Lets talk about Mercy,

General Discussion
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Right, I know there are probably hundreds of posts already about this whole Mercy situation, but I just wanted to have my own input on this whole topic.

Lets start with her original state, yes it was overpowered, we all know that, there were always issues with her original ultimate, but it didn’t necessarily mean she needed a whole entire rework of her abilities. Instead of changing her ultimate to something completely different, they could’ve tweaked it and made it more balanced, for example people have mentioned the idea of giving her a charge like Zarya in which it needed to be up to a certain point for Rez to actually work.

Now I’ll talk about her having Rez out of ult. This was a complete mistake and everyone knows it. Having Rez out of her ultimate was possibly the biggest mistake out of this whole rework, for starters it made Rez way to easy to achieve, at least while it was in ult form it had some form of build up. Rez in this state is so unsatisfying and unrewarding (like the whole Mercy experience in her current state). While I understand there will always be issues with Rez due to it being the biggest game changers within the game, simply taking it out of her ult and giving it to her character as an ability was the wrong move.

Since they decided to give Mercy a whole new ultimate this destroyed her whole identity, they stated that Mercy was intended to be a ‘Pure solo healer’, meaning she’s supposed to be focused around the idea of being a healer, and nothing more, yes she can still kill but not as easily as other supports. By giving her this new ultimate it completely took that away from what she was originally intended to be and at the same time eliminated her greatest weakness which is not being able to heal multiple people. To me her ultimate seems to have so little impact on the way the game is carried out, even though its intended to support her team whilst their engaging in combat, they still die so easily. I thought ults were supposed to have an impact on the way the game played out? Oh, I guess that idea just doesn’t apply to Mercy then?

My last issue with this whole rework of Mercy is that the devs are just completely ignoring the community’s feedback. It’s so disheartening to see the pure dissatisfaction within the community (yes, I understand there are many who are completely content with this rework, but there are many who aren’t and want their voices to finally be heard). To see the devs just focus on what the ‘pros’ are calling ‘unbalanced’ and ‘still needing nerfs’ or saying that ‘this character needs a buff’ etc, and just focusing on these select few players instead of the vast majority of the community is just completely unacceptable and just disappointing to be quite frank. At this point in time I no longer care if this game is dying because to be quite honest, its what they deserve, if they aren’t going to listen to the community’s discontent and want to be heard, then I guess its just karma.

I apologise for this being so long, I’ve been wanting to make this for quite a long time so obviously I have many things to say. I hope all of you can understand my disappointment with the way Mercy and her player base has been treated, thank you.

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Ya, I like this idea because it is linking res into a mechanic that is based upon skill expression rather than a flat cooldown timer which is universal to all Mercys. With a mechanic like a resource system or an energy charge, it allows more skilled Mercys to acquire res more often than a bronze one might. I think looking at the initial acquisition of res is the better way to balance the ability than by putting in something like a cast time which is horrible design.

All ults have a natural charge based upon skill expression, as more skilled players can charge their ult faster. This is what you’re getting at here and while I definitely agree that res needs to be “earned”, there are other mechanics that can achieve this without requiring it to be an ult. So, I don’t think it necessarily has to be an ult. It just needs a way to be charged that’s similar to how the ults are charged. For example, Moira’s resource is a bit like a second ult charge. Yes, it doesn’t power a single dramatic ability, but it is still something that is charged through skill expression, which in Moira’s case is her tracking skills with her RMB.

I don’t think Valk destroys her identity. It is still more useful for her to use her heal/damage beams over firing her pistol most of the time. I don’t really see where you’re coming from with that complaint. Again, I’m kind of ok with her healing multiple targets. An ult like this has to change things up a bit, and this changes up her gameplay a bit as she can inform a push.

Yeah, they’re making a bit of a pigs ear of this. They have to make changes, but then it’s concerning when they come out with things like “Mercy’s in a good spot now” and “These changes were brilliant” or whatever the quote is. :neutral_face:

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I just want to say that Mercy wasn’t overpowered before all the buffs that she got (before invulnerability) not everyone wanted a Mercy on their team because most of the time she would die right after rezzing which left her team without a main healer.

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I was content with the Mercy rework that they implemented, the whole ult change and whatnot. When they gave res a cast time of 1.75 seconds, I was a little upset but I handled it just fine, it just meant that I had to be extra careful when using res. Then they decreased the flight speed of GA and it was agonising but it held. Now with the 60 HPS down to 50 HPS nerf, this has taken it too far. Mercy has been getting nothing but nerfs, and I understand nerfing res to a point where it’s more of a curse than an actual gift of life, but reducing Mercy’s healing is just crossing a line since it’s the only thing she’s got going for her.

I don’t care what they do with her res; scrap resource system or a Zarya-like charge system, it doesn’t matter. If you’re gonna nerf her healing, give her a fighting chance to deal damage then since apparently an all-out-support is out of the question.

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While I can understand why you say this, she was and most likely will always have a fundamental flaw in her skill set, Rez. This is possibly the biggest game changer in the game due to it being able to bring back an entire team. Personally, I think that her character went downhill after they gave her invulnerability during Rez, simply because it took away that sacrifice that was potentially required whilst carrying out Rez. Again, I understand completely why you say this, I thought that too (Being a Mercy main lol), but after looking deeper into the massive change she had in the game I can understand what other players had to say about her.

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After losing like 200 points in comp with her on the weekend I think I will give up with her as well until the next patch :(. One game Lucio healed over 20K which was like w000t? even with my very best try in games where I had to heal constantly it was a 15k. She might have her tiny weapon to headshot other mercies or weaklings like Sombra but while you do that your team dies so you can only use her for shooting if everybodies health is OK in which case why aren’t they chasing your target anyway?! With Lucio and Moira you can do some serious damage.

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See, I was quite happy with her original rework, but then they kept nerfing her down and now it just feels so unfun and unrewarding.

I 100% agree with you that they shouldn’t have touched her healing, they originally buffed her healing simply because it couldn’t sustain her teammates during a push. But now they’ve nerfed it back down, the only reason why I can think of why they did it was because other healers weren’t simply getting their time in the spot light, which I understand is unfair but nerfing the one balanced thing about her skill set was completely unjust.

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I would like if people would stop talking about her for once, the mercy thread spam is extremely annoying

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Yeah I know, it’s so infuriating. They keep nerfing her down to the point where she’s so unfun to play, then they touch her healing. Like I said, they stated she’s meant to be a pure solo healer , but then they next her healing down to the point where it’s no longer enough to sustain her team during fights. Mercy isn’t meant to do damage, she’s not a multi-use support like others such as Ana, Lucio etc.

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Ya, the problem with the latest nerf is that it’s brought her healing output into levels where you very often just lose an ally, not because you did something wrong but rather because your numbers simply aren’t high enough. When you lose an ally, you should be able to learn from your mistakes, see where you went wrong and do better next time. That more often than not isn’t the case now. You’re just left with the conclusion that you couldn’t have done anything better to save your ally. This isn’t as much the case with other healers because they can stack healing abilities to get very high spike healing for when they need it most.

If you think of it in terms of a graph, Mercys healing output is basically a flat line. The other healers can spike heal when they need to which results in a curvy wave with hills and dips in healing output.

This was always true with Mercy of course, but before this latest nerf, her healing output was enough to pull you through most every day situations. It’s just not the case now. You are much more powerless to have your skill expression matter, and that’s no fun at all.

So, they’ve created this problem because they’re trying to balance the rest of her kit around the existence of res, but they’ve killed the character in the process.

Anyway, those are the problems. I see a lot of solutions out there, but this one’s mine:

This solves many problems and tackles the heroes balance in the right places, adds skill expression, retains Mercys “flavor”, works towards her strengths as a mobile hero, allows Mercy to regulate healing output, makes res “earned” and adds a lot more potential decision making to the kit.

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Honestly, implementing this mechanic into Mercy’s kit would not only make her more able to support her team but it would also add a new fun twist into the way you actually play the game.

I really hope they do add a mechanic like this (or at least something similar to it) because most other supports have some kind of amp/boost to their healing when their team is in need of it, for example Lucio with his amp it up function, and Ana with her bio grenade.

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Ya, actually every healer has a way to stack/amp/boost their healing output with the exception of Mercy and Zen. I give Zen a pass because, well, it’s Zen. He’s basically a badass DPSer with some healing on the side. :stuck_out_tongue: Mercy is supposed to be a main healer, so lacking this fundamental element is pretty crazy.

Brig can stack her healing from E and LMB.
Lucio Amps it up as you said.
Ana stacks her bio nade and her LMB.
Moira stacks her LMB and her orb.

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I was genuinely quite shocked when the whole rework happened because I thought her new ability would’ve been something focused around her healing, but it was Rez? It’s quite a shame really that they’ve missed a perfect opportunity to introduce a new ability that would actually benefit the character and the game a lot.

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Yeah, I want Mercy reverted with some tweaks to her ult like longer charge time, cast time or even line of sight requirements. All of this could have been avoided if they would’ve just nerfed her old ult a bit.

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I think her hps should have stayed at 60 hps.
Valk is a decent ultimate.
I think it can be tweaked by maybe giving the person she is targeting have 10% damage reduction and having the beam spread out.

But seriously y’all need to be patient. It’s been a month, they probably still gather data and don’t have enough about what to do next. Screaming at the forums is not reliable data.

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‘We need to be patient’, we are, well at least I am, it’s been a year already and they haven’t fixed her, I’m completely fine with waiting longer, I’m simply just expressing my opinion on the whole situation.

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This whole thing with Mercy has been a mess since the start of the rework. Will they revert her? No, because the main DPS characters whined, it’s why DVA’s defense matrix was toned downed. Any extra healing done or defensing causes immediate changes.

It is why Brigitte remains relatively untouched on the development end. Very little done and I feel the ease of dealing damage with her is overpowering, especially on console where you have less control. It is a struggle to get rid of her. Pharah can until a Soldier is on the map. Then you need to land all shots with her, until you are taken out of the air. Only other option is to hope you have a good Junkrat on the team who can get rid of her without dying.

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Yeah I highly doubt they’ll revert her, although I do hope they do (but obviously tweak and adjust her ultimate to make it more balanced). But the whole issue surrounding the rework (going off your idea of the DPS complaining about her) is most likely just because once they wipe the team, she comes in and undoes all that work, yes it’s annoying but everyone’s ult is a game changer.

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Completely agree, the devs didn’t want her to “hide and rez”

  1. Ever heard of taking cover
  2. Heroes like Reaper and Mcree can do it why can’t Mercy?
  3. Right now she has to hide to rez because she becomes a literal rock for 1.75 seconds.
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While screaming does occur, I don’t see any of that going on in this thread.

Data provides insight on pick rates / win rates, but insight into what’s fun or not is largely down to the feed back from the player base. You can achieve an “ideal” pick rate / win rate and yet still have a badly designed hero if it is no longer fun to play. Mercy in her current state isn’t fun and that’s why so many people are making their voices heard on the issue.

The devs claim that they are attempting to make the heroes both balanced and also fun which is a noble goal, however by the very parameters that they’ve set out, they’re failing. That kind of needs addressing, or at least acknowledging.

The problem I have is that the devs have claimed that everything is fine, which means no change is coming, which is bad. So, there’s a stubbornness going on that’s probably linked in with ego and an unwillingness to accept when a mistake has been made. It’s not a good position to be in, and since they’re failing at it, they’ve taken the other option which is to nerf her into a state where she just won’t be played anymore, which is a shame.

If the devs sounded like they were leaving the door open for future fixes then I wouldn’t be as concerned, but the language they’ve used isn’t very encouraging. :roll_eyes:

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