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Mercy Undergoes A Nerf On Overwatch Test Servers
Much like the plot of every high school popularity movie, Mercy has unfortunately come to realize that being everyone's favorite is eventually accompanied by a huge crash. New changes to the character on the Public Test Realm indicate that Blizzard is trying to bring Dr. Ziegler down to Earth.
Last year, Blizzard decided to restructure Mercy to make her a more attractive support pick by turning her Ultimate into a regular skill with a cooldown and just all around making her better. This plan worked too well, as Mercy soon became so indispensable that one slot on every team was dedicated to her or the team was likely to lose. No other support characters were worth the time to learn because Mercy would fly circles around them.
Slowly, Blizzard tried to undo this by nerfing the character bit by bit. For example, the team tried to increase Mercy's charge time on her resurrection ability, forcing a longer cooldown. Doing so barely moved the needle, Mercy was simply a little more annoying to use but no less essential to victory.
The latest nerf strikes at the heart of her necessity: her Valkyrie Ultimate. The ultimate previously turned Mercy into a superpowered version of herself with a fresh resurrection skill to use and twenty seconds to wreak havoc on the opposing team. That time has now been reduced to fifteen seconds and the cooldown elimination on the resurrection skill is gone. Additionally, Mercy's ability to fly to teammates has been slowed down and shortened considerably.
While balancing changes introduced to the PTR are not guaranteed to come to the rest of the servers, it is more likely than not. Fans of Mercy who had gotten used to her arguably overpowered state are in for a difficult time with the new changes.
[Source: Overwatch Forums]
Our Take
It seems like Blizzard is struggling to rebalance the cast to adjust for new additions and competition. Mercy is seemingly worse off than she was before her original buff that caused the problems in the first place.
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