Overwatch principal designer Geoff Goodman has outlined some of the changes coming to a few of Overwatch’s heroes. He mentioned that Mercy and Mei were getting buffed and Zenyatta was getting nerfed.
After Zenyatta got buffed, Goodman revealed on the forums that Zenyatta is “actually a bit *too* strong at the moment.” To fix this the team is looking “to reduce some of his power in an upcoming patch, probably related to his Discord Orb.” For the buffs, they already have a good idea on how they want to improve Mei. Currently, they find that Mei’s ultimate is a bit lacking and to fix this they are thinking about increasing the radius of her ultimate and allowing it to go right through shields.
For Mercy, they only know that they want to buff her. Currently, they are unsure what they exactly want to do to help Mercy out.
“I’ve been looking at Mercy for some time now. If you guys saw the last PTR iteration, you could see the kinds of changes we were trying with her. I’d love to give her damage buffing alternate fire more power, but there are too many degenerate cases that pop up when we try that.
“There are some other ideas, and many more things we’ve been trying on and off that you guys never get to see. At one point (a couple months ago) she had a new E ability that put a slow heal over time effect on everyone around you, that meant you could use it to toss onto people that needed topping off without having to swap beam targets as often. That particular design ended up having some issues, but just so you know we are iterating on her internally.
“That doesn’t mean shes necessarily due for a new ability either. She already has a lot to do and think about when you’re in the thick of combat. You’re constantly deciding which beam to use, where to be positioned to stay safe and still help your team, and her Guardian Angel ability has almost no cooldown so its always on your mind as a re-positioning option.
“If she were to get a new ability it would ideally have to be something that she could use more ‘outside of combat’ or something that is generally used much more rarely.
“That said there are some things we can do to help her out in the near future.”
Overwatch is out now for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. There is currently no date for when these updates will take effect.
[signoff2]
