When it comes to Overwatch, Blizzard isn't afraid to completely rework its characters in order to find a better balance in the game. As it turns out, the studio is currently testing two huge reworks for a couple of its most popular characters, and while the D.Va changes have already been discussed, Blizzard has now revealed the changes coming to the healer character Mercy.

The Mercy rework coming to Overwatch sounds rather significant, and should completely change the way people play the popular healer. Mercy's Ultimate ability, Resurrect, is now going to be a regular ability that can only target one dead teammate at a time, with a 30 second cooldown. Her new Ultimate is called Valkyrie, and it allows Mercy to fly, improves her Guardian Angel ability, increases the range of her healing and damage beams, allows Mercy to chain her beams between multiple teammates, and improves the speed and damage of her gun.

As explained by Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan, this Mercy rework, arguably the biggest character rework since Symmetra's, is meant to change the way people play Mercy. The Overwatch development team noticed that whenever Mercy was close to having her Ultimate or had her Ultimate ability at the ready, Mercy players would stop healing teammates and hide, waiting for an opportunity to swoop in and resurrect multiple heroes at once. With her new Valkyrie Ultimate, Kaplan and his team hope that Mercy mains will heal their teammates at all times, and not go into hiding to wait for their teammates to bite the dust.

Besides detailing the big changes coming to Mercy, Jeff Kaplan has also touched on some of the D.Va tweaks that are currently being tested in the PTR. Kaplan explained that D.Va's Defense Matrix is being nerfed to make it feel less smothering, and that she is getting other changes to make her a more offensive character. While Kaplan didn't explain exactly how that would be accomplished in the video, we know from a forum post by principal designer Geoff Goodman that D.Va is getting a new ability called Micro Missiles that should make her a more offensive tank.

These are significant changes coming to both D.Va and Mercy, and it will be up to Blizzard to ensure that the characters stay balanced after these reworks are implemented outside of the PTR. Overwatch is a constantly evolving game, though, so expect Blizzard to rework other characters, as we've seen it do to both Symmetra and Roadhog in the past.

Overwatch is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: PlayOverwatch – YouTube