Mercy (Overwatch)

Mercy is a player character appearing in the 2016 video game Overwatch, a Blizzard Entertainment–developed team-based first-person shooter, and its related animated and literary media. Lucie Pohl voices Mercy in English-language Overwatch media.

Within the Overwatch narrative, "Mercy" is the callsign of Swiss doctor Angela Ziegler, who provided key medical support for Overwatch group. In game, she is a Support class character who can heal and buff teammates, and has a powerful ultimate ability to resurrect all dead teammates, which can be strategically used to continue a strong offensive push or defensive stand. The character is one of the more popular in the game, being noted by Blizzard to be the most played support character during the game's beta.

Gameplay
In Overwatch, Mercy is classified as having a "support" role, specifically as a healer for her team. As a healer, a player using Mercy can see colored ghost images of their teammates through any obstacle, with the color indicating their health levels, and when in-sight, can see the health bar of the teammate. Mercy is equipped with the "Caduceus Staff" and "Caduceus Blaster". The Caduceus Staff possesses two firing modes: the primary fire, when connected to an ally heals them for as long as they are tethered to the healing stream, while the secondary fire buffs an ally's damage output. The Caduceus Blaster is a small pistol which can deal effective damage at close range, but is otherwise weak. Although Mercy comes equipped with the Caduceus Blaster, a close-range pistol, Kotaku noted that many Overwatch players ridicule offensive-minded Mercy players, referred to as "Battle Mercys", as firing the pistol detracts time from healing teammates.

Her abilities include "Guardian Angel" and "Angelic Descent". Mercy can use Guardian Angel to fly directly towards a targeted teammate, including those that have recently been eliminated, either to move quickly across the field or near a teammate to apply her staff's powers, or to dodge enemy fire. While aloft, Mercy can use the Angelic Descent ability to slow her rate of falling, provide more maneuverability, and also boost her self-healing rate. Her ultimate ability, "Resurrect", performs its title, reviving any recently eliminated teammates within a certain range, granting them full health and a brief invulnerability. Blizzard's developer notes on their July 21, 2016 patch for Overwatch referred to Resurrect as "one of the most powerful abilities in the game." Timely and strategic use of Mercy's Resurrect ability is considered by players to be a game changer, either saving a defending team from a defeat, or allowing an attacking team to continue an offensive push despite several eliminations.

Development and design
Mercy was one of the first twelve Overwatch characters introduced at Blizzard's BlizzCon 2014 event. A Polygon story covering the event noted Mercy was equipped with feathery wings, a healing stream, and a pistol. Mercy is voiced by Lucie Pohl, a German-American voice actress. While Blizzard had been trying to find an actor native to the area that could perform a good Swiss-German accent, they found Pohl's accent to be good for the character and selected her instead, according to lead writer Michael Chu.

In addition to her default skin, Mercy has received themed cosmetics, such as during the game's 2017 "Year of the Rooster" event.

In late June 2016, a post-release patch which added a competitive play mode to the game also unintentionally inserted a nerf for Mercy. Gamers quickly pointed out this nerf; Blizzard confirmed it was an unintentional addition and shortly thereafter fixed the issue with the July 21 patch. Later, in August, Blizzard added a buff to Mercy's ultimate ability, as well as her general healing abilities, in order "to solidify her role as a strong, single-target healer."

Prior to a patch in September 2016, post-match Plays of the Games in competitive play were frequently dominated by a Mercy player using the Resurrect ability, requiring Blizzard to rework how the game selected Plays of the Game to reduce this frequency.

Pending changes for Mercy were introduced on the Public Test Region (PTR) in August 2017. The primary change was shifting her "Resurrect" ultimate ability to become a standard ability, at the same time, making it only usable to revive a single teammate and with a thirty-second cooldown. Replacing this, hew new ultimate is "Valkyrie", which when engaged, gives Mercy several boosts for a twenty-second period: her healing rate and damage boosts are increased and tether to all nearby teammates, her Resurrect cooldown immediately resets and temporarily decreases to ten seconds, and her sidearm does more damage and fires at a faster rate. The changes were to address issues Blizzard had seen with Mercy players that overemphasized the Resurrect ability, as "it incentivized Mercy players to hide away from important battles, instead of taking part in them". Blizzard felt by keeping the Resurrect as a skill and adding the new Valkyrie ultimate, it "gives her the opportunity to make big game-making plays and opens a number of new options for her".

Lore
Mercy's fictional biography lists her real name, age, and base of operations: Angela Ziegler, 37, and Zürich, Switzerland, respectively. The fictional bio also describers her as "a peerless healer, a brilliant scientist, and a staunch advocate for peace." In the Overwatch universe, she is known to have been affiliated with Overwatch, being their head of medical research, and operating as a field medic and first responder while with them. She ascended to these positions in Overwatch via becoming the head of a prominent Swiss hospital, after which she developed a breakthrough in the field of applied nanobiology, which attracted the attention of Overwatch. Although she disagreed with the militaristic methods implemented by Overwatch, she used their resources to develop her winged Valkyrie swift–response suit. Mercy found herself at odds with her superiors and others in Overwatch, despite her medical contributions. Mercy is also mentioned in Genji's fictional biography, with one line stating, "Hanzo believed that he had killed his brother, but Genji was rescued by Overwatch and the intervention of Dr. Angela Ziegler."

Comics
In the tenth issue of the Overwatch digital comic book, Mercy is briefly featured and seen reading a letter, implied to be Genji's.

Literary media
In a fictional news report uploaded by Blizzard, Mercy is quoted as commenting on the end of the Overwatch organization, describing the growingly negative relationship between Soldier: 76 (Jack Morrison) and Reaper (Gabriel Reyes): "after Morrison's promotion to strike commander, his relationship with Reyes changed, the tension became more pronounced as time went on. I tried to mend things. We all did. Sometimes when the closest bonds break, all you can do is pray you stay out of the cross fire."

Reception
Mercy has been noted as one of the more popularly used characters in Overwatch; during the game's open beta she was the most played support class character. Mercy's Witch skin for the game's Halloween-themed event was noted by Polygon to be extremely popular with Mercy players.

Video game journalists also praised Mercy; in his review of Overwatch, Phil Savage of PC Gamer, expressed, "I particularly love how varied the movement is between characters," praising Mercy's glide ability and citing Mercy as "the perfect example of how every aspect of a character can, in the best cases, support a specific style." Savage elaborated, "alone, she's vulnerable and slow – easily ambushed and dispatched. But, with line-of-sight to a teammate, she can spread her wings and fly towards them. It's fun to do, and also reinforces the symbiotic partnership between healer and healed: Mercy needs her teammates as much as they need her. It's masterful design." Due to her Resurrect ability being able to cause such an impact on the flow of a game, Kill Screen's Joshua Calixto referred to Mercy as "the most terrifying character in Overwatch."

A relationship between Mercy and Genji was hinted at in voice lines added in early 2017; fan reception to these voice lines was mixed, particularly among fans who engage in "shipping" characters from the game. Fans of the game created a couple name, Gency, for the duo's possible relationship. The relationship is one of the more popular fan-created ones, based on Genji's fictional biography, which includes Mercy saving his life. Gita Jackson of Kotaku wrote that, "while some fans don't like the idea of the characters being canonically straight, there are other concerns that go beyond preference for a particular [relationship]. Some fans believe that 'shipping Mercy and Genji is inappropriate because Mercy is the Overwatch foundation's doctor. For them, the conflict of interest in a doctor/patient relationship is enough to make the ship feel inappropriate," adding that "some fans see the relationship as predatory on Mercy's part."