Overwatch's Zenyatta To Be Nerfed; Mei, Mercy Buffed

Overwatch [official site] principal designer Geoff Goodman was quite active over on the game's message boards this week, popping in to discuss some upcoming patches that might be coming to Blizzard's bright and bold'em up. Read on for details of what buffs and nerfs are coming.

On Friday, folks on the Overwatch forums got into it, debating over whether or not Zenyatta should be nerfed. Goodman spoke up:

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.

It looks like Zenyatta isn't the only hero facing some changes, though.

In the same thread, players talked about Mercy. Blizzard has been experimenting with a number of ways to give her a boost, either by granting her more fire power, or, in an example cited by Goodman, an area of effect heal over time ability that never came to fruition. While those adjustments were never meant to be, Goodman told forum users that improvements to Mercy are definitely still in the works:

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.

Meanwhile, Mei isn't one of the more popular characters in competitive play, but Goodman doesn't think things need to stay that way. A simple adjustment may be all that is needed:

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.

There's no word when any of these changes might be happening, but in the meantime there is plenty of good stuff to look forward to. Earlier this week we found out that season one is coming to a close, with season two starting up shortly. To top it off, we'll be treated to a new short featuring Bastion at Gamescom next week.