Mercy is one of Overwatch 2’s most deceptively difficult heroes due to her extensive movement capabilities—and players have found a way to capitalize on her angel wings even further.
The latest exploit flying around the Overwatch 2 community is a bug that allows Mercy players to skip the hero’s Guardian Angel cooldown, effectively cutting the time needed to use the ability down to just 1.5 seconds.
Guardian Angel is already one of the most powerful single-movement abilities in the game, and this exploit could quietly give Mercy one of the largest buffs she’s seen in a long time—if players can use it consistently.
The actual details of how to make the exploit work seem simple at first but require precise timing and movement, something Mercy mains should be used to already. To make the exploit work, players have to activate Guardian Angel, flying to either an ally or an ally’s corpse and then cancel mid-flight and press crouch at the same time.
This effectively shortens the cooldown of Guardian Angel by half, getting rid of the time it takes to fully use the ability while also resetting the cooldown. The actual cooldown of Guardian Angel is only 1.5 seconds, making it one of the shortest ability cooldowns in Overwatch 2, but it also takes 1.5 seconds to complete the flight from one area to another. The ability’s actual cooldown timer only starts when the jump is completed. This translates into the true cooldown (the time between when you can press the button to jump in the air again) to three seconds.
The exploit turns an already incredibly powerful ability into a nearly broken one and will give high-level Mercy players even more freedom to avoid being targeted and move between allies swiftly. If you’ve been seeing Mercys flying around at unbelievable speeds so far in season eight, this exploit could be why.
In general, Mercy is considered a bit of a niche hero. On the surface, she seems almost too simple, with just a healing beam and damage boost that players need to balance to be effective. But the true masters at playing Mercy capitalize on her movement. Similarly to a hero like Tracer, who has a low barrier to entry when learning to play her, Mercy also has a high skill ceiling that can only be reached by practicing precise movement over many hours. Her rework in Overwatch 2 attempted to make hidden Mercy tactics like the infamous super jump more accessible to players learning her for the first time.
With all of the different passive movement abilities Mercy has combined with the precise keyboard and mouse inputs needed to configure her flight effectively, it’s not so surprising that players have figured out an exploit. It’s unclear for now if the Overwatch 2 developers will fix this issue, but it is clearly an exploit, with Guardian Angel not functioning as intended.
