Ana and mercy are fine

[DrFate-11148]

I still find i have to juggle

In fact you have to juggle more because it takes longer to heal making her harder

[AmazonRidrr-1328]

People in lower tiers don’t usually play the optimal character. Shoot sometimes they won’t even play a healer.

[BadWidowEU-2419]

Statistically, if you play Mercy you are de-ranking and if you play her in high tiers, you are throwing. Also, she has a winrate below 53 % in GM. That means top tier Mercy mains can’t even stay in their rank consistently.

She needs a buff or a rework.

[Xian396-1819]

When i say juggling i meant rapid switching of targets. You cant do that now since the hps nerf meant 2 things: (1) you need to prolong targetting an ally because it takes longer for you to heal them and (2) it s a lot easier to out damage 50hps resulting to even more prolonged targetting.

The hps nerf actually made you juggle less because you have to keep targetting someone for a longer period compared to before

[Hauven-2768]

It’s more a question of developer engagement with feedback, nobody knows what path they might consider other than they originally said they don’t want to go down the revert / mass res route (but that’s already had an exception with HP/sec being reverted). Since there’s no developer engagement with any Mercy feedback then nobody really knows what path they might consider, as if the developers are possibly either thinking that their rework concept was a success no matter what or that they don’t really care about Mercy as much as unsatisfied Mercy mains do.

[BadWidowEU-2419]

Also this:

@Agnostika-1802

Note: In diamond - gm, Mercy was the lowest win rate healer throughout the whole month. Usually, the distance to the next healer in masters-gm was about 3%. Mercy also spent the whole month in these tiers in the bottom 4 win rate characters period, almost always in the bottom 3, and usually bottom period in at least one of them.

Now, I’d like to address the claims I’ve been hearing based on this data. Broadly speaking, I separate them into 4 categories: Mercy is balanced, Mercy will be balanced, balance is meaningless, and Mercy should not be balanced.

@Agnostika-1802

Mercy is balanced claims: I’ve heard people say that Mercy is fine, that Mercy is in a good place, that she’s more balanced than she’s ever been, etc. These claims are 100% false. Mercy’s win rates are below the tier average throughout the SR spectrum. The problem gets progressively worse the higher up you go. Being 3% away from the tier average is incredibly bad, given that the entire spread of win rate averages of commonly played characters is about 6%. Statistically, if you are playing Mercy right now then you are deranking, and if you’re playing her in high ranks then you’re throwing.

Another version of this attempts to shield itself from reality by making the non falsifiable claim that Mercy is fine because she still has mobility, consistency, damage boost, and res. You can tell that a claim about Mercy is on its face wrong if you can make it verbatim regardless of what number her healing is changed to. But even more importantly than that, this kind of theoretical analysis is not very useful. The final arbiter of what is good in Overwatch is what actually happens in the game, and the actual numbers point out clear as day that Mercy is not fine. Just as a reminder - after the Ana nerfs pros thought she would always be fine because she still had anti heals, sleep, and high burst healing.

@Agnostika-1802

Mercy will be balanced claims: I’ve heard people say that people are still learning how to play post nerf Mercy, and that the numbers will get better once people figure out what maps/comps she’s good at. From the start, this claim is dubious. Mercy has been around since the game came out and, she’s not hard to figure out. Mercy should be good on maps with lots of verticality, and should be good in mobile comps that can exploit vericality, as well as comps centered on long range damage. I don’t think higher ranks players have any trouble at all figuring this out.

Looking at the data however, this claim doesn’t appear to be true. It’s been a month and the win rates show no indication of an upward trend. Mercy’s pick rates have already plummeted quite severely. People have already heavily restricted the situations they play Mercy in. They just haven’t found success. If this claim were true, you would have expected to see an upward trend when the pick rates decreased, especially in higher ranks where people make better strategic choices. It’s just not there. As a side note: the hero you are thinking of when you make this claim is Zenyatta. His pick rates have gone down, but his win rates have not.

In order to believe this claim, you need to believe an very unlikely constellation of ideas. This claim has grown a beard and needs a shave from Ockham’s razor. Its fig leaf of plausibility is shrinking by the day and it’s becoming indecent.

@Agnostika-1802

Balance is meaningless: These are claims of the form - win rates don’t matter/don’t mean much. Bulls have to eat quite a lot of food. They can’t digest it all, and so that food comes to an unpleasant and inevitable conclusion. A similar situation holds here. Win rate is the number one statistic that matters. The only variable that determines whether or not a character is good is whether or not they’re winning games. Pick rate is only secondary evidence towards this.

Now, that isn’t to say that one can just look at win rates in a vacuum. Some thought has to be applied to them. For instance, situations where a character is on both sides have to be taken into account. These situations will always cause a character’s win rates to trend closer to the tier average (For example, when a character is picked on both sides in every game then their win rates are the exact tier average). When a character is below the average win rate (as Mercy is), that means that non mirror matches are actually significantly worse than the win rate indicates.

Just because you have to think about something in order to speak about it in an informed way doesn’t make it meaningless. I suspect that many of you making this claim would not make it about other characters.

@Agnostika-1802

Mercy shouldn’t be balanced: These are claims of the form - Mercy is mechanically easier than Ana, so she shouldn’t do as well in higher tiers. Leaving off the fact that non of the other characters are balanced in this way, it’s a non sequitur. Mercy players don’t want to be better than Ana at higher ranks. They want to be viable there. When you are making this claim, you are really thinking about someone else. Moira is better than Ana at lower ranks, and worse than her in higher ranks. She’s viable at every rank. She’s also very easy to play (easier than Mercy in my opinion). Moira is the model Mercy players are looking for.

In any case, these are claims that can’t really addressed by numbers. They can only be addressed by love. If you’re making this silly claim, I love you anyways.

@Agnostika-1802

Pro Mercy crowd: I’ve seen a lot of you retreat to the claim “Mercy is balanced now but boring”. When you do this, the other side just says that fun is subjective and dismisses you. Don’t be so hasty to retreat from reality. Mercy is not balanced. That needs to be fixed.

@Agnostika-1802

Anti Mercy crowd: Some of you are making honest well reasoned arguments. You have a natural and worthy position to take here - Blizzard should be cautious with regards to Mercy to prevent her from dominating the support roster. You guys should stick to points like this where you are in the right.

@Agnostika-1802

My guess is that you knew it all along. You will need to fix it eventually. The healing will need to go back to 60. Start figuring out how to do this without breaking the game. Valkyrie and res are both controversial messes. Do something to them, and make it happen. Also, despite my criticisms I love you guys too.

[Thx Agnostika ]

[Pyrrha-11934]

If Mercy mains genuinely cared about making Mercy fun/impactful as soon as possible, they’d figure a fun/impactful version of Valkyrie as an ultimate, and Rez that isn’t dramatically more powerful than it is right now, and whatever additional features needed.

I genuinely don’t understand your obsession with Valkyrie. Just because we have ideas about Rez (you know, the prime centrepiece of her kit and her most impactful ultimate), we shouldn’t be forbidden from having and proposing the ideas.

Do you just, really hate Rez or something?

[MOƗRA-2694]

We tend to forget that Ana is a fantastic counter to Brigitte, something that we also see quite a lot in our games. No other support is as effective against this hero as she is.

[GreyFalcon-11737]

How about this:

Mercy

Cadeuseus Staff

• 55 heals per second, up from 50.

Valkyrie

• -10hps on permaregen, with 20hps regen after not taking damage for 1 second.
• Chain beam, 45hps on chain beams, with 95hps on primary heal target

Sympathy Bond:

• Mercy blocks half of incoming damage on a teammate, and receives half the incoming damage to herself.
• Bonded teammate has a halo visual effect above them.
• Casting the ability on the same teammate twice cancels this ability

Resurrection:

• Default keybinding to Q during Valkyrie.
• Resurrects one fallen teammate, this teammate is restored to full health.
• Zero cast time.
• Resurrected Teammate cannot take any action for 1.75 seconds except for walking at 25% speed, and glows bright yellow.
• If this teammate dies within 4.75 seconds after being resurrected, they are put on their former respawn timer.
• Healing, Zarya Shield Bubbles, etc are effective on the resurrected teammate.
• Ten second cooldown during Valkyrie.
• Yup, that’s two instant cast Resurrections.

[Xian396-1819]

Ive had dicussions with greyfalcon before and to me it s not their obsessed with valk it s simply that theyre trying to find a way to make it work. Both in a balance and fun sense

[Maka-21687]

Ana is peaking a pickrate close to reworked Mercy in GM. That also is not ok

except the amount of effort required to take down Ana is nothing compared to reworked mercy. It’s only natural GM players play Ana more because experienced players can get the most value out of her. Seeing Ana picked more in GM where SHE IS SUPPOSED to perform the best is in no way comparable to how Mercy ruled the game through all tiers and how not having her in your team was such a disadvantage.

[BadWidowEU-2419]

55 heals per second, up from 50.

If statistically, 60 wasn’t an issue and 50 is clearly too low, I wouldn’t mess around with something that can do either.

Valkyrie

I hate Valkyrie in general so I won’t be giving my opinion on this.

Mercy blocks half of incoming damage on a teammate, and receives half the incoming damage to herself.

Umm… This is kinda an issue since Mercy is supposed to be a main healer. An ability that damages her is an ability that will basically give the team an advantage.

Casting the ability on the same teammate twice cancels this ability

2 questions. What is the cooldown on this and is the effect permanent until you cancel it yourself?

Zero cast time.

Counterplay? I mean, that is a big concern for some people.

Healing, Zarya Shield Bubbles, etc are effective on the resurrected teammate.

No idea what this means.

[MafiaBella-1549]

Or maybe you Mercy mains need to adapt to the change and communicate with your teammates to get healed around corners instead of in the fray with 20 hp. Before, most people couldn’t be killed through Mercy’s healing without burst fire, but now, it only takes one person to hard focus a target to do it. Make necessary adjustments to the change and stop calling the best all around support “awful” on the forums.

[GreyFalcon-11737]

The counterplay for the Rez is that the Rezzed teammate is a sitting duck glowing bright yellow for nearly 2 seconds.

As for the Sympathy Bond, I guess I should add an LOS break causing the ability to cancel.

[Xian396-1819]

Before, most people couldn’t be killed through Mercy’s healing without burst fire, but now, it only takes one person to hard focus a target to do it. Make necessary adjustments to the change and stop calling the best all around support “awful” on the forums.

Did people forget that prework mercy was considered to lean towards underpowered despite having 60hps too? Her hps was never an issue it s the presence of cd rez which is too strong of an ability that they had to nerf her base kit

[Pyrrha-11934]

If a professional team who does this for a living and over a year (not counting how Valkyrie was added and then scrapped in Alpha testing), I don’t personally believe Valk and Rez as an ability will ever be worked out.

Also, I’ve had discussions with them before too, and it always boils down to: ”You can have fun as long as Rez is still useless”.

[Macster-11267]

Bahahaha. Good thing the 50HP/S is enough to keep allies alive. Play Mercy as a main healer and then report to me your success in keeping everyone alive.

[Zwei-11485]

Valkyrie in general is a bad concept for an ultimate compared to other transformation ultimates though which is one of the defining factors in why it’s so boring. Genji gets to use his blade, Zen turns into a omnic god, Torbjorn becomes a molten boi and his turret goes berserk, Mercy? Oh look you can fly while your job is made 10x easier to the point where it feels like a spectator mode.

[Xian396-1819]

Neither do i at least not the way it works now. Valk and rez could work but only together, not separately as valk on its own has always been more or less a weak but useful ult that was too easy to get value from while rez is too strong to be placed on a simple cd mechanic

[stormlord199-1672]

Mercy isn’t a off healer even with all of anas buffs mercy still outputs more healing on average than her.