Overwatch update makes major changes to Mercy

Every so often, Blizzard likes to make subtle changes to help balance out characters in Overwatch. This month though, the studio is making some more sweeping and major changes to one of the characters- Mercy, giving her an ability overhaul. The biggest change here is that player resurrection will no longer be an ultimate move.

Mercy happens to be my favourite character in Overwatch, so these new changes have me very intrigued. Going forward, Mercy’s resurrection ability will be classed as a regular move with a 30 second cool-down. Instead of being able to resurrect all dead players in a 15 meter radius though, you will only be able to target one player at a time within a 5 meter radius.

This has its pros and cons. Pro: you can resurrect much more often. Con: you will no longer be able clutch games by mass resurrecting in the middle of a big team push. Ultimately, I think the new changes will work out better more often, especially since in competitive settings, most players know to target the Mercy first. With that in mind, those end-game clutch resurrections are much rarer and harder to pull off than they were at launch.

So what will Mercy’s new ultimate ability be? From now on, her ultimate is a new ability called ‘Valkyrie’, which allows her to fly and makes her staff more effective for 20 seconds. While this is active, your beams will chain, so you can heal or boost multiple nearby teammates. In my opinion, it sounds like a much more useful ultimate to have across the board as there will be more chances to use it optimally, compared to mass-resurrection.

As Overwatch director, Jeff Kaplan, explains, this also means that Mercy players no longer have to hide away from the action while charged up.

KitGuru Says: During my time playing Overwatch, I have played Mercy more than any other character. For a long time, she was the only character I would play, though I have begun branching out a bit over the last few months. With these changes, I think she will be much more useful and generally more fun to play, which will hopefully encourage more players to pick her in the future. What do you guys think of the changes made to Mercy?

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