Junkrat had been towards the bottom of the meta for ages. He had been seen occasionally during the beta, but overall, Junkrat had been one of the worst heroes.
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Blizzard decided that the crazy Australian really needed some help. As such, they gave him some serious buffs. RIP-Tire and Concussion Mine were all given a big juice up to give him more mobility and make him better at zoning heroes out.
Honestly, Junkrat’s usage didn’t skyrocket. He was used way more, but overall, teams were still a little hesitant to use him in a lot of situations. What did happen was players were much more careful when selecting their dive compositions. Junkrat wasn’t necessarily an anti-dive hero, but all it took was one mine to really mess with a Dive comp. He also worked incredibly well with a few other heroes who didn’t take kindly to Dive, most notably Reinhardt, who enjoyed the pressure that Junkrat could apply onto the opposing team.
Dive fell off a little bit as a result, but it was still the dominant playstyle; D.Va could handle Junkrat on most maps to an extent, and the positives of dive were way too much to overlook just because of one stupid Rat.
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One of the oldest complaints about Overwatch was the Team Resurrection mechanic. Players often complained that one hero being able to undo their hard work just by hiding was very unfair in the eyes of many players. The debates on this were very back and forth, but in the end, Blizzard agreed that Team Rez was poorly designed. However, they did not want to ditch Rez, which is a core part of Mercy’s identity. As a result, a single Resurrection was added as an ability. Mercy was also given a new Ultimate, which basically gave all of her abilities a small boost.
Unfortunately, Blizzard inadvertently created a monster in the process.
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This Mercy was insanely good. Resurrections spaced out consistently was a huge boon in teamfights, and Valkyrie gave Mercy even more Resurrections to use. This new Mercy unceremoniously shoved Lucio out of the meta for the first time ever. A whole host of weird compositions came into being due to this new Mercy.
The very early precursor of what is now known as the Bunker comp came into existence here. Resurrection actually enabled immobile heroes like Torb and Bastion to come back quickly if they were killed early.
The newly introduced Junkertown gave Bastion a time to shine, as the now-infamous Pirate Ship featured both Bastion and Mercy as key players. Dive was still fantastic as well, because Mercy was incredibly mobile and could move along with the team. Tanky compositions were largely shoved to the wayside as Mercy failed to support them effectively.
It was the Moth’s world, the community was just living in it.
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