A mercy main's view on mercy

General Discussion
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I’ve spoken before about Mercy on how she needs some sort of tweak to her kit whether that’s removing rez as an ability, increasing her healing etc. but I’ve never truly spoke about Mercy as a character and what impact I think she has in a game. Before I start, I just want to say that Yes: I am in support of the #reworkmercy movement but I don’t agree with the entire forum raid crap. It was just a desperate way of trying to get our voices heard that just made the devs less likely to listen to us. But anyway, here’s my opinion on Mercy.

In terms of the game right now, I’d say that mercy is definitely balanced. Thanks to the recent changes to Valkyrie, mercy can now make relatively good team saves when your team is under pressure, and the chain damage amp is incredibly useful; the ability also combos incredibly well with orisa’s drum, allowing mercy to focus on healing while orisa covers damage. Rez, if clunky, is also an ability that’s been made so that its useful to keep momentum going in a team fight when the enemy get an early pick. So, having said that, what’s the problem; why does mercy need tweaks?

The problem is her mid-fight capabilities. Her guardian angel is an incredibly useful movement tool, especially in Valkyrie, and it allows her to survive pretty muhh indefinitely if played carefully with god-like decision making. The problem lies with Rez. But wait, I just said rez is in a good spot, if a little clunky, so what’s the problem? The problem is that mercy players wanted mercy to have an E ability since day one pretty much; with rez taking that spot, it denies mercy the ability to burst heal and, with the power creep in the game currently, not being able to have some form of burst heal besides Valkyrie is a huge disadvantage to her and makes her weaker compared to the other healers overall. I’m not saying she can’t get a lot of healing done because this simply isn’t true. Most games I play as mercy, I get an average 18-20k healing done due to the fact that her healing is always consistent unless she breaks LOS, whereas the other healers require more skill like being able to land consistent shots as Ana or making sure you’re quick on your feet as lucio, knowing when to speed boost and when to heal. But that’s always been Mercy. She’s the Soldier of support: A character that can easily be picked up and played well on bother lower tiers and higher tiers of play. So, how can we change her without stripping mercy of being this stepping stone character into the support roster?

It lies with Resurrect. Rez is a powerful ability, and was mercy’s old ultimate for that reason. And mass rez is not coming back, no matter how many times we ask for it. But that doesn’t mean to say rez can’t be mercy’s ultimate. Here’s what I suggest.

Valkyrie:
Upon activation, Ressurect becomes available.
Ressurect has 3 charges.
1 second cast time.
8m range.
Interruptable.
Mercy gains a 20% damage resistance while casting her first Ressurect, 15% on her second, and 10% on her third.
Ressurect doesn’t regenrate over the duration of Valkyrie.
5 second cool down.
Valkyrie duration increased from 15 seconds to 20.

These changes to valkyrie are just an idea on how to make Mercy’s ultimate more of an ultimate; by tying Ressurect to valkyrie, this can help restore some of Ressurect power while still keeping it balanced. Making rez restricted to valk also opens up the door to give mercy a new E ability: A burst heal effect that she desperately needs to help keep up with the power creep in the game. Let me know what you think about the rez changes; I’d like to hear your thoughts. The numbers are obviously subject to change as I’m not a game devoper and don’t work for blizzard, so I don’t really know how they balance the game. With all that said, let me suggest her new E ability.

Halo: Mercy launches a golden ring at an ally up to 15m away that increases healing done to target by Mercy by 45% for 3 seconds.
Range: Targeted hitscan (Ally) 15m
Duration: 3 seconds
Cooldown: 12 seconds
Halo is disabled during Valkyrie.

My idea for Halo is to act similarly to Ana’s bionade, but on a single target that Mercy is tethered to. It doesn’t have the instant burst heal that bionade does, but it will temporarily increase Mercy’s base healing on that target to about 73hps (I did the maths), which is why I’ve decided against it being available in Valk as it would up mercy’s 60hps to nearly 90hps and with healing as consistent as Mercy’s, this would be too powerful, especially with Ressurect being available too, which would just bring around a second moth meta which I as a mercy main hated. But an ability like this would help mercy’s midfight enough to make her a powerful healer but not an overpowering healer that outshines the others.

What does everyone think about these changes to Mercy? Again, I’m not a developer, so these numbers are subject to change; to everyone, try and keep the comments positive and constructive. Mercy’s been a pretty controversial topic recently, especially this week thanks to the Mercy Raid that Aria lead, but I genuinely just want to start a positive conversation on how Mercy can be tweaked to make her a more relevant hero to play. There’ll be people who don’t agree with me that she doesn’t need tweaking, and that’s fine as everyone’s entitled to their own opinions. This is just a way to try and spark thoughts on potential changes that could potentially work; feel free to leave your own changes if you want as well, it’d be cool to see other people’s ideas.

2 Likes
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I would leave Mercy in her current state.

I don’t think she is underperforming, unbalanced or just straight out F-tier, so I don’t think she need changes.

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I’m assuming you are keeping Valk as it is (chain healing) while also wanting to add THREE RES charges to it?
More than 1 res has been proven to be problematic.
Even 1 Ressurect is very powerful.

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That’s why I’m having Ressurect exclusive to valkyrie. There still all single use rezes just like they are on live. Think of it more as a weakened version of mercy’s old valkyrie where she had 2 instant rezzes. Rez is too powerful to be on a normal CD, so this change would allow the CD to be more liniant while not making it broken. Her rezzes are still Interruptable too, like on the live severs, so there’s still counter play to be make against her

2 Likes
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Not gonna lie, I don’t even remember how I played mercy during mass rez, whereas I can actually remember playing valk mercy after a few nerfs (I missed the initial change) and know how that played when it was a bit broken. I don’t have the best memory, but valk is fun imo.

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I think you are trying to change too much just for the sake of re-doing Resurrect in some way.
The rest of her kit is fine.

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Your voices have already been heard, yet you are not ok with the response.

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I think the valk suggestion is too complicated, reduction to damage resistance each time she rez’s is super convoluted. I think youd be better off buffing valk current state, removing rez completely and adding a version of this halo idea, probably still need tweaking, maybe only buffs healing by 30%, but from all heroes, and cleanses the hero of negative status.

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I would remove rez, give her something else.

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In all honesty, I wouldn’t mind Rez being removed completely, as do some mercy mains, but blizzard belive it to be a core part of mercy’s kit and don’t want it removed. So the best we can do is try and make suggestions on how to balance it as the devs clearly think mercy is defined by rez. Also, I like the idea for the cleansing effect; I never thought of that

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Would you accept your suggestion with ONE Resurrect charge on Valk or must it be multiple?
Just curious.

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Im honestly hoping next couple heroes someone has a cleanse, zarya bubble is good but with all the cc and stuff as of recent i think its becoming more necessary. its a shame rez is tied that heavily to the hero, thats why i thought the “halo” part was actually pretty cool, really fits her style, wings on the Q and halo on the E? how could that not be angelic.

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to op:

Having noted your interest in adding a burst heaI and removing the speed reduction, I have an alternate suggestion that addresses both

see:

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Your valk suggestion is way, way too complicated. Overwatch is a simple game with simple systems, and you wrote a Korean VCR manual. (A VCR is a thingthat plays VHS tapes, which are… oh nevermind)

If you want better rez? Add a little bit of regeneration to mercy while she’s channeling, or make it channel faster. it DOES feel clunky and leaves Mercy very vulnerable, but it should still have solid counter-play abilities. Full on damage-reduction is no good, but enhanced in-combat regeneration would give her durability while still leaving potential to burst her down. A faster rez would have similar effects. Been playing Mercy a bit myself and yeah, “let me stand here for ten minutes” is about the dumbest part of her.

I’m leery of burst heal - I remember the days of tanks brawling on point for an hour at a time while both teams’ Anas just pumped healing into them. No thanks. However, what might work is to make Guardian angel a buff to Mercy that increases her healing output to the target she flew to for a short period. The downside there is, of course, pharmercy, which would just get worse at low levels.

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If it meant mercy was more balanced, yes. I want mercy to be powerful, not broken, just like all heroes are powerful in their own rights. The reason I suggested multiple charges was to make rez an ability that still has power but has counter play to go with it, but having multiple charges is just that: Suggestions. This is the sort of thing I wish blizzard would put on the PTR, so we could actually see how stuff like this would play out, rather than us having to guess, and this goes for all heroes

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There are so many negative comments, But I absolutely agree. Mercy’s ultimate just doesn’t feel like an ult. It doesn’t change the tide of battle, it doesn’t contribute some great advantage, it can’t even keep the team alive!! She needs a new ult. And her rez ability is also problematic: Every one keeps talking about it, saying it’s op, when really it’s so hard to carry out! There are so many different ways to stop rez let alone how vulnerable she is. She may be balanced, but it doesn’t make her credible. I like your solutions, and support them.