Overwatch’s Mercy to Get Another Big Nerf, More Changes on the Way

Once again, our favourite healer is getting nerfed. That’s right, Jeff Kaplan and crew just can’t seem to leave Overwatch’s Mercy alone. Ignoring the fact that her abilities are almost unrecognizable from how she was at launch (vanilla Mercy is the best Mercy, fight me), the back and forth between changes, buffs, and nerfs of the soft-spoken healer is giving us whiplash. However, she is not the only hero going through some growing pains, with even some buffs slated for the future PTR update as well.

Overwatch developer Geoff Goodman took to the forums to give us a few details about the upcoming patch. Let’s break it down (Heh, Lucio main here) by character.

Mercy

So far, the only change listed for Mercy is a nerf to her primary fire healing beam. The upcoming patch will reduce this ability by 17%, dropping it from 60 HP/s to 50 HP/s. As far as what the dev team had to say about her change: 

“Mercy is intended to be able to consistently pump out more healing than any other healer over the course of a match. While this is currently true, the difference in healing is so significant that it makes it very difficult for other healers to compete with her for a spot on a team. Reducing her healing output will close this gap a little, but she will still maintain her status as the go-to pick for raw healing power. We’ll keep an eye on her to make sure she is still a strong pick.”

Ana

Another healer, and Pharah’s Mom, is seeing a nice little buff to her abilities. Ana’s Nano Boost will additionally heal her allies instantly for 300 HP. According to the dev team, “Ana has a very strong and unique toolbox, with the potential to dish out more healing than any other hero in the game. That said, she has a couple disadvantages that can be difficult to overcome, such the potential to miss your targets, not having any mobility options, and having a more difficult time keeping herself healed up. Her ultimate can be very powerful but often feels like it can be difficult to use effectively unless it is used in combination with other allied ultimates such as Genji’s Dragonblade. This new change allows Ana to use her ultimate as a clutch save on a dying teammate, or even use it in combination with her Biotic Grenade for a huge instant heal on even the biggest of tank health pools.”

Lucio

In the battle of the healers, Lucio is the next up to see a few changes. As a Lucio main myself, I’m excited to see him receive the buff treatment as well! Not only is his Sound Barrier seeing an increase of 50%, but his Crossfade Aura Radius is also seeing an increase from 10m to 12m. 

According to Blizzard, “Lucio’s Crossfade aura can be an invaluable addition for any team, but it can sometimes be difficult to keep your whole team boosted. We’re increasing the radius of Lucio’s Crossfade aura to allow more flexibility in how he moves while still maintaining his powerful support songs to help out his team. His ultimate is also being increased to help counter large spikes of damage. For example, Junkrat’s ultimate can deal a maximum of 600 damage, which Sound Barrier can now potentially negate completely. It is worth noting that even though the initial shield he provides is larger, it still takes the same amount of time to destroy itself.”

Moira

The character that doesn’t need a buff is getting one as Moira’s healing resource base regen rate increases 20%. The reason for this small change is simple: Blizzard doesn’t think she really needs any work. 

They explained, “Moira is a strong hero that doesn’t need a ton of changes. The resource change her is mostly to help her out in the situations where you’re just not able to get close enough the enemy to drain them for resources. Now if you’re team is sparring with the enemy team at super long ranges, you’ll have a bit more resources to work with to keep your team topped off.”

Brigitte

The newest hero before gool ‘ol Hammond arrives is seeing a slight change to her Shield Bash cooldown, increasing it from 6 seconds to 7. The reasoning behind this was, “Shield Bash is Brigitte’s strongest ability, and its short cooldown makes it very difficult to play around. We’d like to keep her Shield Bash and subsequent melee combos powerful and effective, while just allowing a little more counter-play against it. We’ve talked about possibly reducing her defense somewhere, such as reducing her barrier health. However, her tank-hybrid nature is a core part of her kit and we want to make sure she maintains that feeling of being a difficult target to take down. Overall Brigitte’s win rate is still the highest of any support, despite dishing out the lowest amount of raw healing per second. This speaks volumes to how powerful her kit can be outside of her direct healing numbers.”

These aren’t the full patch notes, those will go live when the update does, but it is a small preview of what’s in store for the future.