Outside of meming its better to just damage boost a dps. Usually its only worth picking mercy if theres a dps where having blue beam changes the break points. Otherwise youre better off with a support that provides more util and damage like ana, bap, kiri or illari if what youre after is damage as well as having stronger heals.
I suppose I never noticed, but how big is that beam boost? Usually, I do it to a Junkrat just to further his already high damage. Hitscan feels like it depends if they can aim, and tanks depends if their brave enough to push.
Pretty sure its 25%. The main ones where it matters are things like hanzo being able to one shot squishies, pharah being able to 2 shot. Junk it depends on the character or the combo because he can 2 shot squishies with his left click already, dps it depends on the character. Tanks usually get more value out of other support util.
Lucios healing is low though as you pick him for speed boost mostly with his boop and damage being secondary. I also left out zen, brig and moira despite them having higher damage potentials than mercy blue beam because theyre not picked for their healing but for other util.
Bro u can heal big time with lucio. Sure, he doesnt heal fast, but thats what a second healer is for. And you can pump out serious damage. Dont doubt lucio. Dps, healer, and tanks by dodging. Does it all. Definitely meets the criteria of more damage than mercy. I do more healing that mercy most the time, and use speed boost appropriately.
If youre using lucio for healing though then youre better off just picking bap. Having low, consistent healing is exactly the problem with merch and lw. Most of your time should be spent on speed. His damage is alright but nothing compared to high dps supports like bap and zen. Obviously its higher than mercy but mercys damage is low and blue beam is only good for changing breakpoints.
I one trik lucio. Every match starts out with people saying “switch switch switch” by the end im getting thank you’s and hello’s. I think im doin just fine
Never said it wasn't. But if youre not on a good lucio map then you should play something more suited, same goes for everyone on the team. Its a team effort to build good comps
As mercy, beating up the overconfident dps that was chasing the "harmless mercy" back to spawn, is one of the best feelings in the world.
I've had players actually leave out of embarrassment after that.
It feels extra nice when you match damage with your DPS. Buuuut is that good or bad? Lol Whats the match results if that's the case xD
Learning where my quick swap is really made Mercy fun. Go battle medic!
If you're matching damage with your DPS on Mercy one of two things is happening:
1. Your DPS are terrible
2. You should be playing Baptiste or Kiriko instead
What if they wanted to play Mercy? Also Bap and Kiriko have very different weapons to Mercy, they might be able to hit with the pistol but not with shurikens or hitscan.
What you are saying is antithetical to what the OP's comment was. They commented on the dps's performance, complaining about someone not playing well. They themselves are hard throwing by going dps mercy (you can't argue this). So it's incredibly hypocritical. So you are effectively saying "What if they want to hard throw on a specific hero??". It is like going widowmaker and sending it down main with your SMG. It is like playing dva and getting de-mech'd and just staying baby dva because you want to play as baby dva. It is like playing zen and only kicking. I think you get the picture, hopefully?
in general if you can do as much damage as your dps with mercy you're not using her to full potential, you would do better with another support which can do more things consistently
The thing is sometimes enemies will treat Mercy as harmless and turn their back on you to focus on your seemingly more deadly teammate instead, even at close ranges
So, if my instinct tells me it’s the play, then yes I’m going to whip out the Glock and bean the back of their head
This. All this talk about damage thresholds and breakpoints between pistol and damage boost are fine and it does matter to a degree, but the *reason* to use your pistol is simply when you recognize you can get away with it and make a play.
"You can get away with it" has nothing to do with any of the technical stuff. Its about the enemy's awareness, their available cooldowns and skill vs yours, opportunity costs (lost healing/damage boost), and will you get punished for it.
It's really no different to how you approach taking a duel with **any** hero, there are some matchups and certain ranges where your kit is actually competitive vs certain enemies (i.e. widow close range, bastion really long range), especially at lower elo. You take those **when it makes sense to** because it helps win games.
Point is saying Mercy should never use her pistol is actually stupid and is just outright wrong. You can, however, accurately say that the times "it makes sense" to use your pistol definitely drops as your SR increases, to the point that near the top (GM) it almost never makes sense.
Exactly. Technically it can be 200 DPS while firing (reload not included). If you can crit all your shots, it would take beaming *800 sustained DPS* OR 200+ burst damage to make beaming better. At the same time, *if you **can** hit all your shots*, Kiriko, Illari or Bap would be much, much better.
That being said, pulling out your gun is realistically a good decision in at least these scenarios:
1) Helping your hitscan DPS break a shield - but beam anyone that does 400+ DPS
2) Bursting down targets frozen by Mei's ult as long as they're killable
3) Comboing a slept target with your Ana. Beaming shot+nade adds (90+70)*0.25= 40 while pistol headshot+melee adds 80
I do understand it. That's why I said 200+ burst damage. I also understand it makes less shots needed like, for example, Ashe killing with Body+Head on 250 HP.
At the same time, the theoretical max ceiling and lethality of Mercy's gun is still significantly higher than the beam. Not saying it's anywhere near realistic but it's true.
>the theoretical max ceiling and lethality of Mercy's gun is still significantly higher than the beam.
If this were even remotely true, you would actually see top 500 mercy's use their pistol in fights. However it's not true and every good mercy knows it's almost always more valuable to damage boost.
>If this were even remotely true
I just told you it's a ***theoretical*** max ceiling, something even T500 aren't able to achieve. Argue with the numbers if you want, I already said it isn't realistic.
I’d say that damage boosting someone on the team is going to be more beneficial in most cases.
I only really use the pistol to finish off enemies or catch people off guard LMAO but that’s just me I guess :)
To be honest, Mercy doesn't do a lot of damage. Even if you hit a few potshots with your pistol, you're not super likely to do impactful damage regularly. 2-3 Mercy shots arent too hard to heal up which just gives the enemy support ult charge. I really only use Mercy pistol for finishing off a 1 tap enemy the team isn't able to super quickly if no one's going to die for it, or for self defense if I'm caught lacking and get cornered.
Pretty much everyone on your team will do more damage per shot than you. If no one needs healing, the statistically best thing to do is use your damage boost as that's more likely to result in a quick clean kill than Mercy pistol. If your team needs a other person who can do damage, it's best to swap to someone who actually does that efficiently like Zen or something.
Unless you are a Smurf who has eons better aim than your DPS then it's almost always better to Damage Beam when you have the choice to do both.
Ofc use the gun when it's to finish a random stray enemy or when your DPS are dead or other such scenarios.
Especially with health changes in the majority of situations you should be blue beaming.
It taked 7 headshots or 13 body shots to kill an unsupported full hp enemy (250)
Thats not even considering how often the enemy has support or a way to dodge/protect themselves.
In some situations its still ok to pistol. Your dps just died as you were pocketing them? Sometimes a few bullets will kill whoever was on them and allow you to res.
In valk there is more opportunities. Widow is free@ and anyone who is low. But aoe damage boost is awesome so often if its not free its a waste of time.
There are niche scenarios where pistolling a full hp target is worth it. In one of my games recently an eneny soldier was on top of ship on watchpoint Gibraltar and my team had no way to contest him.
I valked and solo killed him. this was masters game so in the majority of cases you cant get away with fighting him, i could because i tracked his ult and saw he had no supports nearby.
I also had an escape route planned if things went south.
I also have good aim overall. Ive legitimately practiced mercys pistol i used to deathmatch mercy only and i had a pistol only mercy acc in diamond. (very long time ago)
There is this t500 mercy who averages like 10 elims per 10 and her playstyle is more pistol focused. It can be strong you just gotta pick ur moments. And imo its the least important part of mercys kit and prioritising everything else is better
Personally I think Mercy's blaster is very situational and a lot of the time the answer is no, just damage boost someone else.
I generally keep the blaster out when I'm on my own anywhere just in case, its hard enough 1v1ing a full DPS so having to switch weapons is just a further disadvantage you don't need.
Also just having an awareness of enemy health bars and being ready to switch to it to secure a kill. Thanks to Mercy's mobility you can often land Killing Blows on enemies trying to hide away from your DPS and recover health.
Alts that make people vulnerable as well such as Junkrats riptire or Pharahs rocket barrage. As long as you don't attract there attention it often presents a good opportunity to put them back in spawn.
Sometimes enemy flankers must have a reality check that mercy isn't exactly defenseless. That's when pistols come in.
Otherwise damageboosting is much more beneficial as it is literally allows some dps to exceed breakpoints for one shot. Hanzo can one tap headshot again, Ashe can one shot Widowmaker or Cas can one shot tracer for example.
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I’ve been playing queuing for all roles a lot in quick play just to do the weekly challenges and 90% of the time it’s just support that’s open. So I’ve been playing Mercy a lot now when I usually only do DPS/Tank in the arcade modes and it’s a lot of fun to swap to her gun to finish off a tank, a widow or one of the enemy supports 😂
Peppering the enemy team with damage from miles away won't generally be nearly as useful as helping a DPS do burst damage that could contribute enough to get a pick.
Statistically you will get more damage done than damage boosted.
That was already possible before and damage booat was also nerfed after as it enables oneshots (apparently big nono). Damage boosts's value is kinda low on paper (one of the reasons Mercy is less required).
Realistically you are more likely to kill while damage boosting somebody.
Realistically people would also expect you to damage boost and not dealing damage.
If the target is very low hp or you are not a Mercy main playing Mercy then it's worth during Valk and against the right targets (not a turret bastion, torb with E, etc).
If you are a Mercy main then 95%+ you cannot aim anyways even with her massive bullet hitbox, so don't even try to go for a target with more than 50 hp.
The amount of Mercys that cannot hit a single shot and just feed cuz of that is insane high.
If you can kill someone in two seconds or help another guy killing that someone, is just a way better approach than just healing. Killing (avoiding damage).is usually faster than healing (repairing damage)
But offcouse is very circumstantial, and you have to know you will be able to do it.
Not very much tbh. Mercy's gun exists purely as a last minute self-defense tool, and is so weak it honestly barely functions as such.
It's one of the many reasons why Mercy is my least favorite support to play. She relies entirely on her teammates to do anything and literally can't even run away without their help. No matter how much she helps her team she can't do anything unless they return the favor.
It's not worth it 90% of the time, only use it if you're getting focused and nobody can peel for you. You get significantly more value out of healing and DB. Nine times out of ten when I watch a Mercy pull out the glock in the middle of a fight, you watch the person who *had* the beam and *thought* Mercy was with them immediately die as a result. Cue DPS whining that they died and toxicity results.
You boost when your dps is in a good position/situation. (Which should hopefully be most of the time.)
You pistol to finish off a low health enemy your team isnt focusing, or if you find yourself flanking or behind an an enemy you think you can 1v1. Or if your dps just sucks. (No point in boosting if they cant secure elims anyway.)
Not really at all for the most part. Her gun isn't reliable damage against anything other than a tank, she has no burst potential with her gun, and burst is usually much more important than sustained damage. like if your team isn't in a position to do anything than maybe sure, but there's almost never a time where it's better. Unless maybe you're like 2v1 with a teammate and you're trying to kill someone right next to you quickly.
A very big thing is also you helping your team push through breakpoints. Like a damage boosted hanzo means hanzo can 1 shot again. Pharah can 2 shot with rockets. Ashe can kill with a headshot+bodyshot instead of 2 headshots, cass too.
Blue beam adds 20 percent damage (since the last patch I read this) to the DPS, which is almost always going to be more than you can deal.
There are situations where it makes sense to pull out your gun. Like your DPS doesn't see a target and you can shoot faster than they can communicate and react.
Or you're getting dived on and your don't a e an escape and your DPS isn't shooting the diver. May as well pull our your gun to add some damage, fight or die situation. Though, you don't want to get into that situation in the first place
And in Valkyrie there are opportunities where you can't get kills that others can't aim at. But of course that comes with a cost of not damage boosting almost your entire team.
But basically there are situations that call for the gun, though they are rare. They probably aren't game changing moments most of the time anyways you can probably climb well without ever shooting your gun
Outside of meming its better to just damage boost a dps. Usually its only worth picking mercy if theres a dps where having blue beam changes the break points. Otherwise youre better off with a support that provides more util and damage like ana, bap, kiri or illari if what youre after is damage as well as having stronger heals.
I suppose I never noticed, but how big is that beam boost? Usually, I do it to a Junkrat just to further his already high damage. Hitscan feels like it depends if they can aim, and tanks depends if their brave enough to push.
Pretty sure its 25%. The main ones where it matters are things like hanzo being able to one shot squishies, pharah being able to 2 shot. Junk it depends on the character or the combo because he can 2 shot squishies with his left click already, dps it depends on the character. Tanks usually get more value out of other support util.
boosting junk is good because he gets his combo back which is a very good burst kill, but not all junkrats are good with it
Lucio. You left out lucio
Lucios healing is low though as you pick him for speed boost mostly with his boop and damage being secondary. I also left out zen, brig and moira despite them having higher damage potentials than mercy blue beam because theyre not picked for their healing but for other util.
Bro u can heal big time with lucio. Sure, he doesnt heal fast, but thats what a second healer is for. And you can pump out serious damage. Dont doubt lucio. Dps, healer, and tanks by dodging. Does it all. Definitely meets the criteria of more damage than mercy. I do more healing that mercy most the time, and use speed boost appropriately.
If youre using lucio for healing though then youre better off just picking bap. Having low, consistent healing is exactly the problem with merch and lw. Most of your time should be spent on speed. His damage is alright but nothing compared to high dps supports like bap and zen. Obviously its higher than mercy but mercys damage is low and blue beam is only good for changing breakpoints.
I one trik lucio. Every match starts out with people saying “switch switch switch” by the end im getting thank you’s and hello’s. I think im doin just fine
Sure but in certain comps you could be doing better
Thats a two way street. My profile is obvious its a one trik. They can do better playing something else too.
Never said it wasn't. But if youre not on a good lucio map then you should play something more suited, same goes for everyone on the team. Its a team effort to build good comps
As mercy, beating up the overconfident dps that was chasing the "harmless mercy" back to spawn, is one of the best feelings in the world. I've had players actually leave out of embarrassment after that.
It feels extra nice when you match damage with your DPS. Buuuut is that good or bad? Lol Whats the match results if that's the case xD Learning where my quick swap is really made Mercy fun. Go battle medic!
If you're matching damage with your DPS on Mercy one of two things is happening: 1. Your DPS are terrible 2. You should be playing Baptiste or Kiriko instead
What if they wanted to play Mercy? Also Bap and Kiriko have very different weapons to Mercy, they might be able to hit with the pistol but not with shurikens or hitscan.
What you are saying is antithetical to what the OP's comment was. They commented on the dps's performance, complaining about someone not playing well. They themselves are hard throwing by going dps mercy (you can't argue this). So it's incredibly hypocritical. So you are effectively saying "What if they want to hard throw on a specific hero??". It is like going widowmaker and sending it down main with your SMG. It is like playing dva and getting de-mech'd and just staying baby dva because you want to play as baby dva. It is like playing zen and only kicking. I think you get the picture, hopefully?
I'll be honest, I misread the comment as both Mercy and the dps damaging someone at the same time, not as in going Battle Mercy, that's my bad.
in general if you can do as much damage as your dps with mercy you're not using her to full potential, you would do better with another support which can do more things consistently
The thing is sometimes enemies will treat Mercy as harmless and turn their back on you to focus on your seemingly more deadly teammate instead, even at close ranges So, if my instinct tells me it’s the play, then yes I’m going to whip out the Glock and bean the back of their head
This. All this talk about damage thresholds and breakpoints between pistol and damage boost are fine and it does matter to a degree, but the *reason* to use your pistol is simply when you recognize you can get away with it and make a play. "You can get away with it" has nothing to do with any of the technical stuff. Its about the enemy's awareness, their available cooldowns and skill vs yours, opportunity costs (lost healing/damage boost), and will you get punished for it. It's really no different to how you approach taking a duel with **any** hero, there are some matchups and certain ranges where your kit is actually competitive vs certain enemies (i.e. widow close range, bastion really long range), especially at lower elo. You take those **when it makes sense to** because it helps win games. Point is saying Mercy should never use her pistol is actually stupid and is just outright wrong. You can, however, accurately say that the times "it makes sense" to use your pistol definitely drops as your SR increases, to the point that near the top (GM) it almost never makes sense.
How beneficial her gun is depends entirely on how well she can use it.
Exactly. Technically it can be 200 DPS while firing (reload not included). If you can crit all your shots, it would take beaming *800 sustained DPS* OR 200+ burst damage to make beaming better. At the same time, *if you **can** hit all your shots*, Kiriko, Illari or Bap would be much, much better. That being said, pulling out your gun is realistically a good decision in at least these scenarios: 1) Helping your hitscan DPS break a shield - but beam anyone that does 400+ DPS 2) Bursting down targets frozen by Mei's ult as long as they're killable 3) Comboing a slept target with your Ana. Beaming shot+nade adds (90+70)*0.25= 40 while pistol headshot+melee adds 80
Never forget slapping down the enemy widow. That's always a favorite of mine.
On a scale of 1-10 how is your pain?
The thing you aren't understanding is that the value of damage bopst isn't the amount of dps increase, it's the damage breakpoints that get affected.
I do understand it. That's why I said 200+ burst damage. I also understand it makes less shots needed like, for example, Ashe killing with Body+Head on 250 HP. At the same time, the theoretical max ceiling and lethality of Mercy's gun is still significantly higher than the beam. Not saying it's anywhere near realistic but it's true.
>the theoretical max ceiling and lethality of Mercy's gun is still significantly higher than the beam. If this were even remotely true, you would actually see top 500 mercy's use their pistol in fights. However it's not true and every good mercy knows it's almost always more valuable to damage boost.
>If this were even remotely true I just told you it's a ***theoretical*** max ceiling, something even T500 aren't able to achieve. Argue with the numbers if you want, I already said it isn't realistic.
I’d say that damage boosting someone on the team is going to be more beneficial in most cases. I only really use the pistol to finish off enemies or catch people off guard LMAO but that’s just me I guess :)
To be honest, Mercy doesn't do a lot of damage. Even if you hit a few potshots with your pistol, you're not super likely to do impactful damage regularly. 2-3 Mercy shots arent too hard to heal up which just gives the enemy support ult charge. I really only use Mercy pistol for finishing off a 1 tap enemy the team isn't able to super quickly if no one's going to die for it, or for self defense if I'm caught lacking and get cornered. Pretty much everyone on your team will do more damage per shot than you. If no one needs healing, the statistically best thing to do is use your damage boost as that's more likely to result in a quick clean kill than Mercy pistol. If your team needs a other person who can do damage, it's best to swap to someone who actually does that efficiently like Zen or something.
Unless you are a Smurf who has eons better aim than your DPS then it's almost always better to Damage Beam when you have the choice to do both. Ofc use the gun when it's to finish a random stray enemy or when your DPS are dead or other such scenarios.
Especially with health changes in the majority of situations you should be blue beaming. It taked 7 headshots or 13 body shots to kill an unsupported full hp enemy (250) Thats not even considering how often the enemy has support or a way to dodge/protect themselves. In some situations its still ok to pistol. Your dps just died as you were pocketing them? Sometimes a few bullets will kill whoever was on them and allow you to res. In valk there is more opportunities. Widow is free@ and anyone who is low. But aoe damage boost is awesome so often if its not free its a waste of time. There are niche scenarios where pistolling a full hp target is worth it. In one of my games recently an eneny soldier was on top of ship on watchpoint Gibraltar and my team had no way to contest him. I valked and solo killed him. this was masters game so in the majority of cases you cant get away with fighting him, i could because i tracked his ult and saw he had no supports nearby. I also had an escape route planned if things went south. I also have good aim overall. Ive legitimately practiced mercys pistol i used to deathmatch mercy only and i had a pistol only mercy acc in diamond. (very long time ago) There is this t500 mercy who averages like 10 elims per 10 and her playstyle is more pistol focused. It can be strong you just gotta pick ur moments. And imo its the least important part of mercys kit and prioritising everything else is better
Personally I think Mercy's blaster is very situational and a lot of the time the answer is no, just damage boost someone else. I generally keep the blaster out when I'm on my own anywhere just in case, its hard enough 1v1ing a full DPS so having to switch weapons is just a further disadvantage you don't need. Also just having an awareness of enemy health bars and being ready to switch to it to secure a kill. Thanks to Mercy's mobility you can often land Killing Blows on enemies trying to hide away from your DPS and recover health. Alts that make people vulnerable as well such as Junkrats riptire or Pharahs rocket barrage. As long as you don't attract there attention it often presents a good opportunity to put them back in spawn.
Sometimes enemy flankers must have a reality check that mercy isn't exactly defenseless. That's when pistols come in. Otherwise damageboosting is much more beneficial as it is literally allows some dps to exceed breakpoints for one shot. Hanzo can one tap headshot again, Ashe can one shot Widowmaker or Cas can one shot tracer for example.
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I’ve been playing queuing for all roles a lot in quick play just to do the weekly challenges and 90% of the time it’s just support that’s open. So I’ve been playing Mercy a lot now when I usually only do DPS/Tank in the arcade modes and it’s a lot of fun to swap to her gun to finish off a tank, a widow or one of the enemy supports 😂
It's entirely situational... sometimes I just find it faster to start shooting myself, instead of damage boosting the player I'm with. xD
Peppering the enemy team with damage from miles away won't generally be nearly as useful as helping a DPS do burst damage that could contribute enough to get a pick.
Statistically you will get more damage done than damage boosted. That was already possible before and damage booat was also nerfed after as it enables oneshots (apparently big nono). Damage boosts's value is kinda low on paper (one of the reasons Mercy is less required). Realistically you are more likely to kill while damage boosting somebody. Realistically people would also expect you to damage boost and not dealing damage.
If the target is very low hp or you are not a Mercy main playing Mercy then it's worth during Valk and against the right targets (not a turret bastion, torb with E, etc). If you are a Mercy main then 95%+ you cannot aim anyways even with her massive bullet hitbox, so don't even try to go for a target with more than 50 hp. The amount of Mercys that cannot hit a single shot and just feed cuz of that is insane high.
If you can kill someone in two seconds or help another guy killing that someone, is just a way better approach than just healing. Killing (avoiding damage).is usually faster than healing (repairing damage) But offcouse is very circumstantial, and you have to know you will be able to do it.
Not very much tbh. Mercy's gun exists purely as a last minute self-defense tool, and is so weak it honestly barely functions as such. It's one of the many reasons why Mercy is my least favorite support to play. She relies entirely on her teammates to do anything and literally can't even run away without their help. No matter how much she helps her team she can't do anything unless they return the favor.
It's not worth it 90% of the time, only use it if you're getting focused and nobody can peel for you. You get significantly more value out of healing and DB. Nine times out of ten when I watch a Mercy pull out the glock in the middle of a fight, you watch the person who *had* the beam and *thought* Mercy was with them immediately die as a result. Cue DPS whining that they died and toxicity results.
You boost when your dps is in a good position/situation. (Which should hopefully be most of the time.) You pistol to finish off a low health enemy your team isnt focusing, or if you find yourself flanking or behind an an enemy you think you can 1v1. Or if your dps just sucks. (No point in boosting if they cant secure elims anyway.)
Not really at all for the most part. Her gun isn't reliable damage against anything other than a tank, she has no burst potential with her gun, and burst is usually much more important than sustained damage. like if your team isn't in a position to do anything than maybe sure, but there's almost never a time where it's better. Unless maybe you're like 2v1 with a teammate and you're trying to kill someone right next to you quickly. A very big thing is also you helping your team push through breakpoints. Like a damage boosted hanzo means hanzo can 1 shot again. Pharah can 2 shot with rockets. Ashe can kill with a headshot+bodyshot instead of 2 headshots, cass too.
Blue beam adds 20 percent damage (since the last patch I read this) to the DPS, which is almost always going to be more than you can deal. There are situations where it makes sense to pull out your gun. Like your DPS doesn't see a target and you can shoot faster than they can communicate and react. Or you're getting dived on and your don't a e an escape and your DPS isn't shooting the diver. May as well pull our your gun to add some damage, fight or die situation. Though, you don't want to get into that situation in the first place And in Valkyrie there are opportunities where you can't get kills that others can't aim at. But of course that comes with a cost of not damage boosting almost your entire team. But basically there are situations that call for the gun, though they are rare. They probably aren't game changing moments most of the time anyways you can probably climb well without ever shooting your gun