Overwatch gives Mercy a new Ultimate and buffs Reinhardt

Blizzard has announced in a new Developer Update that it’s making some pretty major changes to the Overwatch hero Mercy. The biggest news is that Mercy will get a new Ultimate ability, which enhances her weapons and gives her the ability to fly freely. Reinhardt also gets a little tweak. Currently these changes are being tested on some of the Public Test Realm servers, so hopefully it won’t be too long until they become available for everyone.

The Overwatch director, Jeff Kaplan, discussed the reasoning behind the changes in the Developer Update. Mercy’s Resurrection Ultimate is going to become a secondary ability that only targets a single player, with a longer cooldown period.

The replacement for the Resurrection ultimate is a new ability called Valkyrie and this will boost all of her stats such as healing beam range, bullet damage and cooldown period. When Valkyrie is active it lets Mercy link her healing beams to support more than one hero at the same time. Valkyrie enables Mercy to fly around the battlefield, like the angel she is. It isn’t a hovering ability like Pharah has, but a fully-fledged flight capability.

Blizzard has also given a little buff to Reinhardt. Barrier Field engages when holding primary fire while the shield is active. Now players will be able to rotate the camera, giving Reinhardt the ability to constantly keep a watch on what’s happening from all angles, meaning he can spot the likes of a flanking Genji, or a blinking Tracer with ease. This buff also makes it easier to peek around corners in a way that other heroes can’t at the moment, making him that much better at defending. While it’s not as fancy a change as that given to Mercy, it’s still a nice tweak.

Blizzard is obviously still testing these changes in the PTR and at the moment there’s no confirmation on when they will officially become available. 

In the meantime you can read the full patch notes on the Overwatch blog.