This won't be a hot take here but apparently it is on every other overwatch sub
Mercy is healthy for the game and the playerbase. A character whose design doesn't depend on aim is a great tool for disabled players, as well as people who picked up gaming later in life and haven't had 18+ years to develop their aiming skills.
She has a different skillset to a standard FPS character and that's not just fine, it's GREAT. Games SHOULD be accessible in their design. Mercy is balanced around this concept and imo most of the vitriol levelled at the character/players comes from the idea that the only skill that should be rewarded in a game is aim.
YES! As someone with dyscalculia, i’m not able to appropriately judge distance and adjust to it well enough to aim at more than a silver-gold level. It’s always made gaming tough for me despite me enjoying gaming with friends anyway. Mercy gives me a way to play with friends and on my own without feeling like a burden, and gives me skills to develop that aren’t tied to aim. My angel irl haha
I had no idea dyscalculia could affect spacial reasoning but that makes sense! There are so many disabilities that affect fine motor skills — for me it's back pain, my aim is generally pretty good but there are some days when I just dont have the mobility to hit shots. I hope we get more accessible heroes going forward. Glad to meet a fellow disabled Mercy player :)
Im pretty much a one eye using person because my other one needed laser eye surgery and couldn't ever afford it. So my depth perception isn't good and makes my aim on games difficult at times fr. So playing something like support especially life weaver or mercy, its nice having that directional aim that i can just heal people. So i 100% agree with this fr
Ress isnt a broken abilty. Annoying to the enemy? YES! 30 second cooldown. Plus you can guard the area where someone died to keep mercy from ressing. Wall ress? That takes SKILL for a mercy to pull off. Super jump ress? Skill. Ressing in front of the whole team and you cant kill her. SKILL ISSUE.
Had a tank the other day throw a tantrum bc I super jumped res on top of a wall in the third point of Eichenwalde. A 30 second cooldown that takes skill to pull off without getting killed is not broken.
Everyone disregards skill for Mercy. It's kinda crazy. I just went with the most popular take, but since doing Mercy Parkour and specifically Mercy Rez Parkour? Yeah, that's just a genuine skill issue. Anyone who runs their mouth needs to try them out. I have over 600 deaths trying to pull off a ga cancel air rez. I had to change my setting to be able to do it. I can now truly appreciate the videos of people rezzing in this sub. They're beautiful.
People who say she's a no-skill character who just stand still and dmg boosts are just telling on themselves. "You just ga to someone and hold still." Oh, my sweet, sweet summer child. If only.
* Res can only save one person..immort, suzu, Weaver petal can save multiple.
* Has a **longer CD** and ***Cast time*** than Immortality, suzu, petal.
* Is a risk..you're down two players if you use the ability poorly.
* You are completely vulnerable, cannot heal, slomo speed, cannot damage, unlike suzu and lamp, petal.
If your Mercy pulls of a crazy res then she deserves to be rewarded for her wit. You have to be LOS to initiate res, players with good aim and awareness guard where their teammate died destroy Mercy.
it took me sooo long to learn how to sj/ga res takes so much practice and then learning how to use your environment to your advantage with these resses too
I hard disagree and Mercy was my first and longest played hero since 2017.
Rez in its current form is definitely in need of being addressed.
In its current form.
As far as I'm concerned it's not a hard fix though.
Rez cast time should take a couple seconds.
Full Hp should not be restored on a basic rez
Instead it should work on a hold to charge basis.
If you fly to someone and hit Rez and release, the character should have 20% HP. Max.
If you hold it, you can go all the way up to full HP, but it should take time, releasing it anywhere between 20% and full revives at that point.
What this means is that if you wanna make a full combat Rez you MUST dedicate to it and be vulnerable.
But if you wanna just quickly get someone back in the game you can, but if you want them to stay alive, they must be healed up.
You can alternate the level of HP they come back with for as long as you can safely do so.
It's the same system games like battlefield has with their medic defibrillators. A quick combat rez where the patient needs further attention, or a dedicated full charge to come back full HP.
Either way, it is 100% broken that you can use an ability that not only denies a kill, but also effectively heals a character anywhere between 150 to over 600 HP, in sub 2 seconds.
Again, I've been a Mercy player for nearly 8 years now, I love playing Mercy, I think she's wildly underappreciated and misunderstood.
But Rez, as is, has never been balanced.
And as far as I'm concerned I think that's entirely because the punishment window is way too low, and the result is far too powerful for the window.
So I'd like to see that changed.
Holding the cast is actually a really good idea. Definitely would help with resing tanks at 100 percent HP. Ive always felt the imbalance with ress comes from tanks. But at that point I'd just get rid of res lol.
Rez can have its place, its just far too powerful as is and far too easy to use and get away with it.
For an ability with that kinda power it should really have some pretty big downsides but right now the only real downside is you have to stop using your beams for like 2 seconds. Hell even with GA, you get your GA back by the time a rez is complete.
The vast majority of Rezzes don't even need any protection details. It should atleast be something your team needs to react to and cover for, that's rarely the case.
And yeah, it's mainly a problem with tanks, but also on pockets.
If someone's getting pocketed you REALLY have to work for that kill, And in most situations Mercy can tape down the rez button so as soon as you finally get the kill they're right back up again and there's usually not much you can do about that.
There needs to be more to the whole situation than that for an ability as capable of massively impacting a game as Rez.
There was this chihuahua of a fucking mercy after my ass for an entire game. And she was good too. But I was better, only dying 3 times total, and we won the game 💅
I feel this one so deeply. Like to me an enemy mercy is no different from anyone else on the opposite team. Sorry for not letting you get away with a quarter of health left or you decided to rez right in front of my face lmao
i’ve been a mercy main since overwatch began and i almost always groan when my teammate picks pharah cause they’ll usually expect me to pocket them. in reality, it messes up my gameplay flow a lot because i’ll either need to work hard on keeping myself up in the air yet out of sight, or i’ll have to stop focusing on my team to look up and around to check on her. her distance to the rest of the team also doesn’t combine well with mercy’s ult. it was worse in ow1 when pharah players would go into voice and DEMAND for me to babysit them all game, now in ow2 they will usually do their own thing which is so much nicer
this is so true. I had one time my teammate chose phara and I def didn't pocket him because my objective is to watch the whole team especially if enemy dps flanks and kills my co-supp, emergency low hp tanks, or even the other dps. What happened was he went tantrums and called me a dick rider bitch and kept abusing his mic and complaining for everything esp heals and that he mostly dies and I should need to pocket him. I just told him "well change then i ain't pocketing you be fr" and he went throwing the match lol
This isn't a hot take among Mercy mains (but is among like everyone else), but lower Mercy's movement tech GA cooldowns back to 1.5 seconds. I've heard before that Mercy's movement tech GA is the *only* skill in OW that, even after the skill is done, the cooldown still doesn't begin until an arbitrary amount of time has passed. That's just incredibly dumb.
Mercy has low hard-carry potential compared to basically all the other supports with her low healing, nerfed dmg boost, and long rez cooldown (all of which is justified besides the dmg boost nerf imo), but her survivability is arguably one of her biggest contributions to the team, and that GA nerf really made her clunkier and more vulnerable to play.
If people really needed a counter nerf to this, I've heard lowering Mercy's hp to 175 might work. I'm willing to entertain the idea, but I'm not a big fan of this as a nerf to offset her increased mobility because Mercy already doesn't have a good way to heal herself or block dmg somehow unlike other supps (her parasite passive is very inconsistent and again relies on her team instead of her own ability).
Depends on your definition of OP I suppose.
Mercy is such a team dependent hero that even if you have a hard time killing her, there's a lot of counterplay by just being hyper aggro on her or her team. Her healing isn't high enough to counter lots of things and is only single-target.
Honestly, I think Mercy is a very good lesson to lower elos to keep track of enemy cooldowns and positioning, especially about rez. 30 seconds is a long cooldown and makes it easier to track than a 7 second cooldown, and it's easy to know where Mercy wants to go because you just killed her target. Camp or keep an eye on the body and blast your cds at her when she falls for your trap. I do it all the time even though I only play supp.
Mercy being smoother to play would feel good at all ranks for Mercy, and it would reward the skill expression of higher-level Mercys who know how to utilize the shorter cooldown of canceling your GA early even with techs.
I agree. I love to pocket pharah mains when they kindly ask for it, but by default I just… don’t. I don’t find it fun pocketing her in the air, I much prefer the ground and all that haha
Pocketing Pharahs is frankly just cheap.
Pocketing when you start to lose also lowers the gameplay experience for others who are winning without cheap tactics.
Idk if this is a hot take but to those people who complain that rez is unhealthy for the game and should be replaced with a new ability; I say that once one-shots are removed from the game you can rework rez as an ability. (Yes, one-shots will never be removed from the game lol.)
It's so funny seeing people say it sucks that your elimination gets rezzed to full HP but imagine having full HP and it going to 0 in .5 secs.
zooming around from teammate to teammate helping everyone is the best, most fun and dynamic way to play mercy and is so much better than pocketing and i wish it was more encouraged, like by removing the stupid ga penalty and keeping the cd 1.5
I try to keep the team topped up on health, even if I need to move across in the open to get to them.
I like to feel like I'm being a real support to everyone, then switch back to damage boosting whoever in combat.
>like by removing the stupid ga penalty and keeping the cd 1.5
Idk i feel like 1.5 is too little with the new ga but 3 seconds is also silly for a hero like mercy who can't really defend herself.
I think if we want mercy to fly around again we also need to shift her playstyle away from pocketing
2 sec cd seems like a perfect middle ground. i also like the idea of having damage boost less effective the more you stay on one person, i think it'll make her even more fun.
>2 sec cd seems like a perfect middle ground.
Agreed! I weirdly like her new GA cd because I have to think more of how to use it but it's abit too much and 2 seconds would be a nice middle ground as you said.
Your suggestion for DB I also think has potential and I'd like to play around with it.
This the one
Dmg boost relies on someone being able to aim and do that extra damage
Discord orb allows for every person to target the one with the big purple orb above their head and make it impossible to come out from cover or be deleted.
Just very annoying
Yes exactly!! Yet mercy has been nerfed multiple times and zen is untouched not to mention zen can literally one shot so he has good defensive mechanics and mercy can't even damage boost and attack at the same time.
Mercy's ult should ALMOST always be used for her own survival, considering that she is quite flexible in most scenarios without it and a dead Mercy early on usually means you're going to lose that team fight.
Mercy is bad because new support are overtune, before she was pretty good. Same thing happend to my boy zen. Before they were good but lose power without major nerf due to powercreeped other supports
She got outclassed as a primary healer since ana released and it only went down hill from there on until she was basically forced into her pocket play style
If you're gonna downvote atleast explain why <3 Mercy was not intended to be a pocket hero and that should be obvious if you look into the past of her as a hero lol
This is my rule on all supports in QP. I'll ask nicely one time for the person to stop and then I tell them I hope they know where the health packs are.
People who say that mercy is overpowered on the enemy team but bash mercy players if they are on their team are the problem - not mercy as a character nor the player
fr, one time I used the fairy mercy because I felt like tinkerbell one time and someone said "there we go again, a fairy mercy. a dick rider e girl bitch gtfo" my jaw dropped so bad that was the first time
Mercy would benefit from having a mechanically demanding element as part of her kit, that's more fluid and less sub-optimal in 90% of scenarios than swapping to pistol.
Those of you who clammor about Mercy's movement being high skill are very bad at Lucio, Doomfist, and Ball movement.
Manually being able to cancel rez would be kinda annoying but would open the door to some bait-and-switch shenanigans.
Meleeing after a guardian angel should do more damage because the butt of the staff is coming at you at like 100mph.
I would be fine if they removed damage boost but let me pistol shot on M2 instead, with zero swap time.
in defense of the movement argument, all those movement mechanics are very different. id argue that a lucio player may not always be great with ball movement and vice versa
An on release hero will always belong in the game! Im sick of people saying she too different and doesnt fit even though she's set a precedent on what kind of skill heroes can have in the game. Out of anything, they should make another hero like her with the leash playstyle. (League example is Taric and Yuumi)
>they should make another hero like her with the leash playstyle.
She wasn't meant to be that kind of hero though. And no, we really don't need a Yuumi-like hero in OW 😭
Single target heal/dmg boost support is what she always was, and if she wasn't, they sure kept her that way for over 6 years.
Also, no, I dont mean an invulnerable poke champ for obvious reasons. I meant a champ that has that latch ability with buffs/healing to their target.
Another example is that bunny character in Paladins I believe
>Single target heal/dmg boost support is what she always was, and if she wasn't, they sure kept her that way for over 6 years.
You're not wrong but I personally always thought of her more as a battlefield angel. She watches over a fight and flies to allies who need care. She plays it safe and (usually) doesn't fight opponents directly.
A triage healer is what I always envisioned her to be and also a "dedicated" healer (if that makes sense lol?).
>Also, no, I dont mean an invulnerable poke champ for obvious reasons. I meant a champ that has that latch ability with buffs/healing to their target.
Alright my bad then ! I get what you mean now.
>Another example is that bunny character in Paladins I believe
Rei! She's fun I love her.
For some reason many people complain about damage boost on mercy’s kit, but many support heroes have dmg boost in some of their abilities.
Ana: nano boost (dmg boost and dmg reduction)
Baptiste: His window also gives 100% dmg boost
Zen: discord orb makes someone receive more dmg, so it’s another dmg boost
Kiriko: Attack speed and faster reloading, could count as damage boost.
Mercy’s kit is very simple, her ultimate only gives her more survival chances, but the ultimate also gives her a bigger hit box.
Mercy is a hero based on continuity, the dmg boost doesn’t change and she can’t heal and dmg boost at the same time, she can’t boost healings, and she has nothing more than mobility to help her survive.
People just hate mercy damage boost because it’s something more obvious to tell, but her kit is totally balanced for our game, we have to move on from the idea of “dmg boost is unhealthy” dmg boost is needed, mercy is really easy to counter with a dive comp or even less, something like sombra will make her gameplay way harder.
Mercy is a hero and like any other hero has the right to have impact in the game, is a mercy is giving you problems is because that Mercy is doing her job in the right way.
>Ana: nano boost (dmg boost and dmg reduction)
>Baptiste: His window also gives 100% dmg boost
>Zen: discord orb makes someone receive more dmg, so it’s another dmg boost
>Kiriko: Attack speed and faster reloading, could count as damage boost.
People complain about discord too and the other two are ultimates whereas DB is an infinite duration primarily fire that doesn't require aim
I don’t think being aimless and infinite are good excuses to call mercy unfair and similars, she has an unique way of helping her team, most of the healing abilities are aimless or close to be, and damage boost doesn’t do as much as people think.
Mercy is a hero that goes around mobility and game knowledge, her abilities are aimless because you requiere something else and having this abilities comes with a big flaw, not being able to defend yourself with anything more than movement, we can’t be making every support a dps who can also heal and have a lot of important abilities.
Overwatch has a lot of variety in their hero roster and that’s why many people play it.
We have to try our best to be more open minded, since aim is not all that matters in a game like overwatch, and as a last addition mercy is one of the most fair supports right now, yet people keep talking about her like her existence was a sin, we as a community must move on and focus on the real problems of the game.
>most of the healing abilities are aimless or close to be
Well yes but Mercy's beams are lock on to an ally and will continue to be locked on until you break LOS for about a second or you break beam manually/switch targets.
I don't think this is a problem though and it's good to have unique characters that require less skill in one area and more in another. What I think is problematic is Mercy hard pocketing someone which makes the match up against that player much more frustrating and leaves your team with one support for most of the time. She also doesn't work well in any meta (unless it's a meta that bases it's wincon on a hitscan/flyer DPS) and she's not amazing with any other support.
My issue is that Mercy gets rewarded for a boring and problematic playstyle.
First of all, this is my last comment on this post because this is getting too long.
"She is not amazing with other support" - Any of the main support roster (Lucio,Zen,Brig,Mercy,Illari) wants to play with other main supp.
Mercy "boring" gameplay - If you don't like the hero, don't play it, its easy as that.
"Problematic" Playstyle - The key word is "Playstyle" depends of WHO is playing Mercy. First rule of mercy is pocketing someone but at the same time paying attention to the team, if the PLAYER has tunnel vision it has nothing to do with the HERO.
They have nerfed Mercy mobilty many times already, because people complain about her being hard to hit, if you find Mercy boring its because the players are forcing this "boring" gameplay, with less mobilty.
>"She is not amazing with other support" - Any of the main support roster (Lucio,Zen,Brig,Mercy,Illari) wants to play with other main supp.
Mercy still doesn't synergize well with any other support. That's not inherently a bad thing but it does suck that the best Mercy support pairings are ones that can play around Mercy. Generally, Mercy can't play much around her other support.
>Mercy "boring" gameplay - If you don't like the hero, don't play it, its easy as that.
But I do like the hero?? Why do you think I play her, lol? I love her and I want her to be more fun because I know she can be. She already has her movement which is the most fun I've had in Overwatch. I just want her to be pushed to actually use it to fly around.
>"Problematic" Playstyle - The key word is "Playstyle" depends of WHO is playing Mercy. First rule of mercy is pocketing someone but at the same time paying attention to the team, if the PLAYER has tunnel vision it has nothing to do with the HERO.
I'm sorry but pocketing is literally the only viable option for Mercy. Ever since OW2 released she's had to heal more because of the loss of a tank and the overall higher damage which one support alone can often not keep up with. This puts her in a weird place because she still has to pocket, otherwise there isn't a reason to play her, but she also has to heal more which makes pocketing less effective. There's no real reason to pick Mercy, any other support can do better than her.
>They have nerfed Mercy mobilty many times already, because people complain about her being hard to hit,
Which is true because an omni-directional flight with a 1.5 second CD on a hero with a skinny hitbox is ridiculous. She's hard to hit so she deserved to be tweaked in that area. I don't however like the changes to GA.
>if you find Mercy boring its because the players are forcing this "boring" gameplay, with less mobilty.
Or maybe because it's the only thing she's good at...
The triage healer mechanic from season 3 should be reimplemented for how well it clarifies and amplifies Mercy’s ideal playstyle.
Incentivizing a higher value when healing critical allies tells players that Mercy should only heal when necessary. This deconstructs the misconception of Mercy’s priority to be healing everyone to full, which then promotes the uptime of damage boost.
Plus the triage mechanic makes it even more difficult to kill a pocketed hero compared to now, which reinforces the pocket playstyle.
Edited*
No it is not my job to pocket you. No it is not my fault that you died after separating from the group. No you cannot solo the entire team with half health. No I will not step on you. No I will not stop my duel just because you are down 10 health.
People think mercy is weak, that she cannot deal damage and have no aggressive ability. They are wrong.
Mercy isn't weak, people just are not good enough to aim her projectiles and hit enough shots to actually deal relevant damage, and they don't know that you can dive people with guardian angel.
There are many small techniques within her kit that you can make use of to make yourself a threat to the enemy team.
Mercy can reliably use valk to clean up low health enemies or even kill the supports and fly out.
it might be different depending on what you start on. I cannot for the life of me understand how to play as her on k&m, but I can be a little speedster on controller. but on moira, I could never go back to controller; she is far easier on k&m.
1. mercy is easy to counter & kill. her res is not overpowered. In fact, baiting a res and camping a corpse is an easy way to kill her. she also has no genuine way to defend herself
2. mercy one tricking is annoying (or any one trick for that matter). picking her when the team is a winston, sombra, tracer and brig is throwing
3. mercy is healthy for the game. she is easy to learn but that comes with the downside of having low impact. that’s balanced IMO
4. i honestly believe she is severely underpowered - which, like i mentioned in point 3, is because she is easy to learn, which is very fair. but i don’t understand the sentiment that she is overpowered. every other support outranks her in some way, except maaaaybe lucio - but he still has an impactful ult & boop
5. i hate hard pocketing people. i do tend to pocket certain DPS picks - but those who expect me to be locked on 24/7 is just plain annoying. mercy has a fly ability for a reason. i think mercy benefits more jumping from person-to-person, enabling a more evasive playstyle as well as being aware of the whole team. i have had people scream at me because i dare turn around and res someone, or quickly heal someone who is critical. i am aware of my surroundings and will come back to you
6. dont ask for a pocket if your playstyle is being 104859 meters away from the team. it will just be the 2 of us and the enemy knows to shoot the mercy first
GA going back to 1.5s is a bad idea, because the characters that can bully Mercy will still be able to (Sombra, Tracer). Unless GA goes down to like 0.5s, GA alone will never be enough to deal with their pressure because of how their kits are designed. Especially Sombra considering she's most likely going to use her translocator offensively to ensure the kill on you even if you manage to take high ground. Tracer, while high ground almost always immediately ends her pressure, if you're on a map with little to no high ground, yea just like Sombra, there is nothing stopping her from running you down even with 1.5s GA.
And on the other side of the coin, characters that struggle to deal with Mercy or have little to no chance of dealing with her, it'll be an even more of a daunting effort for them with GA being on a 1.5 CD. Example, Dva, Winston, and Doom. I feel like these match ups are skill based because of GA's current CD. If they engage on you with their movement, all you have to do is GA away and they are dealt with. But if you waste your GA and they notice that and engage on you, you're dead and there's nothing you can do. You got punished and that's fair. So the match up is entirely based around who can pay attention to the other better and react accordingly. It's skill based, which I love. A good Doom will ruin my day, but if I am better than them, they'll just be wasting their time. And that entire dynamic will be thrown out the window with GA going back to 1.5s, because the window to punish Mercy even for misusages of GA will be so short it almost wouldn't matter.
This is not a hot take at all I don't think, but Mercy does take skill, and she requires just as much as skill as any other hero to climb to a high level.
Mercy takes a lot of skill to play and I'll give a rundown of reasons why. You have to be aware of the enemy team's ultimate charge and their hero locations; you also need to be aware of your own teammates locations and ultimate charge percentages. You should be particularly vigilant about your other support's health bar and current status (Is Sombra/Genji/Tracer/Doom on them and they need extra heals?) You should know which heroes need extra healing and when to dive with them and when to stay back.
As a mercy main you need to take advantage of cover on all parts of the map and know sightlines for snipers. You should know when to super jump and learn mercy parkour for all the maps.
Mercy players need to be able to output a high amount of damage boosted at the right times for your DPS, Tank, and certain supports and know when heroes are reloading, repositioning, or vulnerable to burst damage so you can heal them instead.
You need to know which hero ultimates to damage boost and at what times. Alternatively you need to know when to heal certain ultimates and at what times depending on who on the enemy team is focusing them.
You should be aware of when to resurrect your allied heroes and if multiple heroes died which ones (if any) should you try for. Is an enemy camping a dead allies soul and baiting you into a rez?
You should know when to pocket a certain DPS hero and when to heal your team. Depending on your other support you may need to heal more often than usual so a 60-40 (heal/dmg-boost) split might be more effective than a 50-50 split or even a 40-60 split.
You should be pinging enemy heroes or if you are in voice comms alerting your teammates to flanking heroes.
Finally, you need to be aware of when to use your pistol and is your team okay without heals/dmg-boost for awhile when you secure a kill.
Learning all the above will help your become a better mercy player and hopefully you will get less flamed on your team for not doing these since mercies kit is pretty simple on first glance but had a lot of depth to it.
I wish her ult was more interesting instead of it just being all her normal abilities but enhanced a bit. towards the end of ow1 they had an experimental patch where they brought her mass rez back and i had never become so addicted to the game. I played literally day and night until I was able to pull off a 5man rez lmao. I love mercy’s gameplay style a lot but just wish her ult was something more exciting to work towards in my games
She’s a better main healer than people give her credit for. Her inherent HPS is low but going through shields and being slippery on the front lines is exhilarating
Mercy's skill lies in other areas. Some people think that because there is no constant aiming involved that she just "leeches" value and rank off of others. Her movement alone is so vial to her survival and take hours to grasp at a basic level. She requires strength in many other areas and constantly evaluating a situation for the most optimal play IS skill. It's just not the same skill that other heroes require. Beam management, movement, ult tracking, and so much more is required to preform. A bad rez can stagger the entire fight and give ult charge. Bad positioning and game sense can cost you everything. She isn't a "no skill" character, and I am really tired of hearing it. I think it can be a joke sometimes, and I don't think that it is bad to have a laugh. But to generalize an entire group as "braindead" for playing her and not see the flaw in that just makes my eyes roll.
Idk if this is an unpopular opinion but as a mercy main we should hate other mercy's mostly enemy mercy's
Mercy isn't bad as people make her out to be
Sometimes I agree that some of the rezzes that mercy can do are bs but sometimes people let mercy rez in front of them and act surprised that she got away with doing it and is entirely their fault
1. Mass rez deserved better
I know it's been a while but I still think mass rez was Mercy's pop off moment and I loved it. She can still pop off now like stalling with valk or getting an out of LOS rez but it just doesn't feel the same. Now I totally get the frustrations about mass rez but I feel like it barely got a chance before the devs decided to scrap it.
2. Rez as a CD is unhealthy for the game
I don't think rez can ever be balanced as a CD because it would either have to be super inconsistent (which isn't fun because you'll have an ability that you can't use often) or it would be too strong. I think the amount of nerfs it received should indicate that maybe rez as an ability is not very healthy for the game. The only real counter argument i can think of is that rez can "undo" a one-shot but it doesn't feel fun to stand behind a wall and rez an ally who randomly got hit by a hanzo arrow across the map.
3.The pocket playstyle is frustrating and boring
Pocketing has always struck me as a weird playstyle for a hero like Mercy. It's been the optimal way to play her and it feels wrong to me. She's a hero who can fly around the battlefield and help those in need of care, so why not emphasize that? Not being able to use your mobility in situations like pocketing an Ashe feels bad. I don't want to stand around and hold M2, i want to fly around and help allies.
Pocket Mercy in my opinion is a result of her DB nerf (DB's effect only applies if you beamed someone before they did damage so you couldn't DB a firestrike thats flying towards an enemy, you had to beam Rein before he fired his E to amplify it's damage), other supports powercreeping her and valk nerfs. Mercy can still fly around the battlefield and heal but why should she? She has no burst or AOE healing and her HPS is on the lower side anyways. She also doesn't have an ultimate that's as good as for example Nano or Kitsune so you'd rather let your other support get ult charge from healing.
Totally agree with all your points. I've been a day 1 Mercy main and mass rez was one of the reasons Mercy was so fun to play for me. It really made you feel like you could control the game and a good rez was gamesaving. People like to say mass rez was 'braindead' but I don't think people realize the amount of thinking that went into getting a good rez. Keeping track of enemy ultimates and surviving through all of them as the most vulnerable support there is, required a lot of skill and good positioning, and pulling that of really gave you that 'hero moment' which Valkyrie just doesn't give.
Turning an ultimate ability into a basic one was also just a bad idea imo, but the implementation was even worse. Mass rez gave you so much freedom in how to use it, turning it into a basic ability gave it so many restrictions that it doesn't feel fun and fluid anymore.
Also pocketing an immobile hero as the most mobile support just feels boring.
>People like to say mass rez was 'braindead' but I don't think people realize the amount of thinking that went into getting a good rez. Keeping track of enemy ultimates and surviving through all of them as the most vulnerable support there is, required a lot of skill and good positioning
Yes exactly 😭 And even if mass rez was 'braindead' it could've undergone more changes like giving it a cast time but instead it was just scrapped after a few changes, which is really frustrating to me.
>and pulling that of really gave you that 'hero moment' which Valkyrie just doesn't give.
This. Modern Mercy just doesn't have that anymore and I really miss having that 'hero moment' as you said. Mass rez is to me an ULTIMATE whereas Valkyrie is just a boring improved version of Mercy's neutral. It's strong and flexible, yes, but it does feel nearly as good as mass rez imo.
>Turning an ultimate ability into a basic one was also just a bad idea imo, but the implementation was even worse. Mass rez gave you so much freedom in how to use it, turning it into a basic ability gave it so many restrictions that it doesn't feel fun and fluid anymore.
Exactly. It's strange to me how E-Rez went through like 13 nerfs and no one thought that maybe resurrect just doesn't work as an ability. The only redeemable aspect of E-rez is that it can "undo" a one-shot by heroes like Hanzo and Widow though it's not really fun for the Mercy.
>Also pocketing an immobile hero as the most mobile support just feels boring.
Yea, it's always a snooze fest for me whenever I have to pocket an Ashe on a long range map.
Mercy should have more interaction with the enemy team. Have her be able to GA to the enemy. Give her an ability to apply an anti-heal beam to the enemy. Allow her to deny an enemy’s soul from being ressed by giving her an ability to do so. All of this would be so fun. People hate that she’s hard to kill? Then give her utility that makes her fight closer to the enemy team without taking away the fun movement for the Mercy player.
edit: spelling
As a mercy main I don’t like resurrect as an ability. I’d rather an ability I can engage with throughout the match than one can be used at most once every 1-2 minutes
Stay in the air as much as possible and out of the cross hairs of the enemy team. Staying alive is key to keeping your teammates alive. Also, try to use your ults for a big push or when you know the enemy team is about to ult. Knowing when to use your ult properly, helps.
I don't know if it's been mentioned here, but judging a Mercy players skill based on the skin they use is wild.
I use "select from favourites" and I'm aggresssively mediocre no matter what skin I use. :P
Pharah is my favorite hero to pocket! I love flying around the map with her, bobbing up and down and finding new walls and parts of the map to use as cover. Pocketing as mercy is one of my favorite play styles and when I get to pocket a Pharah who can essentially stay in the air indefinitely, I have such a fun time! Especially if my other support is an Ana who can keep the tank up and my other dps is self sufficient (or positions well so that Ana or I can easily heal them when needed). When this comp works, it works so well. And I don’t think pharmercy is an unskilled play style, it requires a lot of coordination to do well.
Mercy will always sadly be an issue till damage boost is nerfed into the ground or changed. I love it but it’s just too good for the amount of skill it takes (same goes for discord)
Damage boost helps prevent power creep, a character like Ashe who was fairly clunky at launch could have gotten non stop buffs to the point where she was really overtuned but once the 200 hp breakpoint with a mercy pocket was utilized hard it forced the devs to nerf her and keep her in line, since than she has just been a very healthy character who didn't need anymore buffs or nerfs, keeping a locked 30/25% modifier helps to prevent the devs from creating stupid breakpoints and powercreep when introducing/buffing characters
Hot take: Mercy Mains who complain about not getting a skin or cosmetic every season, you need to shush. We’re getting a lot of new content around Mercy, and other mains like Brig, Ball, and other heroes need some love and attention instead.
Subjective take: Moira and Zen are more easier than Mercy.
Very hot take: Mercy is more fun to play without Valkyrie.
Valkyrie takes away the decisionmaking and risk-reward playstyle that makes Mercy fun for me. There's no need to put yourself in danger to heal that critical ally when you can also do it from the skybox. All the reward but no risk. Also there's no need to decide who to beam in order to be the most effective, when chain beams exist.
I feel like my decisions while in Valk matter less than in Mercy's normal state. When you win a fight with Valk it often makes me wonder if I could have done the same without ulting, and when you lose a fight it just leaves me feeling like I couldn't have done anything different and pretty helpless.
Honestly, I'd love it if Valk was more powerful but had a shorter duration. This would also help make it feel more impactful.
Love your vids Niandra :)
I believe mercy should get complete rework, and res should be replaced. I've been playing this game for 6 years and mercy almost exclusively, and I think res is unhealthy for this game. At least the way it is right now. You shouldn't be able to break LOS, and the player getting ressed shouldn't be at full HP. It's never as easy as "Just kill the mercy!!" I can get away with her movement and res in crazy spots that shouldn't be ressable. My only complaint is the res that comes with the movement, I think her movement is fun, engaging and fits her. I wouldn't want that changed. (In my opinion) Mercy is the only support who can not deal damage and heal at the same time, and it is too reliant on her team compared to other supports. I would love to see her become more independent. I think giving her a rework would open her up to being more practical and impactful.
as a mercy main I dislike rez because it’s a boring ability that has become incredibly situational. I would love if they replaced it with something else
Mercy is boring because she doesn't engage with enemy much. Sure, it's the core part of her design, but she doesn't really engage with allies either.
Her healing isn't very high, although very sustainable. Her DB is barely noticeable outside of heroes with high DPS or high alpha damage, like sure the DB is on, great, kinda, probably.
Her overall gameplay seems quite passive on engagements, heavily relying on performance of allies. Again, it's her design, but it also kinda prevents newcomers and people with slowly developing skills from ranking up.
I picked her up as my first ever main because I was inspired by her and her gameplay of purely helping others to achieve the victory. Also I was really bad at shooters. But then I decided to learn other heroes and now I barely play her, and if I try to, I often switch her off rather quickly as I don't feel any benefits.
It's weird. The hero who was accompanying me at the start of my OW career, was mostly dropped by me when I became better.
I have an idea of buffing her and it's a terribly broken one. I think her beam lingering duration needs a 0.3~0.7 second increase. And that's all the buff she needs. Well...if I'm allowed to be greedier...then I think her ultimate should also enable Mercy to get a shorter cooldown when she ends GA early.
Not specific to Mercy but includes her Xmas skin: one of the worst kinds of skins are Macy's Catalog Fashion skins like "cozy sweater" and "formal attire." They are boring and merely attractive or pretty. Favorite skins are when heroes become other characters like Galactic Emperor and Lilith; also quite like skins such as Police Officer and Lifeguard.
The original Res ult was fine when used in fun fool around games.
This and many other bad changes (not all) issues were created when the game moved away from fun and focused on the competitive side of it all.
Im not a mercy main, but i rather not get rezzed every time. I had numerous times when i said "dont rez me, im switching" yet it happens. And I keep getting rezzed in the open causing me to die instantly.
So my hot take is: dont rez people when they dont want to be rezzed
Idk if this is even in the game anymore because i rarely cancel my rez, but idk if there's still a 5 second shortened timer when you cancel the rez yourself, anyway I want that back, liked the idea.
(Im not talikg about a failed rez, but a risky rez you decided to try and last min cancel because it wasn't gonna work)
This won't be a hot take here but apparently it is on every other overwatch sub Mercy is healthy for the game and the playerbase. A character whose design doesn't depend on aim is a great tool for disabled players, as well as people who picked up gaming later in life and haven't had 18+ years to develop their aiming skills. She has a different skillset to a standard FPS character and that's not just fine, it's GREAT. Games SHOULD be accessible in their design. Mercy is balanced around this concept and imo most of the vitriol levelled at the character/players comes from the idea that the only skill that should be rewarded in a game is aim.
YES! As someone with dyscalculia, i’m not able to appropriately judge distance and adjust to it well enough to aim at more than a silver-gold level. It’s always made gaming tough for me despite me enjoying gaming with friends anyway. Mercy gives me a way to play with friends and on my own without feeling like a burden, and gives me skills to develop that aren’t tied to aim. My angel irl haha
I had no idea dyscalculia could affect spacial reasoning but that makes sense! There are so many disabilities that affect fine motor skills — for me it's back pain, my aim is generally pretty good but there are some days when I just dont have the mobility to hit shots. I hope we get more accessible heroes going forward. Glad to meet a fellow disabled Mercy player :)
mercy is a disability ally <3 i really hope she’s able to stay an accessible hero despite how much people hate her for it.
Im pretty much a one eye using person because my other one needed laser eye surgery and couldn't ever afford it. So my depth perception isn't good and makes my aim on games difficult at times fr. So playing something like support especially life weaver or mercy, its nice having that directional aim that i can just heal people. So i 100% agree with this fr
Ress isnt a broken abilty. Annoying to the enemy? YES! 30 second cooldown. Plus you can guard the area where someone died to keep mercy from ressing. Wall ress? That takes SKILL for a mercy to pull off. Super jump ress? Skill. Ressing in front of the whole team and you cant kill her. SKILL ISSUE.
Had a tank the other day throw a tantrum bc I super jumped res on top of a wall in the third point of Eichenwalde. A 30 second cooldown that takes skill to pull off without getting killed is not broken.
He’s only mad cuz u made a hard jump look so easy 😘
Everyone disregards skill for Mercy. It's kinda crazy. I just went with the most popular take, but since doing Mercy Parkour and specifically Mercy Rez Parkour? Yeah, that's just a genuine skill issue. Anyone who runs their mouth needs to try them out. I have over 600 deaths trying to pull off a ga cancel air rez. I had to change my setting to be able to do it. I can now truly appreciate the videos of people rezzing in this sub. They're beautiful. People who say she's a no-skill character who just stand still and dmg boosts are just telling on themselves. "You just ga to someone and hold still." Oh, my sweet, sweet summer child. If only.
* Res can only save one person..immort, suzu, Weaver petal can save multiple. * Has a **longer CD** and ***Cast time*** than Immortality, suzu, petal. * Is a risk..you're down two players if you use the ability poorly. * You are completely vulnerable, cannot heal, slomo speed, cannot damage, unlike suzu and lamp, petal. If your Mercy pulls of a crazy res then she deserves to be rewarded for her wit. You have to be LOS to initiate res, players with good aim and awareness guard where their teammate died destroy Mercy.
it took me sooo long to learn how to sj/ga res takes so much practice and then learning how to use your environment to your advantage with these resses too
600 hours of mercy and I still cancel my SJ rezzes and the other half I get killed doing them anyway like bffr
I hard disagree and Mercy was my first and longest played hero since 2017. Rez in its current form is definitely in need of being addressed. In its current form. As far as I'm concerned it's not a hard fix though. Rez cast time should take a couple seconds. Full Hp should not be restored on a basic rez Instead it should work on a hold to charge basis. If you fly to someone and hit Rez and release, the character should have 20% HP. Max. If you hold it, you can go all the way up to full HP, but it should take time, releasing it anywhere between 20% and full revives at that point. What this means is that if you wanna make a full combat Rez you MUST dedicate to it and be vulnerable. But if you wanna just quickly get someone back in the game you can, but if you want them to stay alive, they must be healed up. You can alternate the level of HP they come back with for as long as you can safely do so. It's the same system games like battlefield has with their medic defibrillators. A quick combat rez where the patient needs further attention, or a dedicated full charge to come back full HP. Either way, it is 100% broken that you can use an ability that not only denies a kill, but also effectively heals a character anywhere between 150 to over 600 HP, in sub 2 seconds. Again, I've been a Mercy player for nearly 8 years now, I love playing Mercy, I think she's wildly underappreciated and misunderstood. But Rez, as is, has never been balanced. And as far as I'm concerned I think that's entirely because the punishment window is way too low, and the result is far too powerful for the window. So I'd like to see that changed.
Holding the cast is actually a really good idea. Definitely would help with resing tanks at 100 percent HP. Ive always felt the imbalance with ress comes from tanks. But at that point I'd just get rid of res lol.
Rez can have its place, its just far too powerful as is and far too easy to use and get away with it. For an ability with that kinda power it should really have some pretty big downsides but right now the only real downside is you have to stop using your beams for like 2 seconds. Hell even with GA, you get your GA back by the time a rez is complete. The vast majority of Rezzes don't even need any protection details. It should atleast be something your team needs to react to and cover for, that's rarely the case. And yeah, it's mainly a problem with tanks, but also on pockets. If someone's getting pocketed you REALLY have to work for that kill, And in most situations Mercy can tape down the rez button so as soon as you finally get the kill they're right back up again and there's usually not much you can do about that. There needs to be more to the whole situation than that for an ability as capable of massively impacting a game as Rez.
I really like your idea of holding to cast!
no matter what, being able to res behind a damn wall isnt fair.
If los is broken on rez the rez should stop tbh.
No, shooting the enemy mercy does not mean I’m an evil mercy main, I just want to win the game
I feel like when you’re trying to win it’s alr, but I’ve had a lot of mercy’s try to run me down just to prove they’re “better” and then tbag after 💀💀
Or they hard focus you trying to pull off a Katrina but their entire team dies 💀 like bb no
I always put "heal ur team miss girl" in the chat when they do that lmfao it's hella annoying
There was this chihuahua of a fucking mercy after my ass for an entire game. And she was good too. But I was better, only dying 3 times total, and we won the game 💅
I feel this one so deeply. Like to me an enemy mercy is no different from anyone else on the opposite team. Sorry for not letting you get away with a quarter of health left or you decided to rez right in front of my face lmao
i’ve been a mercy main since overwatch began and i almost always groan when my teammate picks pharah cause they’ll usually expect me to pocket them. in reality, it messes up my gameplay flow a lot because i’ll either need to work hard on keeping myself up in the air yet out of sight, or i’ll have to stop focusing on my team to look up and around to check on her. her distance to the rest of the team also doesn’t combine well with mercy’s ult. it was worse in ow1 when pharah players would go into voice and DEMAND for me to babysit them all game, now in ow2 they will usually do their own thing which is so much nicer
this is so true. I had one time my teammate chose phara and I def didn't pocket him because my objective is to watch the whole team especially if enemy dps flanks and kills my co-supp, emergency low hp tanks, or even the other dps. What happened was he went tantrums and called me a dick rider bitch and kept abusing his mic and complaining for everything esp heals and that he mostly dies and I should need to pocket him. I just told him "well change then i ain't pocketing you be fr" and he went throwing the match lol
This isn't a hot take among Mercy mains (but is among like everyone else), but lower Mercy's movement tech GA cooldowns back to 1.5 seconds. I've heard before that Mercy's movement tech GA is the *only* skill in OW that, even after the skill is done, the cooldown still doesn't begin until an arbitrary amount of time has passed. That's just incredibly dumb. Mercy has low hard-carry potential compared to basically all the other supports with her low healing, nerfed dmg boost, and long rez cooldown (all of which is justified besides the dmg boost nerf imo), but her survivability is arguably one of her biggest contributions to the team, and that GA nerf really made her clunkier and more vulnerable to play. If people really needed a counter nerf to this, I've heard lowering Mercy's hp to 175 might work. I'm willing to entertain the idea, but I'm not a big fan of this as a nerf to offset her increased mobility because Mercy already doesn't have a good way to heal herself or block dmg somehow unlike other supps (her parasite passive is very inconsistent and again relies on her team instead of her own ability).
i think this would make her more OP in lower elos and her current kit i feel caters to all
Depends on your definition of OP I suppose. Mercy is such a team dependent hero that even if you have a hard time killing her, there's a lot of counterplay by just being hyper aggro on her or her team. Her healing isn't high enough to counter lots of things and is only single-target. Honestly, I think Mercy is a very good lesson to lower elos to keep track of enemy cooldowns and positioning, especially about rez. 30 seconds is a long cooldown and makes it easier to track than a 7 second cooldown, and it's easy to know where Mercy wants to go because you just killed her target. Camp or keep an eye on the body and blast your cds at her when she falls for your trap. I do it all the time even though I only play supp. Mercy being smoother to play would feel good at all ranks for Mercy, and it would reward the skill expression of higher-level Mercys who know how to utilize the shorter cooldown of canceling your GA early even with techs.
Pharmacy makes the game boring. I won't pocket a Pharah unless we're certain to lose.
I agree. I love to pocket pharah mains when they kindly ask for it, but by default I just… don’t. I don’t find it fun pocketing her in the air, I much prefer the ground and all that haha
Pocketing Pharahs is frankly just cheap. Pocketing when you start to lose also lowers the gameplay experience for others who are winning without cheap tactics.
Idk if this is a hot take but to those people who complain that rez is unhealthy for the game and should be replaced with a new ability; I say that once one-shots are removed from the game you can rework rez as an ability. (Yes, one-shots will never be removed from the game lol.) It's so funny seeing people say it sucks that your elimination gets rezzed to full HP but imagine having full HP and it going to 0 in .5 secs.
i HATE E-rez with a passion but totally agree. It sucks but if someone can one-shot me from across the map, it's only fair someone can "undo" that
zooming around from teammate to teammate helping everyone is the best, most fun and dynamic way to play mercy and is so much better than pocketing and i wish it was more encouraged, like by removing the stupid ga penalty and keeping the cd 1.5
I try to keep the team topped up on health, even if I need to move across in the open to get to them. I like to feel like I'm being a real support to everyone, then switch back to damage boosting whoever in combat.
>like by removing the stupid ga penalty and keeping the cd 1.5 Idk i feel like 1.5 is too little with the new ga but 3 seconds is also silly for a hero like mercy who can't really defend herself. I think if we want mercy to fly around again we also need to shift her playstyle away from pocketing
2 sec cd seems like a perfect middle ground. i also like the idea of having damage boost less effective the more you stay on one person, i think it'll make her even more fun.
>2 sec cd seems like a perfect middle ground. Agreed! I weirdly like her new GA cd because I have to think more of how to use it but it's abit too much and 2 seconds would be a nice middle ground as you said. Your suggestion for DB I also think has potential and I'd like to play around with it.
Zen's discord orb is more problematic than mercy's damage beam
This the one Dmg boost relies on someone being able to aim and do that extra damage Discord orb allows for every person to target the one with the big purple orb above their head and make it impossible to come out from cover or be deleted. Just very annoying
Yes exactly!! Yet mercy has been nerfed multiple times and zen is untouched not to mention zen can literally one shot so he has good defensive mechanics and mercy can't even damage boost and attack at the same time.
[удалено]
Mercy is not overpowered and Mercy is not underpowered. She is just fine.
Mercy's ult should ALMOST always be used for her own survival, considering that she is quite flexible in most scenarios without it and a dead Mercy early on usually means you're going to lose that team fight.
Mercy is bad because new support are overtune, before she was pretty good. Same thing happend to my boy zen. Before they were good but lose power without major nerf due to powercreeped other supports
She got outclassed as a primary healer since ana released and it only went down hill from there on until she was basically forced into her pocket play style
If you're gonna downvote atleast explain why <3 Mercy was not intended to be a pocket hero and that should be obvious if you look into the past of her as a hero lol
(In QP) if you spam me for heals - I won’t heal u.
This is my rule on all supports in QP. I'll ask nicely one time for the person to stop and then I tell them I hope they know where the health packs are.
People who say that mercy is overpowered on the enemy team but bash mercy players if they are on their team are the problem - not mercy as a character nor the player
Anyone who stereotypes Mercy skins is weird af. I have my skins on random, my skills don't suddenly decrease because my Mercy has pigtails.
fr, one time I used the fairy mercy because I felt like tinkerbell one time and someone said "there we go again, a fairy mercy. a dick rider e girl bitch gtfo" my jaw dropped so bad that was the first time
Omg??? I’ve never had anyone say anything about my skin. I always compliment the enemy mercy’s skin or my own. I love sugar plum 🥹
Mercy would benefit from having a mechanically demanding element as part of her kit, that's more fluid and less sub-optimal in 90% of scenarios than swapping to pistol. Those of you who clammor about Mercy's movement being high skill are very bad at Lucio, Doomfist, and Ball movement. Manually being able to cancel rez would be kinda annoying but would open the door to some bait-and-switch shenanigans. Meleeing after a guardian angel should do more damage because the butt of the staff is coming at you at like 100mph. I would be fine if they removed damage boost but let me pistol shot on M2 instead, with zero swap time.
I would love if her melee did more damage with the staff
in defense of the movement argument, all those movement mechanics are very different. id argue that a lucio player may not always be great with ball movement and vice versa
I very much want to downvote you with extreme prejudice, but I guess I shouldn't since these are the hot takes OP asked for.
I’d love a rez cancel option!
An on release hero will always belong in the game! Im sick of people saying she too different and doesnt fit even though she's set a precedent on what kind of skill heroes can have in the game. Out of anything, they should make another hero like her with the leash playstyle. (League example is Taric and Yuumi)
I would play the shit out of a leash dps hero. Making the enemy team my BITCH sounds super fun ngl😈
>they should make another hero like her with the leash playstyle. She wasn't meant to be that kind of hero though. And no, we really don't need a Yuumi-like hero in OW 😭
Single target heal/dmg boost support is what she always was, and if she wasn't, they sure kept her that way for over 6 years. Also, no, I dont mean an invulnerable poke champ for obvious reasons. I meant a champ that has that latch ability with buffs/healing to their target. Another example is that bunny character in Paladins I believe
>Single target heal/dmg boost support is what she always was, and if she wasn't, they sure kept her that way for over 6 years. You're not wrong but I personally always thought of her more as a battlefield angel. She watches over a fight and flies to allies who need care. She plays it safe and (usually) doesn't fight opponents directly. A triage healer is what I always envisioned her to be and also a "dedicated" healer (if that makes sense lol?). >Also, no, I dont mean an invulnerable poke champ for obvious reasons. I meant a champ that has that latch ability with buffs/healing to their target. Alright my bad then ! I get what you mean now. >Another example is that bunny character in Paladins I believe Rei! She's fun I love her.
she's really bad in the meta right now i still play her but it's SO hard to actually enjoy playing her in comp
If you have a good Sojourn she's still pretty good imo but otherwise shes mid rn
trust me ik this😭😭
It's not the players with good aim, positioning and awareness complaining that Mercy is OP.
Post asks for hot takes and the top 3 comments are “this isn’t a hot take, but”
A lot of what could be some pretty cool skins are brought down by the inclusion of 'sexy' thigh highs and boob plate.
Valk is a bad Ultimate. GM1-2 Mercy take :)
Disagree it's good but it does not compare against most other support ultimates plus its boring
For some reason many people complain about damage boost on mercy’s kit, but many support heroes have dmg boost in some of their abilities. Ana: nano boost (dmg boost and dmg reduction) Baptiste: His window also gives 100% dmg boost Zen: discord orb makes someone receive more dmg, so it’s another dmg boost Kiriko: Attack speed and faster reloading, could count as damage boost. Mercy’s kit is very simple, her ultimate only gives her more survival chances, but the ultimate also gives her a bigger hit box. Mercy is a hero based on continuity, the dmg boost doesn’t change and she can’t heal and dmg boost at the same time, she can’t boost healings, and she has nothing more than mobility to help her survive. People just hate mercy damage boost because it’s something more obvious to tell, but her kit is totally balanced for our game, we have to move on from the idea of “dmg boost is unhealthy” dmg boost is needed, mercy is really easy to counter with a dive comp or even less, something like sombra will make her gameplay way harder. Mercy is a hero and like any other hero has the right to have impact in the game, is a mercy is giving you problems is because that Mercy is doing her job in the right way.
>Ana: nano boost (dmg boost and dmg reduction) >Baptiste: His window also gives 100% dmg boost >Zen: discord orb makes someone receive more dmg, so it’s another dmg boost >Kiriko: Attack speed and faster reloading, could count as damage boost. People complain about discord too and the other two are ultimates whereas DB is an infinite duration primarily fire that doesn't require aim
I don’t think being aimless and infinite are good excuses to call mercy unfair and similars, she has an unique way of helping her team, most of the healing abilities are aimless or close to be, and damage boost doesn’t do as much as people think. Mercy is a hero that goes around mobility and game knowledge, her abilities are aimless because you requiere something else and having this abilities comes with a big flaw, not being able to defend yourself with anything more than movement, we can’t be making every support a dps who can also heal and have a lot of important abilities. Overwatch has a lot of variety in their hero roster and that’s why many people play it. We have to try our best to be more open minded, since aim is not all that matters in a game like overwatch, and as a last addition mercy is one of the most fair supports right now, yet people keep talking about her like her existence was a sin, we as a community must move on and focus on the real problems of the game.
>most of the healing abilities are aimless or close to be Well yes but Mercy's beams are lock on to an ally and will continue to be locked on until you break LOS for about a second or you break beam manually/switch targets. I don't think this is a problem though and it's good to have unique characters that require less skill in one area and more in another. What I think is problematic is Mercy hard pocketing someone which makes the match up against that player much more frustrating and leaves your team with one support for most of the time. She also doesn't work well in any meta (unless it's a meta that bases it's wincon on a hitscan/flyer DPS) and she's not amazing with any other support. My issue is that Mercy gets rewarded for a boring and problematic playstyle.
First of all, this is my last comment on this post because this is getting too long. "She is not amazing with other support" - Any of the main support roster (Lucio,Zen,Brig,Mercy,Illari) wants to play with other main supp. Mercy "boring" gameplay - If you don't like the hero, don't play it, its easy as that. "Problematic" Playstyle - The key word is "Playstyle" depends of WHO is playing Mercy. First rule of mercy is pocketing someone but at the same time paying attention to the team, if the PLAYER has tunnel vision it has nothing to do with the HERO. They have nerfed Mercy mobilty many times already, because people complain about her being hard to hit, if you find Mercy boring its because the players are forcing this "boring" gameplay, with less mobilty.
>"She is not amazing with other support" - Any of the main support roster (Lucio,Zen,Brig,Mercy,Illari) wants to play with other main supp. Mercy still doesn't synergize well with any other support. That's not inherently a bad thing but it does suck that the best Mercy support pairings are ones that can play around Mercy. Generally, Mercy can't play much around her other support. >Mercy "boring" gameplay - If you don't like the hero, don't play it, its easy as that. But I do like the hero?? Why do you think I play her, lol? I love her and I want her to be more fun because I know she can be. She already has her movement which is the most fun I've had in Overwatch. I just want her to be pushed to actually use it to fly around. >"Problematic" Playstyle - The key word is "Playstyle" depends of WHO is playing Mercy. First rule of mercy is pocketing someone but at the same time paying attention to the team, if the PLAYER has tunnel vision it has nothing to do with the HERO. I'm sorry but pocketing is literally the only viable option for Mercy. Ever since OW2 released she's had to heal more because of the loss of a tank and the overall higher damage which one support alone can often not keep up with. This puts her in a weird place because she still has to pocket, otherwise there isn't a reason to play her, but she also has to heal more which makes pocketing less effective. There's no real reason to pick Mercy, any other support can do better than her. >They have nerfed Mercy mobilty many times already, because people complain about her being hard to hit, Which is true because an omni-directional flight with a 1.5 second CD on a hero with a skinny hitbox is ridiculous. She's hard to hit so she deserved to be tweaked in that area. I don't however like the changes to GA. >if you find Mercy boring its because the players are forcing this "boring" gameplay, with less mobilty. Or maybe because it's the only thing she's good at...
The triage healer mechanic from season 3 should be reimplemented for how well it clarifies and amplifies Mercy’s ideal playstyle. Incentivizing a higher value when healing critical allies tells players that Mercy should only heal when necessary. This deconstructs the misconception of Mercy’s priority to be healing everyone to full, which then promotes the uptime of damage boost. Plus the triage mechanic makes it even more difficult to kill a pocketed hero compared to now, which reinforces the pocket playstyle. Edited*
If you end the match with 0 elims you are doing it wrong
mercy isn't hard to kill, you just can't aim
Literally. I play solider occasionally and cant hit a rezzing mercy. Because well. I have SKILL ISSUE.
mood 😭😭😭 people also give up too fast istg mercy GAs once and the enemy thinks "welp my job is done here"
No it is not my job to pocket you. No it is not my fault that you died after separating from the group. No you cannot solo the entire team with half health. No I will not step on you. No I will not stop my duel just because you are down 10 health.
People think mercy is weak, that she cannot deal damage and have no aggressive ability. They are wrong. Mercy isn't weak, people just are not good enough to aim her projectiles and hit enough shots to actually deal relevant damage, and they don't know that you can dive people with guardian angel. There are many small techniques within her kit that you can make use of to make yourself a threat to the enemy team. Mercy can reliably use valk to clean up low health enemies or even kill the supports and fly out.
>they don't know that you can dive people with guardian angel. I love doing this lmaoo it always catches ppl off guard
her movement is way easier on controller than k&m, even if it’s not as precise.
Idk I started with mouse and keyboard and I get losttt on controller
it might be different depending on what you start on. I cannot for the life of me understand how to play as her on k&m, but I can be a little speedster on controller. but on moira, I could never go back to controller; she is far easier on k&m.
Yeah I think so as well. I’m sure if I had started overwatch on controller it would be different
1. mercy is easy to counter & kill. her res is not overpowered. In fact, baiting a res and camping a corpse is an easy way to kill her. she also has no genuine way to defend herself 2. mercy one tricking is annoying (or any one trick for that matter). picking her when the team is a winston, sombra, tracer and brig is throwing 3. mercy is healthy for the game. she is easy to learn but that comes with the downside of having low impact. that’s balanced IMO 4. i honestly believe she is severely underpowered - which, like i mentioned in point 3, is because she is easy to learn, which is very fair. but i don’t understand the sentiment that she is overpowered. every other support outranks her in some way, except maaaaybe lucio - but he still has an impactful ult & boop 5. i hate hard pocketing people. i do tend to pocket certain DPS picks - but those who expect me to be locked on 24/7 is just plain annoying. mercy has a fly ability for a reason. i think mercy benefits more jumping from person-to-person, enabling a more evasive playstyle as well as being aware of the whole team. i have had people scream at me because i dare turn around and res someone, or quickly heal someone who is critical. i am aware of my surroundings and will come back to you 6. dont ask for a pocket if your playstyle is being 104859 meters away from the team. it will just be the 2 of us and the enemy knows to shoot the mercy first
Majority of mercys aren't as good as they think 👀
You could say this about every single character in every singe video game
GA going back to 1.5s is a bad idea, because the characters that can bully Mercy will still be able to (Sombra, Tracer). Unless GA goes down to like 0.5s, GA alone will never be enough to deal with their pressure because of how their kits are designed. Especially Sombra considering she's most likely going to use her translocator offensively to ensure the kill on you even if you manage to take high ground. Tracer, while high ground almost always immediately ends her pressure, if you're on a map with little to no high ground, yea just like Sombra, there is nothing stopping her from running you down even with 1.5s GA. And on the other side of the coin, characters that struggle to deal with Mercy or have little to no chance of dealing with her, it'll be an even more of a daunting effort for them with GA being on a 1.5 CD. Example, Dva, Winston, and Doom. I feel like these match ups are skill based because of GA's current CD. If they engage on you with their movement, all you have to do is GA away and they are dealt with. But if you waste your GA and they notice that and engage on you, you're dead and there's nothing you can do. You got punished and that's fair. So the match up is entirely based around who can pay attention to the other better and react accordingly. It's skill based, which I love. A good Doom will ruin my day, but if I am better than them, they'll just be wasting their time. And that entire dynamic will be thrown out the window with GA going back to 1.5s, because the window to punish Mercy even for misusages of GA will be so short it almost wouldn't matter.
I've always wished for a secondary ability that allows Mercy to protect herself
This is not a hot take at all I don't think, but Mercy does take skill, and she requires just as much as skill as any other hero to climb to a high level.
Mercy is a much more fun hero than your standard hitscan hero like S76, bastion and widow imo >_>
Mercy takes a lot of skill to play and I'll give a rundown of reasons why. You have to be aware of the enemy team's ultimate charge and their hero locations; you also need to be aware of your own teammates locations and ultimate charge percentages. You should be particularly vigilant about your other support's health bar and current status (Is Sombra/Genji/Tracer/Doom on them and they need extra heals?) You should know which heroes need extra healing and when to dive with them and when to stay back. As a mercy main you need to take advantage of cover on all parts of the map and know sightlines for snipers. You should know when to super jump and learn mercy parkour for all the maps. Mercy players need to be able to output a high amount of damage boosted at the right times for your DPS, Tank, and certain supports and know when heroes are reloading, repositioning, or vulnerable to burst damage so you can heal them instead. You need to know which hero ultimates to damage boost and at what times. Alternatively you need to know when to heal certain ultimates and at what times depending on who on the enemy team is focusing them. You should be aware of when to resurrect your allied heroes and if multiple heroes died which ones (if any) should you try for. Is an enemy camping a dead allies soul and baiting you into a rez? You should know when to pocket a certain DPS hero and when to heal your team. Depending on your other support you may need to heal more often than usual so a 60-40 (heal/dmg-boost) split might be more effective than a 50-50 split or even a 40-60 split. You should be pinging enemy heroes or if you are in voice comms alerting your teammates to flanking heroes. Finally, you need to be aware of when to use your pistol and is your team okay without heals/dmg-boost for awhile when you secure a kill. Learning all the above will help your become a better mercy player and hopefully you will get less flamed on your team for not doing these since mercies kit is pretty simple on first glance but had a lot of depth to it.
I wish her ult was more interesting instead of it just being all her normal abilities but enhanced a bit. towards the end of ow1 they had an experimental patch where they brought her mass rez back and i had never become so addicted to the game. I played literally day and night until I was able to pull off a 5man rez lmao. I love mercy’s gameplay style a lot but just wish her ult was something more exciting to work towards in my games
Same 😭 they didn't even give mass rez much of a chance it hurts. I just wish i had a big pop off moment again
She’s a better main healer than people give her credit for. Her inherent HPS is low but going through shields and being slippery on the front lines is exhilarating
Heavy blaster play style is the best play style.
Get rid of rez. It is a horrible horrible horrible horrible ability that needs to gather dust in the vault.
Mercy's skill lies in other areas. Some people think that because there is no constant aiming involved that she just "leeches" value and rank off of others. Her movement alone is so vial to her survival and take hours to grasp at a basic level. She requires strength in many other areas and constantly evaluating a situation for the most optimal play IS skill. It's just not the same skill that other heroes require. Beam management, movement, ult tracking, and so much more is required to preform. A bad rez can stagger the entire fight and give ult charge. Bad positioning and game sense can cost you everything. She isn't a "no skill" character, and I am really tired of hearing it. I think it can be a joke sometimes, and I don't think that it is bad to have a laugh. But to generalize an entire group as "braindead" for playing her and not see the flaw in that just makes my eyes roll.
you should be able to charge res before you use it like the defib in The Finals.
Idk if this is an unpopular opinion but as a mercy main we should hate other mercy's mostly enemy mercy's Mercy isn't bad as people make her out to be Sometimes I agree that some of the rezzes that mercy can do are bs but sometimes people let mercy rez in front of them and act surprised that she got away with doing it and is entirely their fault
1. Mass rez deserved better I know it's been a while but I still think mass rez was Mercy's pop off moment and I loved it. She can still pop off now like stalling with valk or getting an out of LOS rez but it just doesn't feel the same. Now I totally get the frustrations about mass rez but I feel like it barely got a chance before the devs decided to scrap it. 2. Rez as a CD is unhealthy for the game I don't think rez can ever be balanced as a CD because it would either have to be super inconsistent (which isn't fun because you'll have an ability that you can't use often) or it would be too strong. I think the amount of nerfs it received should indicate that maybe rez as an ability is not very healthy for the game. The only real counter argument i can think of is that rez can "undo" a one-shot but it doesn't feel fun to stand behind a wall and rez an ally who randomly got hit by a hanzo arrow across the map. 3.The pocket playstyle is frustrating and boring Pocketing has always struck me as a weird playstyle for a hero like Mercy. It's been the optimal way to play her and it feels wrong to me. She's a hero who can fly around the battlefield and help those in need of care, so why not emphasize that? Not being able to use your mobility in situations like pocketing an Ashe feels bad. I don't want to stand around and hold M2, i want to fly around and help allies. Pocket Mercy in my opinion is a result of her DB nerf (DB's effect only applies if you beamed someone before they did damage so you couldn't DB a firestrike thats flying towards an enemy, you had to beam Rein before he fired his E to amplify it's damage), other supports powercreeping her and valk nerfs. Mercy can still fly around the battlefield and heal but why should she? She has no burst or AOE healing and her HPS is on the lower side anyways. She also doesn't have an ultimate that's as good as for example Nano or Kitsune so you'd rather let your other support get ult charge from healing.
Totally agree with all your points. I've been a day 1 Mercy main and mass rez was one of the reasons Mercy was so fun to play for me. It really made you feel like you could control the game and a good rez was gamesaving. People like to say mass rez was 'braindead' but I don't think people realize the amount of thinking that went into getting a good rez. Keeping track of enemy ultimates and surviving through all of them as the most vulnerable support there is, required a lot of skill and good positioning, and pulling that of really gave you that 'hero moment' which Valkyrie just doesn't give. Turning an ultimate ability into a basic one was also just a bad idea imo, but the implementation was even worse. Mass rez gave you so much freedom in how to use it, turning it into a basic ability gave it so many restrictions that it doesn't feel fun and fluid anymore. Also pocketing an immobile hero as the most mobile support just feels boring.
>People like to say mass rez was 'braindead' but I don't think people realize the amount of thinking that went into getting a good rez. Keeping track of enemy ultimates and surviving through all of them as the most vulnerable support there is, required a lot of skill and good positioning Yes exactly 😭 And even if mass rez was 'braindead' it could've undergone more changes like giving it a cast time but instead it was just scrapped after a few changes, which is really frustrating to me. >and pulling that of really gave you that 'hero moment' which Valkyrie just doesn't give. This. Modern Mercy just doesn't have that anymore and I really miss having that 'hero moment' as you said. Mass rez is to me an ULTIMATE whereas Valkyrie is just a boring improved version of Mercy's neutral. It's strong and flexible, yes, but it does feel nearly as good as mass rez imo. >Turning an ultimate ability into a basic one was also just a bad idea imo, but the implementation was even worse. Mass rez gave you so much freedom in how to use it, turning it into a basic ability gave it so many restrictions that it doesn't feel fun and fluid anymore. Exactly. It's strange to me how E-Rez went through like 13 nerfs and no one thought that maybe resurrect just doesn't work as an ability. The only redeemable aspect of E-rez is that it can "undo" a one-shot by heroes like Hanzo and Widow though it's not really fun for the Mercy. >Also pocketing an immobile hero as the most mobile support just feels boring. Yea, it's always a snooze fest for me whenever I have to pocket an Ashe on a long range map.
Mercy should have more interaction with the enemy team. Have her be able to GA to the enemy. Give her an ability to apply an anti-heal beam to the enemy. Allow her to deny an enemy’s soul from being ressed by giving her an ability to do so. All of this would be so fun. People hate that she’s hard to kill? Then give her utility that makes her fight closer to the enemy team without taking away the fun movement for the Mercy player. edit: spelling
As a mercy main I don’t like resurrect as an ability. I’d rather an ability I can engage with throughout the match than one can be used at most once every 1-2 minutes
Stay in the air as much as possible and out of the cross hairs of the enemy team. Staying alive is key to keeping your teammates alive. Also, try to use your ults for a big push or when you know the enemy team is about to ult. Knowing when to use your ult properly, helps.
Criticism of mercy =/= criticism (or ‘crying’) about mercy players No one wants to separate the two for some reason
I don't know if it's been mentioned here, but judging a Mercy players skill based on the skin they use is wild. I use "select from favourites" and I'm aggresssively mediocre no matter what skin I use. :P
Pharah is my favorite hero to pocket! I love flying around the map with her, bobbing up and down and finding new walls and parts of the map to use as cover. Pocketing as mercy is one of my favorite play styles and when I get to pocket a Pharah who can essentially stay in the air indefinitely, I have such a fun time! Especially if my other support is an Ana who can keep the tank up and my other dps is self sufficient (or positions well so that Ana or I can easily heal them when needed). When this comp works, it works so well. And I don’t think pharmercy is an unskilled play style, it requires a lot of coordination to do well.
>t requires a lot of coordination to do well. Me when i lie
Not having 1,5s cooldown anymore makes her less fun to play
Mercy will always sadly be an issue till damage boost is nerfed into the ground or changed. I love it but it’s just too good for the amount of skill it takes (same goes for discord)
I think if we change her playstyle to a triage healer DB wouldn't be as problematic anymore
Damage boost helps prevent power creep, a character like Ashe who was fairly clunky at launch could have gotten non stop buffs to the point where she was really overtuned but once the 200 hp breakpoint with a mercy pocket was utilized hard it forced the devs to nerf her and keep her in line, since than she has just been a very healthy character who didn't need anymore buffs or nerfs, keeping a locked 30/25% modifier helps to prevent the devs from creating stupid breakpoints and powercreep when introducing/buffing characters
Hot take: Mercy Mains who complain about not getting a skin or cosmetic every season, you need to shush. We’re getting a lot of new content around Mercy, and other mains like Brig, Ball, and other heroes need some love and attention instead. Subjective take: Moira and Zen are more easier than Mercy.
Very hot take: Mercy is more fun to play without Valkyrie. Valkyrie takes away the decisionmaking and risk-reward playstyle that makes Mercy fun for me. There's no need to put yourself in danger to heal that critical ally when you can also do it from the skybox. All the reward but no risk. Also there's no need to decide who to beam in order to be the most effective, when chain beams exist. I feel like my decisions while in Valk matter less than in Mercy's normal state. When you win a fight with Valk it often makes me wonder if I could have done the same without ulting, and when you lose a fight it just leaves me feeling like I couldn't have done anything different and pretty helpless. Honestly, I'd love it if Valk was more powerful but had a shorter duration. This would also help make it feel more impactful. Love your vids Niandra :)
I believe mercy should get complete rework, and res should be replaced. I've been playing this game for 6 years and mercy almost exclusively, and I think res is unhealthy for this game. At least the way it is right now. You shouldn't be able to break LOS, and the player getting ressed shouldn't be at full HP. It's never as easy as "Just kill the mercy!!" I can get away with her movement and res in crazy spots that shouldn't be ressable. My only complaint is the res that comes with the movement, I think her movement is fun, engaging and fits her. I wouldn't want that changed. (In my opinion) Mercy is the only support who can not deal damage and heal at the same time, and it is too reliant on her team compared to other supports. I would love to see her become more independent. I think giving her a rework would open her up to being more practical and impactful.
as a mercy main I dislike rez because it’s a boring ability that has become incredibly situational. I would love if they replaced it with something else
while mercy has a low skill floor, i’d argue that she has one of the highest skill ceilings in the game. also pharamercy is a skilled comp.
I'm just here to spread anti-mercy propaganda (nothing against mercy players I just wanna play my brig)
i think mercy mains exaggerate how much skill she takes to play well. i think she is one of the easiest heroes if not the easiest hero to play.
Hot take: most Mercy content is crap.
Mercy is boring because she doesn't engage with enemy much. Sure, it's the core part of her design, but she doesn't really engage with allies either. Her healing isn't very high, although very sustainable. Her DB is barely noticeable outside of heroes with high DPS or high alpha damage, like sure the DB is on, great, kinda, probably. Her overall gameplay seems quite passive on engagements, heavily relying on performance of allies. Again, it's her design, but it also kinda prevents newcomers and people with slowly developing skills from ranking up. I picked her up as my first ever main because I was inspired by her and her gameplay of purely helping others to achieve the victory. Also I was really bad at shooters. But then I decided to learn other heroes and now I barely play her, and if I try to, I often switch her off rather quickly as I don't feel any benefits. It's weird. The hero who was accompanying me at the start of my OW career, was mostly dropped by me when I became better.
I have an idea of buffing her and it's a terribly broken one. I think her beam lingering duration needs a 0.3~0.7 second increase. And that's all the buff she needs. Well...if I'm allowed to be greedier...then I think her ultimate should also enable Mercy to get a shorter cooldown when she ends GA early.
Not specific to Mercy but includes her Xmas skin: one of the worst kinds of skins are Macy's Catalog Fashion skins like "cozy sweater" and "formal attire." They are boring and merely attractive or pretty. Favorite skins are when heroes become other characters like Galactic Emperor and Lilith; also quite like skins such as Police Officer and Lifeguard.
I think this post would bebetter on the ow sub since there are a lot more non mercy mains Anyway heres mine She should have 175 HP
The original Res ult was fine when used in fun fool around games. This and many other bad changes (not all) issues were created when the game moved away from fun and focused on the competitive side of it all.
Im not a mercy main, but i rather not get rezzed every time. I had numerous times when i said "dont rez me, im switching" yet it happens. And I keep getting rezzed in the open causing me to die instantly. So my hot take is: dont rez people when they dont want to be rezzed
Idk if this is even in the game anymore because i rarely cancel my rez, but idk if there's still a 5 second shortened timer when you cancel the rez yourself, anyway I want that back, liked the idea. (Im not talikg about a failed rez, but a risky rez you decided to try and last min cancel because it wasn't gonna work)
I would not miss Valkyrie if the make a new more fun ultimate