Multiple Overwatch hero balance changes teased – Mercy buffs & more

Bill Cooney

Multiple heroes will be getting balance changes in the coming weeks and months, according to what Jeff Kaplan said in the latest Overwatch Developer Update.

Jeff provided us with another developer update on May 11, and besides informing us that Open Queue would be added as another permanent Competitive mode alongside Role Queue, he also gave us a little preview of what hero changes we can expect going forward.

Almost every support hero will be seeing changes, along with a number of DPS and Tank heroes, as developers focus on “fast balancing” the game in 2020, as Jeff put it.

Hopefully, the changes will please all those die-hard Mercy mains out there.

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Jeff said that the changes he mentioned will be in an upcoming Experimental card, coming “very soon,” which Jeff clarified as the next “one or two” days following the dev update.

“A lot of changes targeted to make Bastion more viable, and I know many of you are just dying to see more Bastion in your matches,” Jeff teased. “So we’ll see how this goes. I’m sure you’ll all be very vocal about feedback.”

“Lots of changes to Support heroes, some are getting brought down a little, some are getting brought up a little,” Kaplan added. “For example, Ana is getting balance to tune her healing down a little bit, while Mercy is just getting healing that’s purely a buff.”

Timestamp at 4:40 for mobile viewers.

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Jeff also threw out something for all of the desperate Zenyatta mains out there, as well, when he told us the Omnic monk’s Discord Orbs would be reverted back to their original stats.

“We’ve also put Zenyatta’s Discord Orb back to what it used to be, back up from 25 percent to 30 percent,” Jeff continued. “And we’re trying a bunch of changes with Moira, so we’d like to hear what you have to say about those.”

Jeff conveniently failed to mention what kind of Moira changes we might see on the Experimental card, but he did add that Junkrat and multiple other heroes besides the ones he mentioned would be getting updated as well.

Blizzard Entertainment
Zen will finally be getting his old Discord Orbs back.

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According to a recent leak, Overwatch’s 2020 Anniversary event will be starting on Tuesday, May 12, but whether or not the Experimental card Jeff was talking about in the Dev Update will come then remains to be seen.

About The Author

Bill is a former writer at Dexerto based in Iowa, who covered esports, gaming and online entertainment for more than two years. With the US team, Bill covered Overwatch, CSGO, Influencer culture, and everything in between.