November 2, 2016: Hero Concept Release
December 3, 2016: v1.1.0
- Added attack range, ability design, and range information.
- Baseline Changes:
- Base attack speed decreased from 1.0 to 0.8.
- New Abilities:
- Bounty Hunter (D) -
- Cooldown: 20 seconds
- McCree can mark a nearby enemy Hero as Wanted. The targeted enemy Hero is revealed for 6 seconds. McCree gains additional XP if he or his team kill an enemy Hero marked by this ability.
- New Talents:
- Lvl 1: Hired Help - Hero Takedowns grant McCree 10 stacks of Bribe. Use 20 stacks to Bribe a mercenary, instantly defeating them. Does not work on bosses. Maximum of 80 stacks. If a camp is defeated entirely with Bribe, McCree's next Takedown grants twice as many stacks of Bribe.
- Lvl 16: Practiced Aim (D) - McCree deals an additional 15% basic attack damage to any enemy Hero under the effects of Bounty Hunter.
- Lvl 20: Dead or Alive (D) - McCree can continue to mark targets with Bounty Hunter even while dead. He can only mark targets that are within his team's vision range.
- Ability Changes:
- Fan the Hammer (Q) -
- Removed ammunition requirement. McCree will now always fire six shots.
- Combat Roll (W) -
- Removed ammunition effects. Instead, McCree's next 2 basic attacks are fired twice as fast.
- Talent Changes:
- Lvl 1: Eagle Eye - This talent now also increases McCree's basic attack range by 10%.
- Lvl 4: Vigorous Assault - Renamed "Frontier Medicine".
- Abilities Removed:
- Peacekeeper (D) -
- Much like Tracer, McCree has a limited amount of ammunition (6 rounds) which he then needs to reload after he runs out. He can also manually reload using "D". Reloading takes 2 seconds to complete.
- Talents Removed:
- Lvl 1: Master Bounty Hunter - Quest: Secure the killing blow on 5 enemy Heroes. Reward: McCree's basic attack range is increased by 20%.
- Lvl 4: Focused Attack - Identical to the "Focused Attack" talent on other heroes.
- Lvl 16: Practiced Hands (D) - McCree's reload time is reduced by 50%. This grants him about 15% more damage per second.
- Lvl 20: How Many Bullets Does This Thing Have? (D) - Upon activation, McCree can fire his Peacekeeper without using ammunition for 15 seconds. Can only be used once every 60 seconds.
Author's Notes: My biggest problem with my original McCree design is that his trait was basically Tracer's trait, but with his auto-attack being spun to work the opposite way (high damage, low fire rate). That didn't seem particularly fair to poor McCree, who deserves a trait to call his own. To that end, I've designed a new trait which focuses on McCree's profession as a bounty hunter. This allows him to provide vision on any priority targets for the team, and also grants him additional XP if the targeted hero is killed (the "reward" for his successful "bounty").
As far as talents, it occurred to me that Eagle Eye simply didn't provide enough of a tangible benefit to be worth picking. As such, it was adjusted, and new talents were added to replace talents that became out of date when Peacekeeper was removed. This also required a tweak to his attack speed and Fan the Hammer due to the removal of ammunition as a mechanic.
December 4, 2016: v1.1.1
- Ability Changes:
- Fan the Hammer (Q) -
- Cooldown increased from 4 seconds to 6 seconds.
- Fire rate increased from 0.25 seconds per shot to 0.2 seconds per shot.
- Damage increased from 71 (+4%) damage per shot to 82 (+4%) damage per shot.
- Combat Roll (W) -
- Removed previously added effect. Instead, McCree's Combat Roll now resets the cooldown on Fan the Hammer.
Author's Notes: As pointed out in discussion below, when removing ammunition as a mechanic, I forgot its synergy with Combat Roll and Fan the Hammer, which meant that Fan the Hammer's damage was now woefully low for the amount of risk it places on the character. I've readded some synergy between Fan the Hammer and Combat Roll, and buffed up Fan the Hammer as well. To compensate for this buff (and to encourage use of the Combat Roll synergy), Fan the Hammer's cooldown has been slightly increased.
Heroes of the Storm Build Guides
Aidan, The Dark Wanderer
Aldur, Nomad of the Forest
Genji, Cybernetic Ninja
Izsha, Advisor to the Queen of Blades
And while Alarak isn't as squishy, he also has a 1 second delay on his primary damaging ability.
Abilities with delays like this are increasingly more common in HotS and are by no means "suicidal" unless used improperly. I might agree that the ability's risk-reward ratio is off, perhaps, in that perhaps it doesn't deal enough damage for the amount of risk it puts you in with such a large delay (it deals ~426 at Lvl 0, vs Chromie's 406 with Sand Blast) or that perhaps the timing of the delay is off....but I don't think the ability itself is inherently flawed just because it keeps you stationary. That's up to the player to determine when is the best time to use it....which is part of why he's marked as a "Hard" hero.
As for the "why" it forces him to be stationary, the main reason I did it this way is because I don't actually think the game engine would be able to handle the ability in its original context. Recall that Fan the Hammer, as it works in Overwatch, is six consecutive shots fired off rapidly with a larger spread. In HotS, the rough equivalent of this is six consecutive skill-shots with a spread between each shot. And HotS heroes already have problems firing off basic attacks or skill-shots of any kind without at least a very minor delay in between the attack animation and their next movement command. I'm not entirely confident that the engine is designed in such a way that it could animate six quick skill-shots in this manner while also allowing McCree full range of movement.
I'm not sure the delay itself has to be reduced, but if it's not, then the damage definitely needs to go up. It's something I hadn't really thought about until this discussion brought it up. I'll be tinkering with it as I continue to work on a few other hero concepts, so feel free to let me know what you think then.