Overwatch Oct 29 update buffs McCree, Mei, Brig and more: patch notes

Michael Gwilliam
Brigitte and Reinhardt

A new Overwatch patch has just gone live on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, bringing in several major buffs from the Experimental Card, but not Baptiste’s Amplification Matrix increase.

Notably, for fans of McCree, they’ll be pleased to know that his reload speed has been buffed along with his health, going from 200 to 225.

The change in health may seem minor, but in the heat of battle, it can be the difference between landing a fatal shot on an enemy or dying before firing that last bullet.

Mei has also received a massive buff with her ammo not being restored by 15 per second when she’s in Cryo-Freeze. This should make her a massive threat when she’s healing up as when she comes out, she’ll be locked and loaded.

Mei uses ice block
Mei will now gain ammo when in her block.

Additionally, her Ice Wall sees its cooldown reduced, so that ability will be up more often.

Moving onto Brigitte, the shield maiden is getting a small health buff, which should help her get the Inspire passive online and improve her survivability.

Meanwhile, Baptiste is getting several changes by being able to shoot faster at the expense of losing one damage per shot and sees her healing buffed by 10.

McCree on Hanamura
McCree just got a lot deadlier.

However, the big Amplification Matrix buff is not going through yet. Community Manager Josh Nash wrote that the dev team thinks, “the width increase from 5 to 9 meters is a positive change to Baptiste’s gameplay because it makes the ability more easily usable for his allies without gathering closely together. We’re planning to add this update to the live game in an upcoming patch after an art polish pass.”

Finally, Widowmaker is getting a small health nerf with her base HP dropping from 200 to 175. This should help keep her in check at the highest levels of play.

Full patch notes:

HERO UPDATES

Baptiste

Biotic Launcher

  • (Primary Fire) Recovery time reduced from 0.45 to 0.38 seconds
  • (Primary Fire) Damage reduced from 25 to 24
  • (Secondary Fire) Recovery increased from 0.8 to 0.9 seconds
  • (Secondary Fire) Healing increased from 50 to 60

Developer Comments: We’re making some adjustments to Baptiste’s Biotic Launcher firing cadence that will make dealing damage quicker and landing a healing grenade more impactful.

Brigitte

General

  • Base health increased from 150 to 175

McCree

General

  • Base health increased from 200 to 225

Peacekeeper

  • (General) Reload time reduced from 1.5 to 1.2 seconds

Mei

Cryo-Freeze

  • Now restores 15 ammo per second

Ice Wall

  • Cooldown lowered from 13 to 12 seconds

Developer Comments: Since we previously made Mei’s primary fire relatively more expensive, she spends more time out of ammo and this was particularly noticeable when unable to reload while in Cryo-Freeze. To help smooth out this gameplay she now regains some ammo during Cryo-Freeze.

Symmetra

General

  • Base shields increased from 100 to 125

Widowmaker

General

  • Base health reduced from 200 to 175

Developer Comments: We’re making some max health adjustments in 25 HP increments to allow for more fine tuning of heroes’ power. Until now this was done in 50 HP increments to help simplify the understanding how many hits an enemy hero could withstand.

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