Brig is back... Goodbye mercy

General Discussion
135

Again. I did but that is two days so far… That is way less than reliable.

You are right if we talk about GM only, but back then GOATS were only being played at top 500 not even at high masters was that played, so OVERALL (across all ranks), she was far more than a decent pick.

Take Brig for instance, even when she was “meta” during these past few months, she was basically only played at GM. Pickrates showed that.

She was considered a sub par healer below GM, and we can debate all we want but numbers told us that.

Even right now, she is a subpar healer across every rank , getting only attention at ranks with far more coordination, a problem that healers like Mercy, Ana, Moira, Lucio do not suffer from :man_shrugging:

Literally only Zen, and specially Bapt and Brig have this “problem” that is actually not a problem per se but the fact that they work in certain situations/ranks and on the right hands.

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No she wasn’t she was outpicked by Ana and Moira etc.

I can do this all day, I spent 2 years watching Mercy’s stats after her HPS nerf. She was a bad healer even in low ranks.

But yet again…none of that matters!

Because the Devs balance. around. masters. GM. and OWL.

Hog and Genji and Brig both reached near 100% pickrate in GM, Hog statistically surpassed 100% during his meta which doesn’t make sense unless different players were swapping onto him between rounds I guess.

Yet she had the highest winrate of other supports in those ranks and people were one tricking her from gold to GM.

Low ranks never know what’s strong. Winston was the least picked tank in low ranks in dive. Tracer was picked less than Soldier and Junk etc. back when she was OP in dive. They didn’t run Bunker or GOATs or Double sniper. The pickrates and perceptions from those ranks hold very little meaning.

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I mean those healers were being picked more often than Mercy in high ranks but again not across every single one.

We can debate all day but you are acting as if all the players below GM have never even existed.

Just GM and OWL. Masters is and can be quite different from GM.
Also, they have just started to balance around GM because if you take out the last 5-6 months the game was clearly being balanced around OWL only.

True but for such short amount of time compared to that of Mercy.

I mean we cannot selectively pick only winrates or pickrates, we need to see both.
Zen had really high winrates on lower ranks, DF too, Sym as well, among others, that is not indicative of anything if they are being played by a minuscule portion of the player base.

We can agree on lower ranks being a mess when it comes to picks and such but still we can’t just omit all that info or opinions because reasons. After all that is the large majority of the player base.

Heck, I can mention multiple GM, streamers, etc who have literally said the most stupid things when it comes to balance because they are extremely biased.

That is why, back then when I was still playing on season 20 I came to realize there was not real incentive to keep doing it (at least competitive mode). The game was so messed up by then that it was more than clear a lot of people did not deserve to be masters let alone GM, but they were there due to the massive wave of players who left the game, including streamers, pros, etc.

So I joined the leaving train as well.
It is only after the recent patches that I am considering coming back, and even then I am unsure to do it so due to the obnoxious waiting times as healer :man_shrugging:
DPS is even worse and almost all my friends have left the game so I don’t have a second tank to play with.

138

Not necessarily. The majority of Overwatch’s player base are DPS players. Why wouldn’t they want to appeal to the majority of their players before all else?

139

I don’t think the devs even balance at just GM. They probably balance around 4.2k+ low GM and mid-high GM/OWL is completely different from 4k and 4.1k. Masters is not consistent enough for it to be reliable on which heroes are dominating the meta. Some players in Masters play heroes completely off meta, and still win games. It’s just not a good place to look when trying to balance the game. Low GM up until around 4200 feels like Masters players if they got better gaming chairs. If I’m being honest, I wish they’d only stick to balancing the game off of players from the OWL and ignore GM completely. There have been instances where players playing off meta heroes have climbed fairly high past mid GM despite not playing meta. Because an individual is good at the game doesn’t mean the hero necessarily is, and the best way to determine which heroes are the strongest and not which players are the strongest is going straight to those who play this game at the highest level and see it as their job.

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140

Good, I’d rather have a Brig meta, than Mercy’s leeching off hitscans.

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No they literally were more picked than Mercy in every rank except Bronze I believe.

No they literally said masters, GM, and OWL. But yes obviously masters is looked at less than the other two.

It’s not an assumption it’s what they told us a month and a half ago. Just repeating their words. :slight_smile:

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Pretty sure they said GM and OWL only though.
if you can show me the source I will gladly concede this one.

And as someone already pointed out, it is really complicated to balance around GM since even in such “narrow” group you have GREAT SKILL variations.

143

Nope

"well there are about 200 pros and 50 million casuals… but we both know you’re not asking for that percentage breakdown =]

we listen to everyone’s feedback. it’s all important. when it comes to balance, we primarily balance the game around owl, gm/masters." -Jeff Kaplan

It’s from the Reddit AMA documented under Wyoming’s post:

I don’t think they should really look at masters at all tbh, but that’s just me echoing what he said.

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Damn then that is even more confusing because masters and GM are literally not even close to each other (maybe they are now due to the lack of players though).
Thanks for this one.

Yep I agree here.

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Zenyatta outshines Mercy though. Discord orb, Trans, high damage output… Mercy should be the weakest support in any case. Brigitte is an anti-dive support, which is must needed against dive. Mercy is good in double snipers because she’s a pocket healer. I wouldn’t want a pocket healer to be stronger than an anti-dive healer. Mercy doesn’t need to be crazy strong to get the job done. She damage boosts a DPS, heals when necessary, rezzes a teammate, and then uses Valkyrie for mass damage boost or healing. Mercy has mobility, and unless heavily focused or shot in the head by a Widowmaker, fairly difficult to kill. Brigitte on the other hand, I’d say needed the health buff. If you have a Winston, DVa/Ball, Genji, Tracer, etc. diving your team, it’s important that the best anti-dive support doesn’t die immediately. If every one in the dive focused the Brig, she’d stand no chance and would perish immediately. With the Brig dead, they’re essentially free to do whatever they want and win the team fight. That just goes to show the value of killing supports. Giving Brig 25 HP more to prevent her from instantly dying was necessary. She’s still killable, but she doesn’t die instantly. Brigitte is the only support in the game who pretty much NEEDS to be on the front line or near it to contribute more than repair packs to her team. Moira in some way is comparable though since Moira spends most of her time with the tanks in the middle of the team and needs to damage to recharge, but Moira has great healing output, fade, heal orb, etc. so I’m not going to compare the two. If Brigitte (unless during a meta where Brig just sits with Ana and protects her) is on the frontline, she’s essentially breaking rule 1 of playing Support; stay safe. It doesn’t matter if there’s a barrier, as there are plenty of heroes and abilities that don’t affect barriers. Playing Brigitte was so problematic with her health nerf because of the fact that she could never trigger inspire without putting herself in a completely vulnerable position. The second you were pushed up with your frontline on Brig, you’d instantly be deleted UNLESS you were a professional Brig player. The average Brig player would pretty much die every time. At that point, Brigitte was only strong at sitting AFK in the backline with Ana or sometimes Zenyatta and then whipshotting any one who tried to attack them. She contributed nothing to her team, and that is the worst state a hero could be in. Brigitte was easily replaceable by a Zenyatta (sits in the backline with Ana but can still actually contribute to the team with discord/heal orb), Lucio (speedboost, amp and boop. He can peel quickly), and Mercy (strong single target healing against most heroes unless burst damage, GA, rez if needed). Dive was coming back into play for a little while after Hog/Zarya, and with Brig being nerfed there wasn’t really any way to counter it besides good peeling. Brig is just not what people think she is. She is niche. She practically needs to be playing with a barrier. Her healing is okay, but it’s not anything to complain about. Her ultimate isn’t the best support ultimate, but it is still fairly strong, though it’s been nerfed in the past aswell. Personally, I am one who just likes the action. Unfortunately for me sitting with a DPS holding right click and then switching to left click when necessary was not very fun for me. I played a good chunk of Ana during that meta aswell, though most times I was forced to play Mercy. Bunker comp is not fun either, and Brig is in no way the most fun hero the play, but at least you feel like you’re contributing something to the team while playing her. I never feel like I’m contributing a lot to the team playing Mercy as damage boost isn’t really that hard to apply. I do sincerely apologize to you if you are a Mercy main, since I understand not being able to play your main or the hero you’re most confident on can be frustrating, but that’s just how the game works unfortunately. I don’t have a main necessarily, as I try my best to flex between pretty much all supports, but both Mercy and Brigitte are at the bottom of my list on supports I like to play. Neither of them make me feel proud playing. I feel scummy playing Brigitte, and can’t help but feel like I’m being carried playing Mercy. I have no bias for Brigitte as she’s made this game hell since her release, but she is in no way broken right now. The meta changes. It has been that way since I can remember. Not every meta involves every hero. How do you think main tanks feel? We’re still recovering from a series of metas where one of the most important part of your team, a main tank, wasn’t viable. I feel support is one of the easiest roles to flex with. Obviously we all have our best and worst heroes in each role, but I also find it’s easiest to know how to play each support hero to some extent especially if it’s your primary role. Also, please don’t think just because pro players are playing Brig, or people are saying she’s the best hero, that you need to play her. Unless you’re GM for the most part meta doesn’t even matter. Play Mercy if she’s what you want to play. Remember Mercy hasn’t changed since she was meta. She’s still strong, and hell, even if she wasn’t, you can play off meta heroes and still get out of most ranks anyways. Play the hero you want to play, you bought the game out of your own wallet. It’s only at Masters where you should even start thinking about meta and what hero to play. Enjoy Overwatch.

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I don’t think just because it was said 100% confirms it to be true… How do you think they community would react if they said they only looked at OWL players to determine the meta? Pretty much every one would feel excluded and be upset at Blizzard and think they don’t care about making the game fun for them. Now, I don’t know for sure since they may balance from Masters+, but to me it just seems like high GM and OWL. By saying they also balanced from Masters made people more understanding since that’s the rank that you’re considered ‘decent’ at the game. If you play the game at masters, you’re not terrible at the game, but there’s still much to learn about the game and to improve on. I wouldn’t count on Blizzard to determine the meta and how to change it from players who can’t consistently play at the highest levels at the game. Even low GM isn’t consistent enough. Hell, I could be wrong here though. They may look at Masters as a final conclusion to know which heroes to change. If they do look at low GM and masters, I’m sure they just look at the OWL players and see what they’re playing and what heroes are consistently being played in their matches, and then look at the hero statistics for Masters to see if there are any common heroes being played the most in both ranks.

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Mercy still gets played with some Dps, gets picked over Brig on some maps and is the best Support for Hog comps, she still gets used a ton even in pro play and in ranked anyway

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What am I doing here? Let me tell you about a little post called the Symmetra Golden Glove Megathread.

Back in March 2019, I remember it well. The year was last year. I was tying an onion to my belt because it was the style at the time…

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It’s either all supports are ‘aggressive supports’ or none are. If you mean aggressive support as a support who’s supposed to flank the enemy and get gold damage, I don’t think any are designed for that. Mercy is in fact fairly aggressive with tempo rezzes (Rezzing some one instantly to keep a snowball going without losing it’s momentum), damage boosting and pocketing a DPS (because she’s focused on damage while doing that), and even Valkyrie is one of the best support ultimates for being aggressive with mass damage boost, or even her infinite ammo blaster if you really wanted to.

Mercy doesn’t need peeling because she’s able to consistently rely on her passive healing to heal her. She’s not like Ana who needs to rely on her nade for self healing, Brigitte and Moira who need to rely on damage or healing orb for Moira, Baptiste who needs to rely on his regenerative burst, or Zenyatta who needs to rely on his shields to recharge. The only support who’s comparable to Mercy on the level of self sustain is Lucio. Mercy doesn’t need to use a cooldown or ability to heal herself, as after 1 second of not taking damage she’s able to begin healing herself. For that reason, Mercy is able to in fact make aggressive plays without having to worry about using a cooldown knowing she just has to hide for a few seconds to be back up to full HP or near it. At the end of the day though, Mercy is still a support. She needs to be healed and shouldn’t rely too much on her self healing. Don’t think just because you’re playing Mercy you don’t need to be healed. I think Supports are the most important member on a team to take a health pack (other than Tracer and Wreckingball, sometimes other dive heroes), even if it’s Lucio or Mercy. Supports can heal their injured teammates, but those injured DPS and Tank can’t really heal their supports unless they’re playing Soldier or in some cases Sombra (or Echo if she duplicates a healer). I understand your comment said she is not meant to need much peeling, which on paper is true, but this bit of my comment was simply meant to show that what goes on paper doesn’t always transfer to an in-game environment.

Mercy is in the top 3 for best peel supports. Is Brig really better for peeling? It depends. Let’s say you’re defending first point of Volskaya on Brigitte. Your second support, Ana, is playing somewhere on the high ground above Mega. Let’s say enemy Sombra sneaks past your team and hacks Ana and begins shooting her. You, on Brigitte, are playing in between point by the crates and near your tanks which are playing from the main choke. Let’s say there are no comms meaning your Ana does not ask for help over voice chat (since every team is different and you can get Ana players who don’t ask for help over voice on Mercy but do on Brig allowing for a better peel, and vise versa). As Brigitte, you are probably distracted healing your frontline or triggering inspire, but you hear Ana’s voice line when she’s being attacked, or you hear Sombra decloak or hear her shots. You turn around to help your Ana, but from your position, it’s VERY hard to throw her a repair pack without her jumping down. If Ana jumps
down, you heal her and more than likely Sombra translocates away. For both scenarios, I will say Ana doesn’t jump down. You probably manage to throw her a repair pack before she breaks LoS and you go upstairs. You heal Ana and do enough damage to Sombra to force her to translocate away. Ana survived, but it was a long time where your team was receiving no healing and it’s possible another teammate died in between.

Now, same exact position with Mercy. As soon as you hear the Sombra voice lines or Ana’s voice line for when she’s taking damage, If you’re playing in the same spot as Brigitte, it’s very possible you won’t find an angle to GA or heal Ana and will need to walk up the stairs aswell. In that case, Ana would probably be dead since she hadn’t gotten the extra bit of healing, but if she’s not, Mercy can out heal Sombra’s damage and force her to translocate away. But, here’s the thing. Mercy is flexible enough to not need to play pushed with her team. If she’s across the point on the ledge by the mini pocketing a DPS, she’d be able to fly straight to Ana and get there much quicker. Even if she was playing by her team like Brig in this scenario, there’s still a way to super jump off of one of her teammates and get to Ana much quicker as well. Now, I’m not going to give another scenario where Brig may be more ideal, but this was just to show it’s never set in stone which support is better at what; especially when it comes to peeling. If Ana was closer to her team or playing low ground, Brigitte would be able to keep inspire on her team while helping Ana, so probably would be better than Mercy and have neither healers focused on healing. Brigitte doesn’t need to be healing to actually heal which would be important if Ana was playing closer to the team or if Brigitte was playing with Ana, but Mercy is able to get into tons of different locations where Brig can’t without wasting time getting there.

Comparing current Brig with current Mercy is like comparing dogs and cats. Both do different things, and both are better or worse depending on team composition and overall team positioning. Neither Brig or Mercy is significantly better than the other. They both have weaknesses (Mercy doesn’t do well in comps without ideal damage boost targets like Pharah, Ashe, Hanzo, Soldier, etc. aswell as comps that are grouped together like brawl and bunker unless played with a Bastion, whereas Brigitte doesn’t play very well when every one is spread out, and doesn’t do well when the enemy play from a distance), and they both have many strengths as well.

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girl- log out ⁿᵉᵉᵈ ²⁰

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Because it makes game dull and boring, reducing it to little more, than pew-pew contests.

And Mercy has to be strong to get job done - otherwise her targets just die and do not achieve anything. She got good survivability for herself, but can’t do much to save her teammates, besides healing, which isn’t enough.

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She’s a pocket healer. She’s not meant to do a crazy amount of healing. She has enough healing to keep a DPS alive which is her job lol. She is strong as a pocket healer, not as a primary support. You haven’t been able to play Mercy as a main healer since her nerfs. If you try to play her as a main healer, you’re not playing her correctly. She’s not designed to output a large quantity of healing, she’s meant to stay with the DPS and keep them alive and damage boost them. Even if you play Mercy with Lucio, Zen or Brig, Mercy is still not a main support, though she would be the primary source of healing. If you finish gold healing with Mercy, something is wrong on your end 99% of the time. Most times Mercy players spend their whole time pocketing tanks and healing constantly they neglect their second support and demolish their ultimate economy. I see Mercy players say they always get gold healing on Mercy as an argument to say Mercy is a good main healer, but most times Mercy can outheal Ana since she has a consistent burst healing whereas Ana has to reload, etc. If you always get gold, you aren’t damage boosting enough unless you only got gold because your second healer is an off healer aswell or the second healer wasn’t healing. Mercy doesn’t need more than she has. She has mobility, sustain, single target healing, damage boost, and rez. If that isn’t strong… She’s fine as is. Mercy can save the DPS she’s pocketing and her other support aslong as she’s peeling. Most comps with Mercy played with a main healer means Mercy shouldn’t ever be healing tanks unless absolutely necessary. She doesn’t need 70 hps pocketing 200 hp targets.

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Sorry, there is no such role in team game. Either you are main healer, or off-healer - in both cases, you are working with whole team.

As for neglecting second support - I won’t lead enemies towards second support.

You can’t keep DPS alive, they are too fragile.

154

Mercy is an off healer. She has more utility to her kit and her kit isn’t surrounded by healing. She doesn’t have a ton of healing because she’s not meant to be constantly healing. She has enough utility to make up for her lack of heals. Most team compositions where you’d run Mercy as main heals is a team composition you shouldn’t run Mercy at all. Mercy is meant to be played with snipers or DPS with consistent damage like Ashe, Pharah, Hanzo, Soldier, etc. If you have a Sombra and a Tracer as DPS, Mercy would be a throw pick. Mercy should only ever be played when she is guaranteed value from damage boost. That’s sort of how off healers work. They’re niche and situational. Main healers work a tad bit differently though. To pick the right main healer, you’d need to look at which tanks you have and which hero would be easiest to heal said tanks. If it’s dive, go Ana for heals. If it’s brawl, go Moira for heals, etc. As for off healers, they are usually picked based off of ultimates like Zenyatta against grav or blade, etc. Obviously meta determines which heroes are strongest, but at most ranks in the game people play whatever they want so it’s not always about meta in the end. Here’s the funny thing though, Mercy isn’t a main healer because she’s only single target healing and best played pocketing a DPS, yet she doesn’t necessarily have a defensive ultimate either. This is why she’s considered a pocket healer. She can’t save your team from a grav, and she can’t save a crazy Reinhardt who charges into the enemy team either. Mercy is just meant for pocketing DPS, it’s how she was designed. She peels, she pockets. What’s wrong with that though? Why get offended just because people are calling Mercy a pocket healer when that’s literally what she is? If you don’t think Mercy is good, then don’t play her. If you want to heal a lot play Ana or Moira, if you want to do damage play Zenyatta, etc. Mercy is situational and all about team composition. If she doesn’t work in the team comp, it’s necessary to swap. She’s not the most mechanically demanding hero and brain dead Mercy players have been climbing the ladder for as long as I can remember. Why should Mercy be the strongest hero when she’s the easiest to get value with? She takes skill in other places like positioning, game sense, ult tracking, communication, etc. but mechanically not so much. I don’t think a hero who doesn’t take a lot of mechanical skill deserves to be as strong as you think she should be. She’s fine as she is. Play other heroes if you think Mercy is bad. She’s not meta anymore anyways, perfect time to not play Mercy.