Overwatch 2 beta addresses Mercy nerf, even though her jump was "completely unintentional" in the first place
"We liked the idea of a bug turned into a feature."
Blizzard has confirmed that it will be tweaking both Mercy and Symmetra in the Overwatch 2 beta mid-cycle patch.
In a blog on the official website, Blizzard said that the team has been hard at work "compiling player feedback, [and] squashing bugs", and revealed that part of this will be revisiting Mercy's changes in light of fan feedback.
Healer Mercy received some minor nerfs when the beta test kicked off, such as her character automatically launching into the air when reaching an ally. Now, however, Blizzard is changing it so that you can decide if and when to jump… even though it seems as though that particular ability was a complete accident in the first place.
"Guardian Angel gives Mercy important mobility that is key to her survivability," Blizzard explains. "Over time, players learned that if you jump during the ability at a specific time, you could launch Mercy up into the air.
"This is super cool; however, it was completely unintentional. Mercy’s super jump was the result of a bug that occurred during Guardian Angel, but players made it a part of her utility," the blog continues. "We liked the idea of a bug turned into a feature, so the changes to Mercy in this beta were meant to make the super jump more reliable and consistent.
"We saw some issues with the implementation of this latest version throughout the first week of the beta, so we’ll be changing up the ability in the mid-cycle patch. Our goal with the next change is to give players even more control over Guardian Angel while also increasing its flexibility."
Looking ahead, players will now be in control of when Mercy jumps, as Guardian Angel will no longer automatically launch Mercy into the air. Instead, there'll be a meter that charges when the ability is active and the more charge there is, the further she'll go if you do decide to jump.
Symmetra is also getting reworked, too, given "in the first beta, Symmetra didn't quite fit into the play space Overwatch 2's changes were defining".
Although Blizzard had made some changes to Symmetra in anticipation of "faster paces, more engagements, and less barriers" in Overwatch 2, it now agrees these aren't enough, and will be increasing secondary fire projectile size from .4 back to .5, and reducing the cooldown of both her secondary fire charge time (1.2s back to 1s) and her Teleporter (going from 16s to 12s). There are also changes to speed up her primary fire beam to level 3 "to help compensate for less tanks and shields to charge it up".
Finally, the team believes queue wait times have "improved and evened out somewhat already", especially for Junker Queen, and it's watching other heroes like Zenyatta and Sojourn in case they "may need to be tuned down a little prior to launch".
"Please keep sharing your feedback and thoughts," the blog concludes. "This beta brings us one step closer to launch, and we are thankful our community is involved in the testing!"
For more, including the Overwatch 2 beta release time, end date, and how to sign up for Overwatch 2 beta, here's our guide on how to get beta access to Overwatch 2 on consoles and PC.