As you recently heard, Mercy has gotten quite the rework and the Overwatch community is trying to process this new and (questionably) improved Mercy. After having a few rounds of Mercy in my PTR games, I can report that there’s a bit of a mixed reception. Some gamers are enjoying the new Mercy and stating that she can be quite overpowered and scary to deal with, while others are saying they miss the old Mercy and the five man ults that would turn the tides of a losing game.

Nonetheless, the community can’t wait to see how she changes the meta in the actual game and use her to climb the ranks. With all that being said, I want to tell you what I’ve experienced in the PTR that you should expect when Mercy comes out in the actual game, not as a Mercy player, but just as someone who has to deal with Mercy.

I know it’s been said that It’s too early to call what you might have to deal with once Mercy hits the scene. Usually when a hero gets nerfed, buffed, or completely overhauled, they’re fixed once they’re actually put into the original game. I will mention the skills as well as habits that PTR players will transfer to live.

During PTR sessions, I never really got the chance to play as Mercy. Either My computer must have been way too slow, being that I play on frames that usually stick around 40-50, or the players on my team have an “Auto-Mercy-Select ™” feature installed in their game that gives them a V.I.P access pass to Mercy before the round even loads. Even so, I usually just stick with Doomfist because I like punching people in their faces and sending them across the map into a wall.

Now I said that this article isn’t for Mercy mains, but it is of utmost importance that you realize that you’re not going to play Mercy. Even if you main Mercy, you’re not going to touch her. This is to be expected, as the hype is way too real right now, but even that’s not the actual issue. Gamers are saying Mercy is more of a DPS and less of a healer now, even though she still has her resurrection ability and her healing ability. During PTR people have been stating that when using her ultimate she is almost unkillable, which makes sense being that when she ults, her passive regeneration doesn't stop when Mercy is being damaged. So while she is floating around shooting pellets at you, she’s constantly regenerating her health. You’d expect a whole team to be able take her out, but I have seen a Mercy 1v4 and it’s terrifying. So expect DPS mains who weren't given a chance to try her out to scoop her up more in your games.

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk more about fighting alongside Mercy. Prepare to die, get resurrected, and die almost immediately again. Now that Mercy can simply resurrect her team without using her ult, your Mercy will resurrect your teammates a lot more often, even when it isn't ideal. This sounds really great on paper as this gives you a chance to right your wrongs, get back in the game, and win a fight that may change the game around, but this also makes you the biggest target of all time.

When Mercy resurrected the entire team, the enemy team would be dumbfounded and wouldn’t exactly know who to target, but when someone is single targeted, they can’t use their skills and don’t have an escape. As such, it shifts all the aggro onto you. Yes, you have a few seconds of invincibility, but when you can’t use your skills, you’re basically a few seconds away from getting rocket punched in the face.

Another thing I have noticed while playing alongside a Mercy is that my games have gotten a lot longer than usual. This goes back to Mercy’s new ultimate, “Valkyrie.” With Mercy’s resurrection being placed as a skill, rather than an ultimate, it now has a 30 second cooldown, which seems to be pretty fair being that you’re bringing someone back from the dead with full health, but things get a little crazy when she activates her ultimate. After her initial use of Resurrection, the cooldown of Mercy’s ability is ten seconds! This means a lot more people coming back, which you’d think would be fine, but, actually, your allies/enemies become an endless army of zombies.

I believe it’s because once Mercy uses her ultimate, it’s a one time gig. Everyone comes back and everyone gets one final try to win the point or win the team fight. If she doesn’t use her ultimate, you have to kill her before she does. And even if she does ult... well, I already explained it. To put it metaphorically, old Mercy is like dumping a bucket of water on someone’s head while new Mercy is like having a trickling faucet slowly drops droplets of water onto your head.

So why not just fix the problem? Kill Mercy and the trickling stops. As I stated before, Mercy is pretty hard to kill. She flies around the stage at a pretty fast pace, has an endless number of bullets, continuously regenerates health, and even has a buff on her healing and damage ability that gives her the power to heal multiple teammates at once, allowing her teammates to live longer and be very effective in battle. Whether you’re fighting against a Mercy or fighting alongside one, you might have to prepare yourself for some very long games. But hey, with this new Mercy, comes a benefit.

The new Mercy will bring forth more duo support picks. More healing for the team right? Well sort of. Even after Mercy gets nerfed (if she gets nerfed) people will still play as Ana because of what they saw on whatever website they go to for the Overwatch news. Stated above, Mercy is being seen more as a DPS, which means people are going to want to try to use her that way; This information also lead to more Ana mains ulting a Mercy so she can use Valkyrie to its fullest potential, which is, again, not quite as bad. You do get a healer and a DPS, but this can lead to trigger happy players who only want to try to get POTG.

The new Mercy is, for lack of a better phrase, game changing. It is true that we probably won’t deal with the same Mercy that we’re currently dealing with in the PTR but there’s a chance that we will deal with a fragment of the new abilities and deal with the players who want to test her out. With all of these new abilities and changes, it kind of make things a bit intimidating but I believe we should be excited!

Before the patch, Mercy was seen as one of the most important healers in Overwatch but was hard to master. This gives players who have never even touched Mercy a reason to try her out and gives Mercy mains a chance to be more than just a useful, one-time, ultimate, but someone who can be useful in the backline while also holding their ground in the front.

Cover Source: Alexnegrea

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