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Mercy Sees a Huge Nerf on the Overwatch PTR While Junkrat Sees Significantly Smaller One

Overwatch's Mercy and Junkrat have both seen nerfs on the Public Test Realms, with the one for everyone's favourite guardian angel being particularly massive.

Mercy has been a topic of hot debate in the Overwatch community for a while. Since her radical rework a few months ago, she has become an almost essential pick, especially in higher levels of play. It was clear something needed to give, and the character has seen little touches and tweaks since. However, the latest changes currently on the PTR are pretty massive.  Her ultimate Valkyrie doesn't grant an extra resurrect charge, the resurrect isn't' isntant, the time has been reduced from 20 to 15 seconds and also her movement ability has been cut in half. Here are the patch notes:

Mercy

• Valkyrie
  • No longer makes Resurrect instant
  • No longer grants a bonus charge of Resurrect
  • The speed boost that Guardian Angel receives has been decreased by 50%
  • Duration reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds

Developer Comments:Mercy's recent Resurrect changes have helped in allowing enemies to have more counter play in dealing with her, but she was able to use Resurrect through Valkyrie enough to largely mitigate the impact of the previous changes. Additionally, we're toning back the amount of mobility Valkyrie provides through Guardian Angel and reducing its duration to overall reduce the power of this ability.

Junkrat has also seen a bit of a nerf now too. While many expected the damage of his concussion mines to be looked at, instead Blizzard has reduced the distance at which his mines do damage. This means when throwing them out, he will have to be a little more accurate. Here are those changes:

Junkrat

• Concussion Mine
  • Will now deal less damage to targets farther away from the explosion's center

Developer Comments:Junkrat has been enjoying the flexibility his double-charge Concussion Mine provides, but it has now become a bit too easy to throw out huge bursts damage in a large area. With this change he can still dish out similar damage but he must now be more accurate with his tosses.

These changes come to two characters the Overwatch community widely expected to be looked at, but the extent of both have certainly caused a stir. Judging by the ratings of comments on the forum, maybe not for the better. Personally, I do think the Mercy nerf is a little bit nuclear, while Junkrat's changes don't quite go far enough. However, one, these changes aren't set in stone and could well see a tweak in the coming days and weeks before this goes live. Two, speculation will always float around but until all of this goes live, it's hard to know exactly how this will affect the game.

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