Hi all,
Since in 2022 people still say Mercy is not a main healer, I wanted to hear what definition people give to the term “main healer”.
My definition would be: a support character that can provide enough healing output to sufficiently sustain the team.
What is yours? and which characters do you consider main heal?
Greetings @Butra , Mercy for now,but I am considering in the close future to make main Kiriko.
I generally think of main healer as healer output, so Ana and Bap, maybe Mercy and Moira - it really comes down to the comp though as output doesn’t always mean better.
but people indeed always say that they need more healing… but the rank according to healing output is (based on my own experience of playing OW for years):
I don’t get how almost 90% of the people say we need more healing and request to switch off a mercy. Is it then that 90% of the people don’t know how to play Mercy properly?
“main healer” isn’t a role. Healer isn’t the catagory (sorry to be a little pedantic about this).
It is main support, healing is just a part of the job.
But yes, the main support is the one that will do the bulk of the healing, mostly focusing on tanks. The flex support will then provide additional utility, like Zen adding more damage to the comp, or Brig providing protection for the main support.
When people say the need more healing, that is usually because they are playing badly, not because the support is doing anything wrong.
Also, side note. Mercy is more of a flex support than a main support. The biggest part of her kit is the blue beam. The yellow should be used to top up the healing coming from Ana (for example). If you are over healing as Mercy, you are denying Ana in this comp the chance to build up nano quickly, which could throw the game.
Yes, generally when i’m in a comp with an Ana I let Ana heal the tanks (they are easier to hit than dps for Ana) and I heal/dmg boost the dps.
However stating that the biggest kit is the blue beam, I must dissagree. The big advantage of the healing beam of a mercy is that you can easely prioritize targets in your team to heal. This to make sure no one dies. No other hero can do this as well as mercy can. Meaning if you do know well who to prioritize in your team, can be a big advantage imo. (this might be different for OW2 since there you can see the statts and it is easier to see who the better dps is to pocket)
i think it’s genuinely just output, mercys output is just on the lower end of the high healing characters so not everyone classifies her as a main healer, due to her limited range on her heals and her requirement to be somewhat close to the people she heals, she’s judged to be more of a pocket healer which is a very unique category.
But again, you are saying she (mercy) is on the lower end of the high healing characters… She is not. She has the second highest overall healing output. Sadly I can’t post screenshots here (stupid… in the past I could?!) but I have avg healing per 10 minutes:
Only a Moira can beat a Mercy healing amount wise.
You doing good numbers, Vs a hero having lower output isn’t the same.
You could have done much more healing as Bap. But if Mercy’s boost is the ideal utility for you comp, that’s why you play her.
Ye really missing your points here. Good numbers = high healing while you are saying Mercy has low output… How can a character have high healing and low output at the same time?
Bap is circumstantial… Just like Lucio could also outheal most if the entire team sticks very close (90% of the times I go Lucio when contesting payload at very end since then whole team is close). If you say, Bap could do much more healing, I simply call that a lie. I don’t believe a Bap can outheal a mercy overall. I never seen this happening (unless the entire team stacks which happens not too often).
Whish we could see screenshots… then I could ask you guys for proof to show how much avg healing per 10 min you guys have 
its not just the healers themselves that you got to take into consideration, its the maps as well, some maps benefit certain healers more. to me there is no main healer as they all do the job.
i’m speaking HP/s wise,
mercys HP/s is 50 on a single target.
moira, ana, and bap and even brig to some extent can keep people up more than mercy can.
what mercy brings is mobility in terms of being able to heal people virtually anywhere and she will be able to always follow.
the only 2 supports that don’t beat mercy in terms of healing is zen and lucio
But their other utility is far superior to mercy’s meaning they are far better picks in nearly every situation.
yeah their utility is probably more useful overall in more situations, but they aren’t considered main healers which is what the discussion is about, i’m simply putting her in a similar position as those 2, mercy used to be the main healer but got out healed in terms of raw healing power by other supports to the degree where a mercy cannot compete in that sense.
for example if you have tank vs tank, when would you pick mercy over the other supports if they are just trading blows and you had to pick 1 support to heal you.
Lucio is one of the main supports though. The main support is usually the one pocketing the tanks… Which in every comp with Lucio in is his role, which is why.
Mercy is always the flex, but the only true place for her is in a double sniper comp, as usually that becomes a sniper duel and the rez is critical.
In general ranked play she has a use (thats why you see her in nearly every gold game), but in actual teams where comps are important, Mercy is really bad and has been for a very long time.
She could be viable in a more spam based comp with Hog Ball… But Zen is better in that situation, so you’d play that with Brig.
Yeh I get what you guys are now saying… Burst healing matters more than overall healing.
But usually people use the arguement “we need more healing, switch off mercy”. This is incorrect because what they are actually asking is “we rather take less healing but more need more burst healing” (considering Mercy has more overal healing output than Ana but less burst healing).
If you are lower ranks, you will hear this a lot.
Sadly that’s usually because they are making basic mistakes and expect others to do things for them.
As long as you’re focusing on playing your role/hero correctly and maximising the value you bring, you’ll storm ahead of them ranked.
Pretty sure its more about the fact that a main healer is supposed to heal the majority of damage wich in the past meant keeping tanks alive. As a Mercy you can do that but idealy you wanna focus on DPS (damageboost) and characters that are hard to heal otherwise (divers, flyers) since thats the thing Mercy truely shines at. So if you just wanna heal ur frontliners ur always better off picking Ana or Bapt (sorry but Moira is just not in a good spot rn).
But if you believe the various tierlists that already get thrown around it seems like in OW2 the support role as a whole changes a lot and damage/utility becomes more important than just raw healing. Having only one damage sponge on ur team somewhat changes things I guess.
As a final sidenode I personaly believe the whole mainheal-offheal setup kinda is and always has been a noobtrap and its always better to just pick what ur good at and whats fitting the situation. You wouldnt believe how many games I won with Mercy/Lucio on my team
Also since im stuck in my 3rd 30k queue in OW2 I found a bit more stuff to rant about I hope you dont mind
Damageboosting the right target at the right time is probably one of the most crucial points about Mercy. That doesnt mean you should spend most of ur time in blue beam, you probably still gonna be healing more often than not, but a lot of the times you absolutely wanna prioritize helping out in the sniper duel and in helping ur divers i.e. cooldown based characters. Wich brings me to the second point:
While yes damageboosting snipers is the most obvious (and easiest to pull off) strongpoint of Mercy there is also a lot of value to be had in joining divers or even flankers. The damage boost completely changes the breakpoints of characters like Monkey, Genji or Doomfist and the added bonus of having a Mercy pocket will allow them to maybe even disengage after getting their pick instead of just trading themselves. While they are waiting for their key cooldowns to get ready again you can go back to ur healing duties and just repeat afterwards. If the Mercy is smart about her positioning and dashes its also pretty easy to survive diving in, despite getting into situations that would be considered deathtraps for almost every other hero in the game.
Other good non-sniper targets are Pharah and Echo but yeah…pretty sure we all knew that 
To get back to ur inital point, two more reasons why Mercy somewhat rightfully isnt regarded as a “mainhealer” despite her output theoretically allowing it. The hero just does other stuff better. And even despite ur numbers not showing it, a skilled Ana or Bapt together with an evenly skilled frontline absolutely pulls more healing than a Mercy. Its just kinda rare you get both of these things in the same game.
I’ve taken it to mean Bap, Ana, Moira and occasionally Mercy.
Mainly because of the on-demand healing they can provide without using an ultimate or a cooldown ability.
Brig can’t do decent healing if she can’t hit a target, while her on-demand healing isn’t that great and has a cooldown.
Lucio can only do localised healing and though he does have decent on-demand healing, it’s on a cooldown.
Zen does decent healing over time to a single target but his only on-demand healing comes from his ultimate.
Mercy does good healing all the time but a lot of her power comes from her ability to damage boost, which can be more beneficial to the team than keep everyone topped-off all the time.