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The Overwatch team is finally giving some love to the game's most iconic healer, evergreen support Mercy, after the latest round of balance patches nerfed her six feet under the bottom of most tier lists.
Overwatch Season 1 might have kick-started a massive resurgence for the game itself, but its most recognizable medic was in need of some revival. As multiple posts on the r/MercyMains subreddit will tell you, the hero's latest stat changes significantly slowed down her primary healing to the point where she couldn't even out-heal the damage done by fellow supports, like Moira.
Overwatch associate game director Alec Dawson has now thrown Mercy mains a lifeline, in an interview with streamer Deemzies on The Omnic Post, promising that her optional Flash Heal perk will be implemented into her base kit sometime in Season 2, as will Lifeweaver's Cleanse perk.
"Both of those definitely help those heroes," Dawson says. "Mercy getting Flash Heal is a pretty different gameplay change for her as a baseline ability. We're looking at making sure they can come in, like, a really polished state for her still and make sure it feels correct. Those are some of the things we're looking at at the moment."
Mercy's Flash Heal is currently the only way you can provide burst healing to an ally. The minute you activate it, you'll heal a friend for 50 HP or 100 HP if they're below half health, making it a pretty essential perk if you want to keep your party alive during tense team fights. Having it in Mercy's base kit means A) she'll have access to the ability way sooner in the match and B) the perk can be replaced with another useful ability.
Needless to say, the Mercy mains were delighted. "Let’s hope this doesn’t lead to any nerfs elsewhere in their kit, but this sounds great," one player writes. "LIFE IS SO BEAUTIFUL," says another.
"Wow that'll be so nice! I almost never use the other perk with her [damage] boost because Flash Heal is basically necessary to stay afloat," a third says.
On the flip side of the coin, Blizzard's planning to nerf Jetpack Cat this week and in a mid-season update since the new support hero can be "very, very lethal." Which begs the question, what the heck did Blizzard expect when it put a cat in a weaponized machine?
