A new Overwatch patch brings changes to Mercy, fixes Lucio's Wall Ride speed

A new Overwatch patch went live today that restores Lucio's Wall Ride speed, gives a minor buff to Mercy's Valkyrie ability, and adds new voicelines for Cultist Zenyatta. Bug fixes have been made, and PC players can now take advantage of some new social tools as well, by setting their status to Online, Away, Busy, or Appear Offline—although that last one won't fool anyone in your friends list if you end up in the same match.

Lucio's Wall Ride speed boost has been cranked up by 65 percent, although that only compensates for a reduction in his speed that resulted from a prior bug fix.

Mercy players can now glide past targeted allies using the jump key while using Guardian Angel, and the cooldown won't reset when Resurrect is activated. Valkyrie won't reset or reduce the Resurrection cooldown either, and it now gives players a bonus Resurrection charge. It's a small nerf to Mercy, though not likely one that will change her indispensable place in the meta.

According to Blizzard, the change also gives her a bit more flexibility.

"This method makes Resurrect more flexible when used with Valkyrie. For example, in the past if you wanted to resurrect two teammates, you had to revive the first target, then activate Valkyrie (causing the Resurrect’s cooldown to reset), and then revive the other target. With this change, you can now activate Valkyrie and fly in quickly to resurrect both targets instantly," community manager Josh Engen explained. "However, this still reduces the overall number of Resurrects that Mercy can provide, since Valkyrie no longer reduces its cooldown."

As for bug fixes, there are two:

Fixed a bug preventing Mercy’s momentum from slowing down correctly when Guardian Angel was canceled
Fixed a bug preventing the visual effects on Sombra’s Pumpkinette victory pose from displaying correctly

The new patch is live now on all platforms. Full patch notes (although really, that's it) are up on the Overwatch forum.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.