I’m not arguing that playing Mercy makes you toxic - rather, I’m pointing out a pattern I see with a particular group of players compared to other groups.
Not all Mercy mains are toxic, totally agree with you there. But it would be silly to say that toxicity ISNT an issue with the Mercy community.
For me it is less fun than ping-pong was… But it still is somewhat fun. But not as much as it used to be.
I would actually say more to this… Calling a group toxic because of a few individuals is actually toxic itself.
That is an issue in every main community. Because it is an issue with this player base.
If 10% of the players are toxic then naturally, those 10% players will be found in any arbitrary group you want to make out of them (tank mains, rein mains, flex players, Mercy mains, Kiriko mains, plat players…). So it is not a nobel worthy discovery, that there are Mercy mains that are toxic.
I disagree. I personally didn’t play with many toxic Mercy players.
And honestly, almost everything that gets cited as being why Mercy mains are toxic can be explained by this:
I saw far more toxicity to Mercy mains than from Mercy mains.
And I would say that I disagree with you on that. I think this is an area where we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
And yes, having more mains will lead to more toxicity being present - that’s true. I would just argue that, due to the size of the Mercy community, most toxicity on the forums is from Mercy players. It’s not reflecting badly on the hero or those who play her, but rather an unfortunate statistic due to her popularity.
Doesn’t mean the statistic doesn’t exist, though. Just because we know the reasons doesn’t mean it ISNT a problem.
You still haven’t responded to this:
I know this is anecdotal but I feel like Mercy mains tend to become toxic once they hit Plat+.
Then it all starts ‘oh no, we got X hero, gg… Switch please or we loose…’
And yes I am speaking from experience of meeting one person like that…
Until he was plat it was all ok… But when he got plat… Man oh man. He was more toxic than Chernobyl reactor 4 ever was…
edit: Well ‘tend to’ may be a bad wording… But if they get toxic that is the point where the toxicity is coming out of them. Before that it is hard to find toxic Mercy (but I am sure you can)
I edited it TO respond to that, but I didn’t necessarily know that you were waiting on a response 
The compensation nerf for the healing changes were the reducing of its healing over 50% and the removal of her passive healing, specially during Valk.
The Mercy changes were a net nerf for Mercy’s intended gameplan as a triage healer Mercy.
There are shorter ways to say ‘‘I dont play mercy and I havent paid attention to anyone that plays them’’ because GA is the most integral part of Mercy’s gameplay and the one that holds most of her skill expression.
Mercy does not have her primary damaging fire as a regular part of her gameplay and as thus the closest thing to a reload in her normal gameplay is GA’s cooldown.
Regardless, the comparison to make here is that adding a second to a part of a hero meant to be used constantly with high frequency and availability is a massive change that cant be dismissed even if its a second.
Mercy as anything but a pocketbot has been utterly nerfed into the ground.
Well sure. But again it is not a problem with ‘Mercy mains community’ it is a problem with ‘this game players community’.
And I think we all here agree that toxicity should be fought with all tools that are available to us. No matter what sub-community that player is from.
The anti Mercy’s are just as bad. People were spamming the forums with sexism when they were damanding nerfs, and then when the mercy’s got toxic back they used it to say Mercy players were worse.
They would literslly post “mercy players are braindead” and say something sexist, then go " see mercy players false flagged us, so toxic!!!"
Doesnt seem very fair, does it?
I am sorry but pulling that card is absurd when Mercy haters literally got my post pointing out how 1 second is a lot in this game false flagged and deleted.
Which got me suspended here for a week so the best you can get is a mutual ‘‘modding here sucks’’.
Most anti Mercy posts eventually (or to start) devolved into calling Mercy mains ‘‘boosted e-girls cosplaying and roleplaying angel waif’’.
Most pro-Mercy posts were calm explanations of how bad the changes were for non-pocket Mercy players, sugarcoated so haters like AKJ wouldnt throw a fit and start with woman hating tirades.
Agreed with this. “Hey, let’s keep pushing the narrative that a specific group is toxic, that’ll definitely not have any repercussions down the line.” All they’re doing is validating hate against Mercy mains as a whole, basically giving people who hate on them the thumbs up.
Nowwww that’s just not true. It’s pretty unanimously agreed upon that Mercy is in fact stronger now than she was before (even creators like Niandra have stated this) and that the only thing negatively impacted by these changes was her fluidity.
I literally posted my career profile up earlier in the thread.
If your proposed change went through, it would absolutely kill Tracer. These mercy changes, on the other hand, did not kill Mercy.
Mercy’s skill expression has been preserved, the only difference now being that you can’t be as risky.
The fact that you’re comparing these mercy changes to absolutely GUTTING tracer is very entertaining to me.
She is stronger than she was before.
The only thing you cited was from Mercy mains flagging posts, which is a misnomer because a lot of posts just deserved to be flagged. There were a lot of troll posts and a lot of downrite hateful posts(these were the ones I flagged). Some of the comments got extremely nasty on borderline posts too, which led to those being removed. This led to people being leniant with the flag button. I don’t think this is comparable to the genuine toxicity and trolling that was done against Mercy mains.
There are also people who flagged posts who weren’t Mercy mains and pretended like it was Mercy mains. There’s a lot of trolls on the forums who literally exist to stir the pot. Some even have countless alts they’ve used in the past to single handedly stop people from posting.
if you take anything from my reply please let it be this part:
Also, no, I won’t agree to disagree on this. This guilt by association attitude and generalization of mains is one of the things that completely killed online gaming for me.
When I played League I was treated like garbage as well as had other generalizations and even hate speech made against me because I mained enchanters(basically the Mercy equivalent in that game).
Then when I came back to OW I had the exact same thing happened, but because I liked playing Mercy. This attitude should not exist, period, and leads to hate.
I get that this isn’t your intention. But this is the eventual outcome of the attitude.
I am wondering how much of those flags where actually from haters to actually push that narrative… Since there were posts that were not like that not flagged for days, and when we pointed it out saying ‘hey, here here and here… There are no insults against us so no flags’ those post were flagged within few hrs (-;
Yes, it is border lining a conspiracy, but I’d like to see some stats some day. Preferably when the dusts settles.
Mercy as a pocketbot might be stronger because that is her only allowed gameplay it seems. This applies even double to e-celebrities who live in a closed circle of high rank games where pocketing is all there is.
I am sure they could adapt. Most of the heroes in the game learned to deal with far more crippling nerfs.
After all, its just a second. You just will have to learn to be less risky 
For pocketing.
For everything else she is weaker. Battle Valk is basically dead and that alone is a massive nerf to Mercy’s ultimate.
To be honest, I think the whole “who’s more toxic” game is a very silly one to play in an online game like OW, and I do apologize if my indifference on the matter is contributing to that echo chamber.
I will stand by the fact that, per my observations, several anti-mercy threads were falsely flagged (yes, even perfectly fine ones), and several “mercy crusades” have already occurred on these forums before (like when she got her rework).
But you’re right that this is mostly due to strength in numbers. Don’t mean to negatively reflect on all mercy players at all, and I don’t think painting it as an issue specific to groups of people is fair. I retract some of my statements from before 
I will also the say the same for the other end of the spectrum - I think that Mercy mains aren’t the only ones who experience toxicity on such a wide scale (flashbacks to Roadhog mains)
I’m so glad you can settle on eating crumbs and living in a cardboard box.
I too can eat crumbs and live in a cardboard box. Unlike you though I’m not going to paint a picture of “This is fine- and learn to adapt”.
Mercy to me is the worst she has ever been. I’m expecting nerfs down the road on her amplified healing… im no fool.
This new literation of Mercy is bad all around.
I ask to not be associated with Aria Rose, and all of the clownery of ‘#ReowrkMercy’ movement…
Thank you
I completely agree. This isn’t a Mercy specific issue. There are aspects that are Mercy specific, but the attitudes as a whole aren’t Mercy specific, not are the negative effects.
Or even Overwatch specific.
Or even gaming specific.
It’s just something, like toxicity in general, that gets amplified by being online. This in group and out group narrative. It’s easier for a lot of people to forget the humanity behind people online, and it’s even easier if you apply a label to them.