Two of Overwatch's most prominent heroes have received significant nerfs in a balance patch; Mercy and Junkrat have undergone changes to key abilities, with the pair respectively picked 95.57% and 24.38% of the time in the Overwatch League (as per Winston's Lab).

Whilst the balance changes won't be going live in Overwatch League play until the end of Stage 1 in February, events such as the PIT Championship and the BEAT Invitational will showcase their affect on the professional meta.

The patch notes have been reproduced in full below:

Patch Highlights

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General Updates

General

  • [XB1] Added 4K support for Xbox One X

HERO UPDATES

Junkrat

  • Concussion Mine:
    • Now will deal less damage to targets farther away from the explosion’s center

Developer Comments: Junkrat has been enjoying the flexibility his double-charge Concussion Mine provides, but it has now become a bit too easy to throw out huge bursts of damage in a large area. With this change he can still dish out similar damage but he must now be more accurate with his tosses.

Mercy

  • Valkyrie:
    • No longer instantly resets Resurrect's cooldown
    • No longer grants a bonus Resurrect charge
    • The speed bonus Guardian Angel receives when activating Valkyrie has been decreased by 50%
    • Duration reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds

Developer Comments: Mercy’s recent Resurrect changes have helped in allowing enemies to have more counter play in dealing with her, but she was able to use Resurrect through Valkyrie enough to largely mitigate the impact of the previous changes. Additionally, we’re toning back the amount of mobility Valkyrie provides through Guardian Angel and reducing its duration to overall reduce the power of this ability.

BUG FIXES

Heroes

  • Fixed a bug that caused D.Va’s face and hair textures to not load when her Black Cat skin was equipped