Along with the buffs to Junkrat and the significant changes to D.Va announced recently, Mercy is the newest member of the "Overwatch" roster to have her play-style altered greatly by the developers. What are the new changes coming to Mercy, and why have the developers decided to make her an Angel Of Death?
Resurrect is an ability
The biggest change to Mercy is her Resurrect ability. At the moment, it is her ultimate ability. When she has her ultimate activated, she can resurrect her entire team by pressing a button. This ultimate could be the difference between winning and losing a match.
Often, an entire team would be killed before Mercy revived them all against a tired and depleted team to win the match.
No longer. Now, Mercy’s former ultimate has become a mere ability she can use on a 30-second cooldown timer. It also can only apply to one player, making it far less powerful than before. Still, a single-use resurrect every 30 seconds could be very powerful and still change the dynamic of a fight.
The new ultimate
Mercy’s new ultimate ability, Valkyrie, essentially puts her in Super Saiyan mode. She can fly around for roughly ten seconds; really fly, staying suspended in the air and having full control of her movement while up there. She gains infinite ammo with her pistol, does more damage, can resurrect on a ten-second cooldown which resets when the ultimate ends and her healing and damage boost beams are strengthened and apply to all team members nearby.
It is a sight to behold.
Why the changes?
Game developer Jeff Kaplan has put forward several reasons for the changes. The first is that there were instances where Mercy would encourage her teammates to die on the point while she hid, then come in and resurrected them unexpectedly. The developers do not believe this is fun for either team and are trying to curb this kind of behavior.
Additionally, the developers have realized how disheartening it can be for a team to completely destroy the enemy team with their ultimates, only to have all that work negated by a Mercy.
Of course, these changes have not hit the live servers yet, and developers have indicated that they will likely nerf Valkyrie slightly before hitting live.
Still, Mercy’s changes make her feel like a more versatile character who can use her ultimate to great benefit in many situations. How do you believe these changes will work out on live servers? Are the developers pushing Mercy in the right direction, or making her even more annoying to fight against?
