Adding a side ability to Damage boost

General Discussion
1

Context

Geoff talking about Mercy (which was nice to see)

Ok, so, Geoff talked about the possibility of putting an extra effect on Mercy’s damage boost.

They may or may not have something in mind, and the forums shouldn’t go off and say “they are going to change her” quite yet.

But… there is a REALLY interesting idea on what they could do with her based on it.

Give damage boost aim assist. I know, it sounds CRAZY at the start, but, there is a lot of goodness this has as an idea. It gives her identity, more impact, reduces toxicity, and the game already supports it.

Identity

First of all, it cements Mercy as the DPS’s support, which, gives her more of an identity in the game, AND also it gives her a Niche (not as in, Oh that character isn’t garbage, they are just Niche - which is short hand for Garbage, but, an ACTUAL real honest to god niche)

Impact

It makes damage boost more consistent, but doesn’t break the damage thresholds which the heroes are balanced around.

She has had a problem for a long time which means people don’t feel like she has impact in the game. Her ability to influence how combat goes has been somewhat lacking for some time now.

Toxicity

One of the things which Mercy players HAVE to be good at is assessing how good their DPS are, after all, you have a huge opportunity cost to using damage boost. If they miss their shots, you have been 5v6ing because Mercy is literally doing nothing.

So, it causes a problem. If your DPS can’t hit their shots, what do you do?

Inform the team so they can support them more? it just… causes toxicity problems.

But with this, you can ACTUALLY do something about it. Since you can literally heal bad aim.

It is also VERY much in Mercy base game play, since, you are about enabling team members to shine.

It also leads to funny interactions.

It is actually solving the problem in your team, rather than blaming people. You don’t even have to let them know that is WHY you are doing it. After all, if they are hitting their shots, you want to boost their damage anyway :slight_smile:

Development

As for coding, Aim assist already exists in the game, the hit check against the hit boxes (well, sphereoids in overwatch) already has the code in it. So it isn’t that much developer overhead to put it in. It is also in the most well tested part of the codebase.

I KNOW it sounds crazy, but from a systems point of view it works perfectly, and it solves a LOT more issues than it creates.

TL;DR: Mercy having the ability to heal bad aim sounds like a joke, but it is a really good idea.

3 Likes
2

No.

3 Likes
3

Hands down one of the worst suggestions I’ve read on these forums - and that means a lot.

2 Likes
4

for this to be a real thing in-game you’d need to nerf damage boost by a lot.

5

So… let the game play itself even more?

6

So give all beam heroes soft lock? No.

7

You know aim assist exists in the game already right?, the hit orbs are bigger than the character is as it stands.

This just makes them slightly bigger.

Not at all. It isn’t like everything would be like Moira’s beam. that would be crazy.

Would you? They were talking about a buff to damage boost. But they couldn’t buff the damage % it gives because it breaks too much stuff. This lets them do whatever buff they want, without breaking certain thresholds.

I think you haven’t given it a lot of thought.

The ability to buff damage boost by an arbitrary amount WITHOUT breaking the damage thresholds has a LOT going for it from a game design point of view.

What else would you do to it?

8

come on now aim assist, the go to baby buff. there loads of interesting effects you could add onto mercy dmg to make it more unique and better then zens version.

  • ignore armour
  • increase the size of aoe effects
  • additional dmg to shields/barriers
  • increased crit dmg
  • increase of knock back effects.
  • increased ROF
  • increase projectile speed
  • increase ability effectiveness

there are so many options, so many much cooler ideas then aim assist that will set apart both zens and mercys dmg boosts in unique ways.

zen gets one target to take more dmg from everything and mercy can have one person who gets extra dmg but with an additional effect or two.

edit: added a few more ideas

9

At lot of these you can’t really use.

Because what you don’t want is for her to be stronger buffing certain heroes or only vs some heroes.

ignore armor doesn’t help against non armored enemies.
increase the size of aoe effects doesn’t work for non AOE heroes.
additional dmg to shields/barriers only works if there is shield / barriers
increased crit dmg is interesting - but it breaks thresholds which Blizzard don’t want to do.
increase of knock back effects - only works if the attack has knockback effects.

Aim assist has the advantage that it is ALWAYS useful, and it is simple and doesn’t break the thresholds which is REAL important.

I’d be happy for another ability instead which was universally useful and non threshold breaking. But, only ROF even comes close, and It is also not without problems.

10

Why shouldn’t damage boost break thresholds? In a McCree vs McCree fight at mid range, if Mercy damage boosts one of the McCrees she has absolutely zero effect on the outcome of that fight. The McCree who is damage boosted has no advantage against the McCree who isn’t, and that’s just one of many such examples in the game.

Mercy’s damage boost needs to give a tangible advantage to the hero she’s applying it to. Whether that’s through increased damage or through additional effects or utilities is up for debate, but the ability needs a buff and increasing it to 50% as they have tried several times before should be one of the options. Does it feel OP when McCree one-shot headshots with 50% extra damage? Sure… but all other things equal, the damage boosted McCree should win.

Rate of fire and reload speed buffs would be the next best thing to a raw increase in damage boost, and might make it feel a little more consistent anyway.

11

because Blizzard sees it as a problem, so they won’t do that.

Read the comment from Geoff in the OP. He lays it out. No point suggesting it, as it has been considered and is already off the table.

12

He identifies what he sees as a problem, but gives no reasoning behind why that is a problem. Lots of things have been “off the table” like Deathmatch mode, and yet here we are now with FFA Deathmatch being one of the most popular ways to play Overwatch. I’m not saying buffing damage boost with raw numbers is necessarily the right way to go, but I don’t think we should ever be so sure that something is “off the table”.

13

He does want people to one shot people in rapid succession outside of an ult.

The issue is one shoting people leave no healing counterplay.

14

Ashe + Mercy already exists.

15

I know and it is great :slight_smile:

But, Ashe has enough disadvantages that they were ok with her doing that.

they are NOT ok with Torb doing it.

It is a design choice they made, so, I’m giving a suggestion which fits the limitations they gave out.

16

Is it though? Does it help melee weapons? Does it help boops or any projectile character who must lead their shots? I don’t think so, unless it is very close range. No matter what they add on, it will not help certain abilities or weapons as they vary so much.

17

last thing we want is more dmg in this game, adding a benfit along side the dmg boost is the best way to go.

but its hard to do that without breaking any threholds at all because blizz literally balances everything below boiling point and any effects that sends values beyond what is already set can easily create powerful characters.

18

Yes to all of the above.

How aim assist works is not how people think it works.

In overwatch the hit boxes (well hit bubbles, since they are ovoids) are bigger than the character model.

You can “miss” the model, and still hit the character.
They have a scaling factor for how big the bubbles are.

On console the bubbles are bigger, because it is harder to hit with the controller - thus, consoles have more aim assist than on PC.

This ability just changes the scaling factor for the test on if you intersected the target with your ability.

Thus it helps Projectile, Melee, boops, AOE etc.

I don’t expect it will scale things by much. The effect will be subtle, but, useful.

19

So you are essentially increasing hit box sizes for the damage boosted player?

20

yes, that is what aim assist is :slight_smile:

the game already has the code for it, because it does it on console.