I’m just gonna be real, most ppl give little to no Fs about mercy, most think she’s in a fine spot. It’s just this forum with the mercy cult , give it a rest and learn to enjoy other heroes, stop crying ffs
Thanks for putting this together, Baja, gonna pin this for a little while so everyone can catch up. Also expect one or two late answers in the Reddit Thread coming in so keep checking!
FYI, we had allotted 11:00 - 13:00 for this (meaning we blocked time out on the team’s schedules to dedicate to the AuAA). Since we still had technical issues by the end of that time, the team is posting responses as they can between meetings throughout the day, including this new update from Josh about Mercy.
Hello. I’ve been wondering how Mercy’s pick and winrate has been since her changes? How is she finding herself in the hero roster after these changes?
Any changes planned for GA cooldown?
Any other changes planned for her?
Thanks for always pouring your heart in the work.
**Josh (Lead Balance Designer - Blizzard) — **
Mercy stayed about the same as before, the changes were mostly neutral in terms of power. Her win rate is still around 51-52%. There was a small drop in pick rate from 9 to 8%. Her ‘damage taken’ stats increased by like 4 or 5% but her average deaths stayed the same – likely we can attribute this to the new passive at work and taking more damage due to the longer GA cooldown.
We don’t have further changes planned for Mercy at the moment. We feel it would be good to let this one settle and see how players adjust to the changes since it can take some time, and then evaluate if more adjustments are necessary. The meta is also quite different between the two patches so it’s even more surprising that Mercy wasn’t really impacted overall.
Despite the stats not changing much there have been both positive and negative effects on the player experience. There has been positive sentiment around players feeling like they can more fairly try to counter Mercy in ways that were difficult with her extreme mobility before as well as Mercy players having more agency in their ability to save low health allies. However, at the same time the reduction in mobility is going to feel bad for Mercy players needing to adjust to the new timing.
So they didn’t address Sojourn or Kiriko lol. Nice to see they plan to keep one shots for now(though they should forever), and it seems there is no “lack of support players” or “support queue time issues” lol.
Edit: It’s so nice to see that all the money they made isn’t going into anything really and we’re still going to be stuck with slow balance changes. I thought Brigs ult rework was confirmed for S4 but now it’s being pushed back to ‘unknown’ territory for ETA? So absurd lmao. Thanks for turning the game into a scam, execs.
“The devs are ignoring Mercy players because they won’t answer Mercy questions!” Devs answer a Mercy question
“The devs are ignoring Mercy players because I don’t like that answer!”
On the bright side, today I learned this game is led by a dev team that only cares about the competitive angle, and makes decisions purely based on win rate and pick rate.
Fun and hero identity is not important, as long as players statistically keep the win rate of a hero around 50%. I guess they want us to reinstall and intentionally play worse? Terrible design philosophy.
Unfortunate response on Mercy.
I don’t need to get used to the new timing, I had 0 deaths first try post patch, it just translates to an extra second devoid of engagement. On a hero who isn’t focusing super hard on hitting the right shots at all times it just makes the gameplay loop overall less engaging.
I’m hopeful that with this response in mind more dissatisfied Mercy players consider dropping her for a while. Stats are obviously what they care about, impact those and maybe they’ll reconsider.
If not I really hope s4’s Support offers an addictive loop or I’m stuck waiting in limbo hell of the game being neither miserable nor enjoyable.
Hey craig, quick question. Isn’t this your job? This seems like the sort of thing a community manager should do. Seems like you pop in to make one comment every 2 weeks and then dip. WHy is it on users to do this?
@OWCavalry on twitter is also compiling these and even making custom graphics for each answer.
Why is it that this random non-affiliated twitter account communicates better, more clearly, more often, more concisely, and in a more organized manner in one location than the OW team and its paid employees whose entire job is communication management?