Overwatch Support Mercy Has Been Bugged Since 2017
By Jakob Lucas
Mercy's massive 2017 rework also introduced an Overwatch bug that players quickly identified, yet nearly four years later Blizzard continues to neglect it.
In 2017, Mercy's ultimate ability of Resurrect became a regular ability that recharged every 30 seconds and would revive one dead teammate instead of all dead teammates in a close proximity. The rework also introduced Mercy's new ultimate ability of Valkyrie.
Mercy's "On-Fire" Bug
Why is the rework relevant? The massive changes forced players to drastically change the way that they played Mercy. As a result, Blizzard's Mercy rework also should have changed the way that the flying support catches on fire, but the developers seemingly failed to adequately update that aspect.
Getting on-fire happens by simply playing the game well, at least in theory. When players heavily contribute to their team through damage, healing, eliminations, and objective play without dying they can catch on-fire. Being on-fire doesn't grant an edge or even an achievement to a player, it merely serves as an in-game nod to their contributions. The bug that's been plaguing Overwatch for almost four years makes it close to impossible for Mercy to catch on fire.
On Friday, Blizzard user and Overwatch player "imbad" posted to the Overwatch forum detailing the issue pestering Mercy players. They point out how broken Mercy's "on-fire ratio" truly is by demonstrating that Mercy's average on-fire ratio per match is a mere 2.57, while support heroes at large have 9.43 average on-fire ration per match.
The user explains that this bug came from Blizzard's change to how Mercy gets on-fire in the first place. For Mercy specifically, players catch on fire through the resurrects they successfully perform. As mentioned earlier, Mercy lost her Resurrect ultimate ability in 2017, as it become a regular rechargeable ability. The regular ability targets a single-player and takes 30 seconds to recharge, making it difficult for Mercy players to perform multiple successful resurrects in a single life. Consequently, Mercy players have a much more difficult time getting on-fire.
September marks four years since Mercy's massive rework, Blizzard shouldn't let it also mark 4 years of an easy-to-fix bug still annoy Mercy players everywhere.