Overwatch principal designer Geoff Goodman recently shared some information hinting at future buffs for Mercy and Mei, and a nerf for Zenyatta in the game’s official forums.
On Mercy:
I’ve been looking at Mercy for some time now. If you guys saw the last PTR iteration, you could see the kinds of changes we were trying with her. I’d love to give her damage buffing alternate fire more power, but there are too many degenerate cases that pop up when we try that.
There are some other ideas, and many more things we’ve been trying on and off that you guys never get to see. At one point (a couple months ago) she had a new E ability that put a slow heal over time effect on everyone around you, that meant you could use it to toss onto people that needed topping off without having to swap beam targets as often. That particular design ended up having some issues, but just so you know we are iterating on her internally.
That doesn’t mean shes necessarily due for a new ability either. She already has a lot to do and think about when you’re in the thick of combat. You’re constantly deciding which beam to use, where to be positioned to stay safe and still help your team, and her Guardian Angel ability has almost no cooldown so its always on your mind as a re-positioning option.
If she were to get a new ability it would ideally have to be something that she could use more ‘outside of combat’ or something that is generally used much more rarely.
That said there are some things we can do to help her out in the near future.
On Mei:
While Mei currently doesn’t see a ton of tournament or competitive play, I don’t think shes super far off.
Currently her ult can feel a bit unwieldy and inconsistent, especially when you compare it to other similar ults such as Reinhardt’s. We’re internally testing allowing the ultimate projectile she throws to pierce barriers (such as Reinhardt’s shield), and increasing the radius a bit on it.
On Zenyatta:
Zenyatta is definitely playing a lot better these days. At this point anecdotal feedback, internal stats, and competitive feedback are all showing hes actually a bit *too* strong at the moment.
At this point we’re looking likely to reduce some of his power in an upcoming patch, probably related to his Discord Orb.
Additionally, players have recently found that Blizzard just stealth-updated 60-tick servers. To give you an idea on how that’ll make a difference, TheBTeam from the forums explains it best:
The tick rate is how often the server sends information to players to update the game (where players/attacks are). The more frequent updates mean where you are and where the game thinks you are are closer together. This should result in less “i got shot around the wall”
A more detailed explanation was provided by Zapsie Chibi Widowmaker:
A “tick” is the period of time it takes for a server to update its knowledge of what is happening in the game, send the update to every player’s client, register each player’s button-presses and actions, and deliver it back to the server. Everything that happens in a game occurs during a tick, and the period in-between ticks is basically just the server equivalent of motion blur and rough approximations.
The more ticks there are per second, the less noticeable and problematic the period between them is, and the more stuff can happen without happening at the same time. Events like you recalling at the same time you get hooked will be much more rare, and shots will (hopefully) be more accurate now that the target’s position on your screen is more accurate to where the server thinks they are — unless you’re lagging like hell, I mean.
Overwatch is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
