After announcing Overwatch’s first post-launch character yesterday, Blizzard has also revealed that a few current characters will be seeing changes to how they play.
The first character facing some changes is Mercy, who will be balanced in numerous ways. Her damage boost now offers a 50 increase versus the previous 30 percent, but can no longer be stacked with boosts from other players using Mercy. Additionally, the cost of her ultimate has increased by 30 percent, but movement is no longer prevented during its activation. Finally, Mercy’s flying ability, Guardian Angel, will reset automatically after use.
“Mercy’s ultimate is one of the most powerful abilities in the game; however, players would often fly into the fray and die while using it, Blizzard wrote. “With this update, Resurrect will now take a bit longer to charge, but Mercy will be a lot safer when activating the ability in the middle of combat. In addition, we always intended Mercy’s Damage Boost beam to be her primary method for dealing damage, but it often felt so weak that you were better off pulling out your blaster. To help address this, we’ve slightly increased its potency.”
Zenyatta players can also expect some big changes for their support, with base shields increased by 50 and the projectile speed of the Orb of Discord and Orb of Harmony increased from 30 to 120. Finally, Zenyatta’s speed is now doubled when his ultimate is activated and his healing amount will increase from 200 to 300 health per second.
“While Zenyatta has never had the healing abilities of Lúcio or Mercy, he made up for it by dealing more damage. However, his lack of mobility and low health has meant he’s struggled to find a place in many games,” Blizzard explained.
Finally, facing the most changes this time around seems to be D.Va. Her cool down time on her defense matrix ability has now decreased from 10 seconds to a lone one second, but also now relies on a resource meter, which will deplete when the ability is active and will refill when it is not (taking about 10 seconds to fill from bottom to top). D.Va’s self-destruct will now cost 15 percent less to use, and the explosion will no longer damage the D.Va who is setting it off.
“D.Va isn’t being selected as often as our other tanks, and we feel a lot of that stems from the underperformance of her damage absorption abilities, Blizzard said. “So, we’ve reconfigured her Defensive Matrix, making it more flexible and giving players the ability to use it more often. We’ve also given Self-Destruct a little more oomph, because it felt slightly underwhelming when compared to many of Overwatch’s other ultimate abilities.”
Some other characters are receiving minor tweaks as well – you can see them all in the latest Overwatch patch notes from Blizzard.