Patch Notes Overwatch 1.19.3.1 Killed Mercy & Huge Nerfs
If you play Overwatch constantly, you are probably aware of the supremacy of Mercy and her absurd pick and win rates. Well, in the last Patch Notes Overwatch 1.19.3.1, it launched on January 30th, the super mercy ended! The Overwatch PTR didn’t prepare us enough for this.
The last patch, already live on all servers, brought with it some changes that people asked for (and, boy, they were desperate). People cried for the nerf of two specific heroes that were destroying the competitive ladder.
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The first change was made to Junkrat
Before this patch, his Concussion Mine got buffed to have two charges instead of one and he also got a speed buff in his RIP-Tire. These two changes skyrocketed his win rate and pick rate in every competitive level, even in the professional scene.
The hero was too easy and he required little skill: you could kill the enemies just throwing two concussion mines at them and ta-da! The aiming skill was unnecessary as you didn’t have to aim and it got a huge hit radio, throwing two concussion mines and doing 240 damage in less than 30 seconds! This was practically impossible to counter and therefore, it resulted in many easy kills for Junkrat without giving the opponents a minimum chance to answer back.
These type of mechanics where the opponents can’t do anything turn out being tedious to play against. That’s why the developers had to change these mechanics, in order to make the game a little bit fairer.
At the end, the change given to Junkrat wasn’t taking out one of the Concussion Mine’s charges because this would decrease his mobility and it’s not really necessary. They went with nerfing the damage of the mine. Instead of doing damage independently on the blasting radio, the mine does damage depending on its closeness to the target. If the mine hits right on target, it’ll do 120 damage, but it will do a fair 50-60 damage when it’s away from the target. So, the closer the mine, the higher the damage.
Having that change done to Junkat makes me happy, it’s just fair. It’s good to try these changes because it was totally frustrating to go against a Junkrat that would explode you in less than 3 seconds… all you could do was to wait for the respawn time to end.
No Mercy for Mercy
The second change was done to Mercy. After her rework she was behaving like a true queen, topping the win and picking rates with her name. She was the best support at all competitive levels. It was evident that the rework was too powerful to bear and she needed some tweaks.
Blizzard decided to just nerf her ultimate, which was extremely potent. Now you won’t have the ability to resurrect instantly and the extra resurrection charge. The speed buff was reduced 50% and the total duration of the ultimate was reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds.
In my opinion, Mercy was too strong and she was almost impossible to kill when she was on her ultimate, making it frustrating to go against her. Not only that, she became a “MUST” pick, if you didn’t have a Mercy on your team, you already lost the match. Simply getting a couple of picks (or kills) before the team fight was useless because of the two instant charges of resurrection.
It was indeed a heavy nerf and we just have to see how it goes from now on.
After the Nerfs
Before the patch, Mercy was the most picked hero of all times. After the nerfs, the rates changed:
- From 15.14% pick rate (01/29/2018) to 6.80% (02/01/2018) on all competitive levels for PC.
- From 14.16% pick rate (01/29/2018) to 8.91% (02/01/2018) on all competitive levels for PSN.
- From 13.86% pick rate (01/29/2018) to 7.57% (02/01/2018) on all competitive levels for XBL.
The win rates changed:
- From 52.25% win rate (01/29/2018) to 47.70% (02/01/2018) on all competitive levels for PC.
- From 51.91% win rate (01/29/2018) to 48.33% (02/01/2018) on all competitive levels for PSN.
- From 52.25% win rate (01/29/2018) to 46.90% (02/01/2018) on all competitive levels for XBL.
Before the patch, Junkrat had better win and pick rates, the changes are not as noticeable as Mercy’s but the rates decreased for the Australian hero, too.
One of the hardest duties involving video games is to find the perfect balance between all the characters (or heroes in this case). It’s difficult to have characters who require much skill and others easy to play at the same level of win rate or equally playable.
The perfect balance it’s definitely impossible to achieve and we just have to trust the developer’ ability for they are doing the most they can to give us a fun and fair game.
Note: the numbers were retrieved from here and here.
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