Overwatch update nerfs Mercy following major changes

Back in August, Blizzard announced that it would be making some major changes to one of its Overwatch characters. The balance update focussed on Mercy and made major changes to her skillset. Now that these changes have been out for a while, it is time for further balancing tweaks, which will nerf Mercy’s resurrection ability.

During the August balance patch, Mercy’s resurrection ability was changed from an ultimate ability to a regular ability. Rather than resurrecting all dead players in a 15 meter radius, the ability was retooled to only target one player at a time within a 5 meter radius. A 30 second cool down was also attached to this ability.

With resurrection turned into a regular move, Mercy needed a new ultimate ability. Valkyrie is Mercy’s new ultimate move and it allows her to fly and makes the staff more effective for a certain amount of time. It also allows the staff to chain across nearby players to boost/heal them all at once.

That’s not all Valkyrie does though, it also reduced Mercy’s resurrection cool down from 30 seconds to just 10 seconds, allowing for lots of resurrections in quick succession. Over on the Overwatch Public Test Realm, a change has now been made. While Valkyrie is active, Mercy’s resurrection range is now doubled to 10 meters but the cool down remains the same at 30 seconds.

KitGuru Says: I haven’t had a chance to try the new changes to Mercy just yet but I can see how that reduced cool down could be a bit of an issue balance-wise. I imagine that made Mercy a favourite pick for the last month or so. The nerf is currently only live on the test servers, so things could still change but don’t expect Mercy to remain as effective forever.

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