When it comes to a game like Overwatch, where tens of millions of players are playing it and using the now 28 characters in special ways that are sometimes unique, it’s up to Blizzard to keep the game balanced so that one character doesn’t have a dominating advantage over the others. For example, for a long time, Roadhog was the most powerful and tough to kill character in the game. So they fixed him. And now, Blizzard is going to be doing some major changes to many of their support characters.
This was revealed in a post on the Overwatch forums, where Geoff Goodman revealed:
In the next patch we’re reviewing the current state of support heroes and are making some changes to nearly all of them to keep them competitive with each other.
The characters that are being affected include Ana, Lucio, Brigette, Moira, and Mercy.
After listing out all of the changes that the characters will be getting, Goodman then went and did detailed breakdowns on why the characters are going through these changes. Here’s the one for Mercy:
Mercy is intended to be able to consistently pump out more healing than any other healer over the course of a match. While this is currently true, the difference in healing is so significant that it makes it very difficult for other healers to compete with her for a spot on a team. Reducing her healing output will close this gap a little, but she will still maintain her status as the go-to pick for raw healing power. We’ll keep an eye on her to make sure she is still a strong pick.
As noted, these changes are to help keep the game competitive, a worthy goal, and as such, it’s going to be interesting to watch and see if more of these changes are needed.
