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Abathur can no longer hat mercenaries on the PTR
Mercenaries Heroes can no longer Heal, Shield, or target allied Mercenaries with Abilities unless an Ability specifically states that Mercenaries are valid targets.
I saw the change in the patch notes and was checking to see if Abathur would still be able to heal/shield mercenaries, since I believed that he would be the exception if there was one, and found myself unable to hat them at all. This is a decent nerf since Abathur loses a lot of utility with his buff talents like
adrenal overload, soma transference, and adrenaline boost. That's not to even to mention being able to hat a target in a better spot than a minion for that last little bit of damage for a kill.My thought is that this is unintended since Abathur's symbiote says ally and most of the healers that could heal mercenaries were labeled as heal allies. So they just removed mercenaries from being labeled under ally to fix most of the work they had to do.
azgaz
This is an unintended side-effect of the below change:
Heroes can no longer Heal, Shield, or target allied Mercenaries with Abilities unless an Ability specifically states that Mercenaries are valid targets.
There are certain abilities that we need to special case and this is one that slipped through so we're looking at it.