Overwatch‘s Mercy has two roles on the battlefield: 1) Stalwart, reliable healer of your team, and 2) stalwart, reliable infuriator of the other team every time she nails a massive resurrection ult, cancelling out all their hard work in a single, blinding flash. Blizzard’s decided to change the latter.
“It’s pretty disheartening to have Mercy just erase [a team wipe] with a full team res,” said Jeff “JKap” Kaplan in a new video. As a result, her resurrection ability is getting demoted. Soon, it will be single-target-only (as opposed to potentially being able to bring back the full team), and it won’t even be an ult any more. Instead, it will be a secondary ability on a cooldown that Kaplan described as “rather long”. So it will be less powerful, but perhaps a bit more versatile.
Mercy will not, however, become Overwatch‘s first ult-less hero. The Overwatch team isn’t that mean. Her new ult will be called “Valkyrie”, and upon activation, it will do multiple things. First, it will give her the gift of full-on flight. No jetpacks or whatever. She’ll have full freedom of airborne mobility. Second, it will make her better at everything, meaning she’ll be able to soar to allies who are further away, resurrect quicker, and her healing and damage beams will reach further, too. In addition, they will chain to multiple allies at once. Addressing Battle Mercys (“I know that you exist,” he said), Kaplan noted that even Mercy’s gun will shoot faster and hit harder. So basically, prepare to get owned by flocks of flying Battle Mercys blasting Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” over voice chat.
“We feel like Mercy will feel a lot more engaging to play than standing around the corner, hiding and waiting for that moment to press the ultimate,” said Kaplan.
The changes should now be available for testing on Overwatch‘s PC public test realm.
Comments
20 responses to “Blizzard Overhauling Overwatch’s Mercy With New Ultimate”
At first read it sounds like a bad move, but I gave up on playing mercy long ago because of constantly being criticized for NOT sitting in a corner and hiding, but instead having the audacity to follow the team (mainly the tanks) around and keep them buffed.
Full team resses might make capture the point games a little less frustrating…. Hrm, it’s hard to judge really. I look forward to giving the mercy change a crack
I loved Mercy. I really did.. it was her and me together forever, and now they are changing her!!!! I am not sure that I will be able to cope.
It’s the lipstick incident all over again!
As someone that regularly plays Mercy as the rest of the team refuses to play healer, let alone tank (PUGs anyway), this makes me sad. Oh well. Thems the breaks.
if you don’t kill the mercy too (preferably first) then it’s not a “team wipe”.
Really, other Mercy players hide when they get their ult to let their team die just to rez them? ptth I try my best to keep the entire team alive throughout the entire match. The rez is there for if the team does happen to get wiped out or a key player. No wonder they’re changing her if that’s true.
I also play Mercy this way, I didn’t realise the how bad this situation was until I watched a few of the higher ranked games on twitch and their Mercy literally abandons them, hides, waits and uses res. they could have just as easily won the battle with her assisting.
I don’t play competitive, but the general gist behind Mercy hiding and then rezzing is to wear down the enemy team as much as possible, get them to waste all of their ults and then rez everyone to full health to wipe the enemy team.
Hmm dunno howni feel about this yet… will have to try it out first
This sounds like a fantastic change to Mercy, it should add a more enjoyable tactical dynamic to her gameplay and teamplay.
New ultimate looks awesome! Details below for those wanting specifics.
Valkyrie (New Ultimate Ability)
Valkyrie unleashes the full power of Mercy’s Valkyrie Suit, enhancing her weapons and abilities for 20 seconds:
Caduceus Staff: Mercy’s healing and damage boost beams now affect all allies near the targeted teammate, and the staff’s effective range has been extended
Caduceus Blaster: Granted infinite ammo, while simultaneously increasing damage and fire rate
Guardian Angel: Increased range and movement speed
Resurrect: Cooldown is instantly reset when Valkyrie is activated and reduced to 10s after the initial cast
Hover: Mercy gains the ability to fly freely, at increased movement speed
Regeneration (Passive): No longer interrupted when Mercy takes damage
Also the single target res is on a 30sec cd.
This is probably the best change to Mercy possible and something that’s been suggested for a while. Mercy suffers from the fact that unless people are dying, her ult is useless, and for every second she holds onto it you’re better off having chosen Ana instead. However, if she dies first in a team fight then her ult is also useless since a well coordinated attack will have wiped the team shortly afterwards before you can get back to them in time. So your team often has to balance out baiting ults from the enemy without getting the Mercy killed, thus leading to the hiding tactics.
In games where you’re playing Mercy and winning with rezzing just one or two people anyway, this change will still allow that and is honestly much more suitable to Mercy’s style. She’ll still be able to pick up the dead without completely nullifying a coordinated push with a single ult while having an actual ult to use.
I mercy main:
i like the idea of being able to solo res without complaints. i like to keep the support or tank up and running during a fight without the predictable cries from a bunch of kids who complain i didn’t use my res to mass res the team (because they use their ults to 100% effectiveness – obviously).
sounds good – will look forward to this change.
any Mercy Mains complaining about these changes are clearly a one trick. My Mercy main friend is super excited for these changes and so she should be, a single Res can sometimes be all it takes to win a push, I can see Mercy being used very strategically with these changes.
woah settle, yeah no, like any change on any game ever, not every one is going to be for or against. so just because your bestie likes it doesnt mean everyone who doesnt is one trick.
I play a very complicated Mercy game, single rez where I need to, never once hidden for a whole rez but got many of them by playing smart, go between fighting and healing and damage boosting on the fly. I dont like the one they have removed her defining feature. All they have done is because people complained too much, in a mob mentality instead of getting better at their own game. Why get better yourself when you can nerf others.
I don’t think these changes mean that other players can relax when playing around New Mercy, I think we’re going to see already very skilled Mercy mains improve and play more strategically, we should also see their teammates play better instead of just dumping their bodies on the point. I guess when I said only one tricks are going to hate on this what I meant to say was they’re the only ones it’s going to affect.
as for taking away from her defining feature or identity, I think it only adds to it. in the battlefield you can’t save everyone, hopping from one hero to another and doing her best but ultimately she can’t save everyone.
i wish they would give Mercy a dual build.
dependent on one half of her skins, or even a swappable staff that you choose before the match, one enables a current mercy build, and the other enables the new build.
ive only just started playing Mercy and i really enjoy the covert nature of keeping out of the fire line while maintaining heals and buffs on the team. i think the new build sounds cool too though.
Looks good to me. Can’t wait to read the salt & tears over on the official forums.
the decisions the devs have been making lately have all been poor. The massive Roadhog nerf, Zayra’s ult change, now this and DVA its like they dont understand that a lot of people play this game because of the connection and passion they have for the characters.
Sure I yell when Roadhog hooked me, but then I learned how to avoid it and got better MYSELF. Sure a team rez after a cool ult felt bad, but once again the fault is mine and my team, we could have avoided it but us getting better.
People would just rather whine and refuse to push themselves and scream nerf, than do anything to get better.
To change Mercy’s defining heroic moment to change what some of us connect with.
She’s still keeping her rez, it’s just she can only rez one at a time which is consistent with how she’s actually played right now anyway. While a group rez is cool and all, statistically across all games, this happens very little and requires luck for conditions to come together more than anything. Holding on to your rez actually puts Mercy at odds to every other hero in the game in that no one else requires your own team to die in order to use their ult.
Her new ult gives her actual utility and increased performance in a team fight just like everyone else that isn’t dependent on waiting on someone to die before she dies (if she dies first, ult is wasted and you were better off picking Ana and boosting someone before dying). And any coordinated push will try and kill a Mercy first, which incidentally this new ult will make that a bit more difficult. Hell, it’s even in line with her whole angel doctor imagery, the fact that she couldn’t fly in the first place was an oddity.
Obviously I will have to play to find out how it all feels. However, my concern now is that all these changes are starting to feel really patchy and band-aidy for trying to fix all the niggles, and IMO will eventually reduce the game down to a number-crunching mechanics device.
I mean, the things I liked about all these characters and their various moves was simply how different and ‘big’ they all felt. But now I’m seeing a lot of changes that are about flattening the stats and reducing the weight of actions down to the same twitchy behaviour. Healers I think really count for this because the very nature of playing them should, in my opinion, be completely different to playing anyone else. So I’m a bit anxious about Mercy’s activities being streamlined to being about getting more agile and having her ult become just another timed stat buff, even if that’s what most players actually want.