Healers, Get Ready For Major Changes to Mercy in 'Overwatch'

The latest Developer Update for Overwatch has some Mercy mains (not to mention their teammates) sweating. The game's seraphic, Swiss healer hasn't just been rebalanced, but has received a completely new ultimate in exchange for a dramatic retooling of her resurrection power.

Mercy's original "ult" (a powerful ability that has to be charged up and deployed strategically for maximum effect) was a team resurrect that could be used to revive any friendly player within a certain radius of her. It's become notorious for encouraging a very successful but very un-fun kind of play, where a Mercy player stops healing her team and goes into hiding on the map until they all die, then swoops in to bring them back all at once to overwhelm the opposing team. It feels very good to pull off (provided you're on the right side of it) but the technique is incredibly overused, and somewhat antithetical to the kind of consistently skillful and active play that Overwatch encourages with other characters.

Enter Valkyrie, Mercy's new ult: Valkyrie allows Mercy to fly freely without having to tether and glide to other characters like Pharah, but also amps-up her other abilities. It makes her healing and buffing beams reach farther as well as being able to chain beams across multiple targets for one. It also increases the damage and fire rate of her sidearm, which makes her much less vulnerable than usual. Valkyrie also automatically refreshes the cooldown on Resurrect, which has been turned into a single-target secondary ability with a hearty, 30 second cooldown and which fills what was previously an empty power slot.

Although these changes were teased earlier this week, it's unlikely that most fans were expecting a shake-up this dramatic. But that said, as someone who enjoys playing Mercy more than any other character in Overwatch, these changes are actually very exciting to me. She's always been a powerful, flexible and fun character to play, and that aspect of her isn't changing. Though it may take some adjustment, making Mercy even more versatile and correcting the predictable and uninspiring strategies that developed around her is likely to be a positive move for her players and their teammates alike.