A note about game design for Mercy Mains

General Discussion
1

This is a little long but it’s not a mindless rant or attack against anyone, it’s just a point I feel needs to be made about why reverting Mercy is a bad idea.

A question: Why don’t you pick 2 main healers over an off-healer?

Think about it, Lucio+Zen has been meta despite their low heals but not Mercy+Ana/Moira, not even once, why? You’d get a serious increase to the team healing which would enable more aggression, a better resistance to focus fire, a potential edge in brawly team fights, a back up main healer, the option to split into 2 sub teams, and more. Sure you lose some dmg and non-healing utility like speed boost but it has never once been meta. It’s never even been some in some wacky off-meta niche comp, it doesn’t exist as a concept at all so why?

Now there are multiple reasons (that non-healing utility is a big one) but a massive part of the answer is ults. Live Mercy and Moira’s ults are kinda meh healing increases and Ana’s has little defensive potential.Meanwhile Lucio and Zen massively counter the majority of attacking ultimate’s, Rally is a powerful, versatile ult for big play making or enemy shutdown, Sym’s old ults kinda filled both those roles in their way (Also Sombra used to be considered an off-healer while having a brilliant big play/shutdown ult, coincidence?). Play without these ult’s and you lose a lot of versatility, counter-play options and team wide shutdowns, making your team super vulnerable to everything. This is why you always need an off-healer, most likely Zen or Lucio.

But what has this got to do with Mercy Simple, if she has an ult of the same calibre as the off healers (aka mass rez), you reduce the role of off-healers to potential irrelevance, seriously restrict the meta and make that main healer a must pick as they now basically fill 2 roles in one. If there is someone who can heal faster and better than Lucio and block a wombo combo, his only utility becomes speed boost. In fact forget Mercy, lets say Blizzard announced plans to change Moira’s ult to team fade where her entire team cannot take dmg for 5 seconds letting her block something like a Dva bomb, Dragon Blade or Riptire. That would be stupid OP right, for someone with her healing to be able to do that, yeah that’s the Moira equivalent of reverting Mercy. For the game to be balanced main healers need to have pretty meh ults or ones that are not at all defensive (like Ana). Zen has maybe the best ult in the game and you cannot just hand ults that good out to any healer.

I get why Mercy mains are unhappy, it’s bad when your main gets nerfed or changed and yes mass rez was really fun and had it’s limits sure, but if anyone besides an off healer with their okay heals and okay dmg has an ult like that it ruins the meta for everyone. Doubly so for the other healer players who got screwed left right and centre whenever Mercy was at her most OP, as the were forced to play her or lose. I get why current Mercy is underwhelming, I get why your upset but a revert is not the answer, it’s either another big rework to change the hero or make do with live Mercy. Also if you stop saying the answer to every issue is revert her, Blizzard will take your concerns more seriously.

5 Likes
2

I don’t play double main healer because or Overheal.

Most of a Main healer ult charge comes from healing teammates. If you are running, let’s say, Ana-Moira or Ana-Mercy, your Ana won’t have as much nanoes as she’d normally get, because her teammates are already healed by Moira.

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Like I said there are multiple reasons, that is one of them as are utility abilities like discord or speed boost, the extra dmg and off healers normally have an advantage to the way they heal, for Brig it’s armour, Lucio is the aura size and Zen it’s range and passive nature. Its not just the ults but the ults are a big part of it too as a lot of off-healer utility comes from big power ults that might be OP elsewhere.

4

Wait

Are you saying reverting Mercy would make her OP?

Are you joking?

4 Likes
5

I’m saying Mass rez as an ult is OP on a main healer (more so than at launch as now we have 3 main healers). Its not so much she’d be OP as badly designed as she would be able to take utility away from off-healers while still being a main healer. This would make me worry for either a double main healer meta which strikes me as unpleasant as the game would just become burning though meat shields or a resurgence in Mercy+Zen/Lucio as it gives huge ult shutdown potential that other healer combos cannot equate to. Either way she’d likely get picked often and most of the other healers would suffer as would a lot of DPS heroes, might be fun for tanks though.

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6

Okay but here’s the thing:

When Mercy had Mass Res as her ultimate, she was the worst healer in the game.

Having Res on a cooldown is way more OP than it is as an ultimate. Wanna know my average heroes resurrected per 10mins from the season before her rework to last season?

~6 pre-rework
~4 last season

That’s really close to the same numbers, so Res effectively didn’t change numbers wise and due to it being a CD ability resulted in it being far more effective and far more powerful.

Mass Res for her is healthier for the game, even if it brings her power levels down to pre-rework levels.

7 Likes
7

Saying mass Rez is op is like saying mass kills are op. I know not quite the same thing but you get my point. Mercy 1.0 was a troll pick by the way. She just needs to be vulnerable maybe have a 1.5 second cast on it and have los tweaks and it would have been perfectly fine.

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8

Where do you people get this from? Mercy was never a must pick. It has been even proven with stats and all.

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9

The reason you don’t play two main healers together is actually much simpler - it is an overkill, they don’t have enough to heal if their team is at least somewhat competent and uses shields and cover properly, and this also leads to them gaining ult charge too slowly.

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10

TBH rez is not an easy mechanic to make work, ult or not ult.

Also your raw numbers seems small, but that is a 33% drop in rez effectiveness. That is huge. Imagine if Lucio’s aura was 1/3rd smaller, Rein’s barrier or something like dragon blade got 33% less kills, its a big drop

Also in the history of the game Mercy has been solidly out of the meta twice. The first was Ana triple tank where Ana had crazy good heals but needed a Lucio for speed and to keep the rest of the team up. The second was early pure dive meta where you needed to win fights quickly so discord and speed boost were needed more than any main healer (this was also only meta for the top tiers of the game as it was hard to do) but she soon came back in a little when people learned how to protect a Mercy from a dive (her big weakness) and then utilise her healing to win the fight, that started maybe a season before her rework and all the rest of the time she may not have been the best or the most meta but she could work okay.

The point I’m mostly making is about ult shutdown, that should not be something a main healer should be able to do with their ult but old Mercy could. That was poor design.

Since the rework however we got Moira. Moira+Mass Rez Mercy would be a team with crazy levels of healing, still pretty good dmg and an ult shutdown ult. Put them behind a Rein with either Zarya or Dva, and almost any half decent dps or a Brig and you would have a monster of a slow push brawl comp. That is not a meta I want but I’d fear it with a revert.

11

This is the exact reason we should never ever revert her. Shes the most mained hero in the game and I dont want trash heals in almost every match. You might have fun playing trash mercy but your dying teammates wont.

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I didn’t say she had garbage heals, I should’ve said she was the ‘worst support’. She actually had the best heals and most reliable heals, but her kit wasn’t great enough to warrant her to be picked over Lucio or Zenyatta.

Also just a reminder: She heals less than she did pre-rework now. So you’d stay alive longer with pre-rework Mercy than you would now :wink:

5 Likes
13

Good to know I didnt play when mass rez was around. What made her the worst support then?

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Zen, Lucio and Ana brought more than just heals and a good ult they also have utility which the former Mercy never really had. Now saying mass-rez would be OP… I heavily doubt that. Why should it all of a sudden be OP? It never really was game breaking OPAF like valk so I cant see any reason it should be now.

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15

Mercy was such a must-pick before her invulnerability buff that she was the least used healer in GM, Masters and Diamond. Let’s not exaggerate history.

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16

That’s my point really. She was a main healer (with good heals) but and off healer ult, that’s bad design regardless of it’s OP potential. A main healer should have a fairly minor ult that charges quickly and gives a slight improvement to the current team capabilities. It should not add major new abilities, or perform a high power shutdown or play as then you have a hero doing too many major functions and some of it gets contradictory

17

Mercy had no utility like the other 3 healers in the game and her ult was to situational. If the enemy was smart enough they never really had to be scared about mass-rez.

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18

Why, because you made this rule up on a whim?

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19

Then how were Lúcio and Zen meta while Mercy had Mass Resurrect as her ultimate? Mercy didn’t become meta until her ultimate became a cooldown ability, and she got better AoE heals than pretty much anyone else as her replacement ‘ultimate’.

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Okay so with this being said. Let’s get back to the question of why would revert her to that state? I’m fairly certain mercy is mained more than any other hero why would we want the most popular hero the worst in her category? Wouldn’t that just put extra stress on the rest of the team?