00:05What's up, everyone? This is Jeff, here with another developer update to tell you about something super awesome, which is
00:12big changes coming for Mercy.
00:15Now, Mercy is one of the top played characters in Overwatch, so I know there are many, many of you
00:23out there who are Mercy mains, who are suddenly worried, what are you doing to my beloved Mercy? Please don't
00:28wreck her.
00:28Keep her awesome. We love Mercy so much. We love Mercy too. We wanted to put a lot of focus
00:35and attention into improving the Mercy play experience.
00:39And I think it's important for me to start with, why are we changing Mercy in the first place?
00:44So, one of the problems we see with Mercy right now is there's a weird behavior that's encouraged by the
00:52core fundamental design of the hero,
00:55which is that if you are a Mercy player and you're healing your team and your ultimate is up or
01:01close to being up, you have this weird moment where you stop healing your team,
01:06you go into hiding, and you start to tell your team, everybody die together, die on the point, die on
01:12the point, I have rez.
01:13There are people who might not be listening to you on your team who are now yelling at you, why
01:19aren't you healing, why aren't you healing, they go off and die somewhere else.
01:22Anyway, the team eventually wipes and then Mercy swoops in and does her big resurrect.
01:30There's a couple things that we really don't like about this. One, we think it's wrong to tell a main
01:36healing character to go off and hide somewhere and stop healing for some period of time.
01:42The other thing is that on the receiving end, like let's say you are a team that puts a lot
01:50of effort into getting a full team wipe.
01:52Use a Zarya Graviton Surge and maybe you have Pharah reign Justice from above. On top of that you wipe
02:00out the entire enemy team.
02:02It's pretty disheartening to have Mercy just erase that moment with a full team res.
02:08So we felt like her Resurrect was something that needed to be addressed.
02:12The other thing that we were hearing frequently from Mercy players is, hey, you know Mercy doesn't have an alternate
02:19ability.
02:20She has Guardian Angel, which is a ton of fun, super useful. I'm using it all the time.
02:25But how come Mercy has one less ability? So we're making some big changes to Mercy.
02:32The first change that I'll let you know about, and it's going to seem a little bit shocking at first,
02:37is that her ultimate is no longer Resurrect.
02:42Resurrect is becoming her second ability. So now she'll have Guardian Angel and Resurrect.
02:47Now there are some changes coming to Resurrect. Resurrect is now single target only, but it's on a cooldown.
02:56So you don't have to worry about generating an ult all the time.
03:00It is a rather long cooldown so you won't see players constantly resurrected,
03:05but it becomes a really cool strategic moment in deciding who to Resurrect and when.
03:11So now Resurrect is a common ability on Mercy rather than her ultimate ability.
03:18Now, Overwatch in a lot of ways has heroes who are defined by their ultimate abilities,
03:24and we knew how amazing Resurrect was as an ultimate ability for Mercy.
03:30So we felt like we really had to come up with something special for Mercy players so that they felt
03:36like their new ultimate was really worthy of the hero that they've come to love and respect so much.
03:42So Mercy will be getting an ultimate that's called Valkyrie, and Valkyrie does a lot of things.
03:48So let me walk you through all of them.
03:51First and foremost, when Mercy activates Valkyrie, she can fly.
03:57And I don't mean that she can Pharah boost in the air briefly, I mean she can fly.
04:03And it's super fun. You have complete control of your character.
04:07After all, Mercy has those wings, we might as well put them to real use.
04:12I mean, Guardian Angel's pretty good, but imagine flying with Mercy how much fun it could be.
04:17The other cool thing about Mercy when she's in Valkyrie is that everything she does is basically better.
04:26So Guardian Angel now goes much further than it did before, so she can reach targets much easier.
04:35Her beams now go further, both healing and damage boost beams can reach much further than they could.
04:42The coolest part about the beams is now they chain to multiple targets.
04:47So if you have multiple teammates who are in need of healing and they're grouped up,
04:53the beam will hit all of them and they'll all be getting healed or they'll all be getting damage boosted.
04:58Also, for those of you who battle Mercy's out there, and I know you exist, her gun is now better
05:06when she's in Valkyrie mode.
05:08She can shoot faster and it does more damage, which is basically like me saying in two ways, she can
05:14do more damage.
05:14I think the thing that you'll like about it the most is the ability to fly.
05:20I think the flying really opens up those moments for Mercy where she's getting attacked, her teammates aren't really helping
05:27her out,
05:28she needs a chance to get away, and really just sort of flying.
05:32The other thing you can do is swoop in and save people at the right times.
05:36And by the way, your Resurrect refreshes right when you use the ultimate ability.
05:42Now, on the PTR we're going to be experimenting with different versions of the Resurrect and how it works with
05:48Valkyrie.
05:49Right out the gate you'll see that she can use Resurrect even faster when she's in Valkyrie.
05:55So, in a lot of ways you now have Battle Mercy flies to the air, sees her teammates in trouble
06:03all around the battlefield,
06:05and then flies to them, either heals them or if they happen to die she's going to resurrect different ones
06:10of them.
06:11We feel like Mercy will feel a lot more engaging to play than standing around the corner, hiding, waiting for
06:19that moment to press the ultimate.
06:21So, we really hope that you respond well to these changes to Mercy.
06:26We know that she is a character that's played almost second to none,
06:30and so we think we're going to get a ton of feedback from you.
06:34And we're really eager to hear. We want to hear what the Mercy players have to say,
06:38and we want to hear what people who have played on the receiving end of that Teamwide Resurrect feel,
06:44and how they feel about Valkyrie. How do you feel like the balance is? Is it fun to play against?
06:50Do you understand what's going on?
06:52So, we think this will be a good, healthy change for the game overall.
06:57So, we look forward to what you have to say there.
07:00Now, I also want to give you a heads up that eventually, and not all of these are going to
07:05happen right away,
07:05but eventually there's going to be some changes to some other heroes as well.
07:10I don't want to instill panic in anybody, but we are going to take another look at D.Va.
07:15We're doing some experiments to her right now.
07:19And to be clear about what we're looking at on D.Va specifically is Defense Matrix.
07:25We've heard both from D.Va players and from players playing against D.Va that Defense Matrix can feel almost
07:35smothering.
07:35And what I mean by this is, as a D.Va player you feel almost required to maximize your uptime
07:42with this ability because it is so powerful.
07:45And on the receiving end, at times it feels like there's no counter to Defense Matrix.
07:51If you take something like Orisa's shield or Reinhardt's shield, you understand when that ability is going to be on
08:01cooldown.
08:01Like you see Reinhardt's shield is cracking and it's going to go down and you know if you destroy it,
08:07you've got a window of opportunity there against Reinhardt.
08:10Where D.Va with Defense Matrix, it's pretty much up all the time and even when she lowers it, she
08:18can feather it very quickly to deny certain crucial abilities such as, you know, Zarya's ultimate which is Graviton Surge
08:26for example.
08:26It's a little bit devastating right now so we're looking at changes to D.Va to lessen the impact of
08:35Defense Matrix without injuring the character's ability to perform her primary role which is that of Tank.
08:43So please don't panic, we're not going to overly hurt D.Va.
08:47We're also looking to give her other fun things to do and we have a couple of experiments in play
08:53right now internally that we believe will make her more skillful and more fun to play offensively which is something
09:02that we've heard a lot from our D.Va players as well.
09:05That they're looking for something to do besides just hold that Defense Matrix button down.
09:10These changes will be coming out soon, we will provide you more details as soon as we have something that
09:17we feel is worthy of your time and attention and playable on the PTR.
09:22So hopefully as soon as possible, it's what our focus is right now.
09:26Overall, even though we've had some of these heroes in the game since day one, we feel like it's our
09:32responsibility to always look after both the players of these heroes and the people who are on the other side,
09:38which is our player base in its entirety, and make sure that everybody's playing out as fun as possible.
09:44Rest assured, if things aren't playing out well on the PTR or if things happen to go live and they're
09:50not playing out perfectly or to the community's liking, we will go back and keep looking at these things.
09:58We look forward to your discussion, we look forward to those of you who go to the PTR and actually
10:03check things out, and we also look forward to people's impressions.
10:06Let us know what you think of these changes, guys, and have fun with them. We'll check in next time.
10:11Bye.
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