fix for this?
Simply, id say nerf FTH to 45-50 damage max, and buff primary fire to 75 instead of 70, and since tracers still seem to bother half of the forums here, this would be an even better counter to her, as mccree could oneshot her if he hit a headshot.

But Mccrees gun is the least of his problems, atleast for the long run.

Combat Roll

Mccrees combat roll, it surely has the potential to be a good ability, if mccree was a tank or a healer. for a dps hero of the likes of mccree, the only real useful thing about combat roll is the fact that he reloads while rolling, since as an escape ability its absolutely disgraceful. You fall down for about 6 meters forward, at a move speed of 15 meters per second, which is not that fast, nor that long of a distance. and frankly,

if it didnt have the reload in it, it would be practically an useless ability.

But just for good measure, lets go through all the other dps heroes with their escape abilities, and why they work far better, and which ones are possibly even worse.

  • Sombra
    • Teleport, which is quite self explanatory, you get to teleport away.
    • Stealth, you get to go invisible with added movement speed.
  • Soldier 76
    • being gay
    • Run.. you know, you just kind of zoom away like a cheeta
    • possible helix jump, to get away from sticky situations.
  • Tracer
    • Blink, up to 3 times you can move up to 7.5meters in a blink of an eye
    • Recall, you recall back your old position you had 3 seconds ago, with all your ammo, and possible health back then.
  • Doomfist
    • Rocket punch, you can punch yourself away from harm if needed
    • Uppercut, you can use this ability with either Rocket punch or seismic slam to escape with relative ease
    • Seismic slam, used often with rocket punch or uppercut, mostly with uppercut for escapes.
  • Genji
    • Cyber agility, includes the essential two, double jump plus wallclimb, which already provide amazing escape capabilities
    • Swift strike, you move up to 14 meters inside 0.4 seconds on 35meters per second.
  • Pharah
    • Jetpack, you can fly... thats about it, you can just fly
    • Rocket boosters, you jump high with your jetback, gaining a lot of height (she can also rocket jump, but not adding it as another point since it works quite the same as rocket boosters)
    • Concussive blast, unlike rocket boosters, concussive blast launches you not up high, but far wide. Either front, back, or any other side, you can launch yourself quite far with it.
  • Reaper
    • Wraith, you get invincibility for 3 seconds, with 50% movement speed increase.
    • Teleport, although very bad in the game, can be used as a decent escape ability, if used correctly.

I didnt bother adding in the “defense” heroes, even though a lot of them have better movement abilities, such as widows grapple, hanzos jump and wallclimb, junkrats bombs, and symms teleport.

I didnt add them in since they belong into the old “Defense” category, which isnt the same as mccree, which was on Offense, since a lot of the defense heroes are meant to be stationary, instead of moving.

But there you can see just how overwhelmingly bad mccrees combat roll is, it doesnt give much agility, nor does it give much ability for mccree, as the only real usage once again, is just to reload for another fan the hammer, which we discussed earlier, and with a relatively long cooldown, you cant really do much escaping on mccree, you kind of just need to die if your team dies, you cant really go away then.

But on we go to the next point which is

Flashbang

So, whats wrong with mccrees flashbang you might ask? well, im gonna tell you, in general. Its a bad stun, its designed poorly, the animations are bad, athe hitboxes are wrong, the animations dont work with the hitboxes nor with what happens on screen, the animations are different from your and your enemies perspectives.

But im not the best to explain this, the best way i CAN explain the faults with flashbang, is by pointing you into the direction of

Spumwack

He is a youtuber who made overwatch videos previously, and tackled this same problem in his videos, about why mccrees flashbang is bad, and why, the video he made on the topic is about as well produced as could be, it has statistics, it has comedy, and it has proof.

So im just going to post it here,

instead of writing my own long long lists of why, its far more convenient for me, plus the entire subject is far better explained in the video, than i could ever do. Although the video is from 2016, the same issues still stand, as nothing really has changed with flashbang since.

I might make some additions to this post, and add my own additions to why i believe flashbang is bad, if i come up with more than what Spumwack did.

But without further ado, to the next point

Deadeye

On paper, Deadeye seems like a great ultimate, auto lock on rapid fire hitscan with a very very good DPS possibility.
But in usage, the best thing Deadeye is really used for is just reloading, to either try to land more headshots, or for another fan the hammer.

Why is this? Well, to anwser that question we dont have to look further than… well at mccree himself, he looks like a damned lamp post when he ults, so you couldnt miss it regardless if youre half blind or not, and if thats not enough, his movement speed is decresed to 1.925meters per second which just diminishes his possibilities in actually dodging bullets, as you cant crouch, or jump while ulting. The most mobility you can get is either standing on a moving platform, or jumping off a cliff.
And if thats not enough his scream of “ITS HIGH NOON” is about as loud as a fighter jet being launched, so everyone and their deaf cats can hear it.

But good abilities come with good costs, i suppose. But the issue with mccree is that Deadeye is objectively the worst offensive ultimate in the entire game, boasting some of the worst kill/use ratios there are, as it can be countered with half of the abilities in game, i could list some myself, but i have had someone else make a post about mccree aswell, so i can just quote them, thank you :wink:

Although i might not agree with every single one of them being there, or being in the places theyre at at the very moment, thats quite a well put together post about it. with good points and how we put the counters together shows how easy it is to not be killed by his ultimate, hell in some cases you can just walk over to him as mei and freeze him.

But onto the last point/last section

Conclusion

I think mccree has great potential of being a good hero, if blizzard adressed his faults, instead of “ehh hes fine buff his fan the hammer”, as someone who loves playing mccree, and has played him for years now, ever since i got the game back in 2016, i wish he was in a better position

He at the moment boasts the second worst winrate of all heroes, right after sombra (who i might make a post on later :wink: )

in almost all ranks
Theres 3 ranks which he isnt either number 1, or number 2 as the worst winrate heroes, and its plat, silver, and bronze. IN GM its the second worst, masters its the worst, diamond its the worst and gold its the second worst.

And i think a lot of it has to do with what ive talked about in this post, and i hope blizzard atleast adresses these, in some form in the future.

im going to be leaving another spumwack video here, which in a lot of ways goes in more detail about the things ive talked here:

Thank you for reading you beautiful person

Yours Truly,
A Casual Player For Equality
-Nixon

18 Likes
2

Another very well put together post, well done :wink:

3

Did you even fully read it? xD

1 Like
4

I did i swear, i read every word!

5

Very informative post overall. Didn’t realize McCree’s kit was so self-destructive. That Flashbang video amuses and enrages me.

7

thank you very much!

8

See, others like it aswell :wink:

9

shhh it wasnt that great

10

It was amazing cmon have some faith

11

I would never, although i have to give it to myself, this is probably my best post xD

12

I mean the best after this is brig, and then the damned homophobia post

13

I never got the problem people took with fan the hammer

you use primary for long range and fan for short range

why is that an issue

always wondered how flashbang would be if it worked like ana’s grenade

14

Umm the fan the hammer thing is that its used both now. As long as theyre not past 20-40 meters, people just fan the hammer

15

and if they’re past 20-40 meters you use the primary~

I find the spread too big for anything that’s not basically Melee range or the like but that’s just me

1 Like
16

But the falloff for damage starts at the same range for primary and secondary i believe

17

what are we trying to hit though

spread still makes it pretty much impossible to hit anything I’m pretty sure

18

i mean, its been multiple times where even ive been able to hit a ton of people from far range with FTH and even kill them after the buffs

19

Yeah mccree is just mcrightclick now

22

Legit played some mccree today. Right click is so powerful

23

I really think they need to do something about his ultimate, compared to his competition (B.O.B.), it just looks so bad.

I don’t think combat roll is quite as bad as it first seems though.