#mercy ptr

I’ll start with D.Va. DM uptime reduced by 50% - Now, for every 10 seconds (plus a delay in recharge), I can protect my team for 2 seconds instead of 4. D.Va can no longer counter the brunt of any ult, nor can she successfully protect herself or her healers, which was something she excelled at. Without having her cooldown, critbox, or delay reduced, and without having her HP altered or increased, D.Va now becomes, like Hog, a walking ult battery for the other team. Her mech can be destroyed in quite literally a second if focused down and you will spend more time out of mech and dying than you will doing anything useful. Short of Zen’s Transcendence, if the enemy team is any good, you’re fucked. In addition, the only decent protection your backline healers had from Tracer and Genji have been removed. IN PAINFUL ADDITION, know who can protect from damage, ults, and even redirect them? Fucking Genji. And now he can do it better and longer than D.Va can. On a shorter cooldown!! That’s fucking right, folks. A DPS character is now better at protection than a goddamn tank. Let that sink in. Added Missile Attack that can be fired every 8 seconds. - D.Va ca now use a missile attack that deals a total of 200, no, 160 (lol they nerfed it too) damage in total, with very minimal splash. - These missiles can be shot while boosting. - These missiles can be shot while firing her regular cannons. Cool, missiles! Not really. Contrary to her cannons, these missiles are projectiles, and require good leading skills rather than the tracking skills her cannons require. Because of this, firing them together is clunky and awkward. You cannot lead and track at the same time. Because of how the missiles are fired (a few on each side in a line, rather than in a burst like Pharah’s ult), any player who is good at straffing can take potentially little to no damage. Firing them while boosting is risky; if you’re too close to the enemy D.Va damages herself, making her mech melt even faster. On the last patch, they actually nerfed her damage, solidifying her role as a protector tank. Why give her something clunky and potentially self-damaging when they could have just upped her regular damage and gotten rid of some of the fall-off? If they wanted to give her another ability, it should have been a utility - that way she wouldn’t have had to rely on DM so much (since apparently it’s a problem). Can now shoot while flying. This is self-explanatory. Despite having learned to use the fire button to cancel flight, this is actually a welcomed quality of life change. Of course, it doesn’t nearly make up for how hard they’ve killed her. Let’s move on to Mercy. I won’t put this in point form since it’s just a doozy. I’m more bitter about this than D.Va, surprisingly. Her rez has been moved to an ability on a 30 second cooldown, which averages more rezzes per game than having it as an ult. In THEORY, this is really cool. In THEORY, this will end the “hide and rez” Mercy tactic the DPS players whine about (isn’t backing off when you hear a teamwipe coming common sense???). However, it completely falls apart when you take a good hard look at her ult. Also her new rez voiceline really just sounds like she doesn’t even care. It’s watered down and uninspired. VALKYRIE, the name of the suit and the reason we’re all here. They have removed what made this character iconic, and given her a bit fat nothing in return. While ulting, for 20 seconds, Mercy can fly, shoot with infinite ammo (because they removed the firerate as it was too strong), move slightly faster, and her beams can chain amongst her team. In addition, her rez is reset, and cooldown while ulting is down from 30 seconds to 10. Yes this sounds super cool! But it’s not. Despite her beams chaining, they do not get buffed. Mercy still heals 60hp/second, and still damage boosts for 30%. If we’re comparing ults, Zen heals for 300hp/s over 6 seconds and is completely invulnerable. Orisa’s ult boosts all your nearby teammate’s damage by 50%. If we’re looking at numbers, Mercy can potentially heal 1200 hp over 20 seconds for each teammate. Zen, while invincible, heals 1800 hp over 6 seconds for each teammate. He can save his team from all high-damage ults that aren’t instakill (Junk and DVa, both of which are easily avoidable). Mercy, while ulting, cannot even outheal anything except a non-ulting Winston. She cannot protect her team from ults. Take 10 damage. A 50% boost puts it at 15, and a 30% boost puts it at 13. Orisa, over the period of her ult can boost 220 damage. Mercy, in 20s, can boost 260 damage. Only more because of the duration; more impact yeah, but over way more time.  With the added firerate of her blaster removed, she no longer has the same DPS addition to her ult (which isn’t really her character’s purpose to begin with anyway so to me this is negligible). But KENDRA! Her rez resets and the cooldown is lowered! Yes, very true! However, what good will this do in a team wipe? You rez once, ult, then rez again. But then you gotta wait 10 seconds. By this time, the other dead souls have respawned and you and 2 teammates are standing there, acting as further ult charge for your enemies. But she can fly and escape! This becomes irrelevant when you have to literally be on top of the soul you want to rez (and you no longer have invincibility frames! This is true even without ult. Rezzing a teammate will literally get you killed unless no enemy is around). The restricted distance is a meager 5m. And despite being able to fly and having your regen be uninterruptable, you still only regen 20hp/s. While for Huge Rez you were invincible, during this ult, any 76, McCree, or Widow worth their salt will still demolish you, especially if the first two ult, making any impact you WERE going to have null and void. LITERALLY, taking all this into consideration, the only thing Mercy is good for anymore is healing outside of her ult and damage boost. And if you thought people yelled at you for not rezzing before, be prepared to be yelled at by every player you choose NOT to rez (or can’t rez because of the cooldown). This leads me to my conclusion; that Overwatch as a game is being changed to cater solely to DPS players. “It’s not fun to be oneshot by Hog.” Nerf. “It’s not fun to have my ult eaten by DM” Nerf. “It’s not fun to have my teamwipe reversed.” Nerf. It’s a disturbing trend that any type of character that can oppose and counter a DPS hero will get nerfed if enough people complain about things being not fun. However, Scatter Arow has yet to be nerfed (”he needs a way to defend himself!” so did D.Va). Symm’s melting capabilities have yet to be nerfed (”she wasn’t strong enough before in a fight!”). Pharah, Reaper, Soldier, McCree, and any ults in combination with Grav or Blizzard can all gain team wipes (”ults are meant to be gamechanging!” mercy’s no longer is tho). Someone on the forums worded it nicely: Overwatch is meant to be a Rock-Paper-Scissors game.You’re supposed to switch it up on the reg to counter your opponents. But because paper beats rock, rock complains and paper gets removed. Rock will now always beat Scissors, and so a new meta is born whether you like it or not, and you have everyone picking rock. This is how the game becomes stale. With D.Va’s new rework (cough, nerf), there is no longer any way to protect your healers from backline harrassers like Tracer, Genji, Pharah, or Reaper. Short of Zarya’s bubble (which only lasts a second under heavy damage), Rein staying back to beside the healer (ill-advised), or Winston’s dome (which can be walked into), anyone getting harrassed will be killed unless another DPS (or a charged Zarya) saves them by killing the enemy first. Hog can no longer punish harrassers completely, and the most Orisa can do is briefly mini-gravi them away (and that’s only if she isn’t paying attention to the frontlines, where she should be). Honestly at this point, the best protector is Mei, who can freeze and secure a kill (except against a really mobile Tracer or Genji, and except Pharah who’s in the sky), but then has to remain with the healers. Very rarely have I seen a DPS player who stays back and helps protect the healer (but yes I know you guys are out there). DVa can no longer counter (despite the amount of characters who can ignore her DM), and Mercy can no longer reverse the tides of battle.  The majority of the roster is meant to secure kills. With the new deathmatch mode being introduced, and characters being reworked to fit a mold, I fear this will only increase. A diverse game that I loved is slowly being changed to accomodate esports and pro-players, and it’s incredibly disheartening.