While I would prefer larger changes like resurrect going back to Mercy’s ultimate, I would like to put some ideas for smaller changes out on the table for discussion. There are parts of Mercy’s current kit that too often go under-used, and I believe both the fun of playing her and the skill required could be improved by redistributing her power budget among her already existing abilities. Now that Mercy’s healing beam has been nerfed, there is already room for a small buff to bring her back up to the power level of the other supports.
Mercy’s blue beam currently provides only 30% extra damage for one ally. For many heroes, that 30% extra damage per shot does not have any effect on the number of shots required to kill a target. Because it doesn’t always produce tangible results, it is generally not worth using damage boost unless there is nobody left for Mercy to heal. In any situation where there is actual competition between blue beam and yellow beam, yellow beam nearly always wins. The healing nerf didn’t change that, all it did was force Mercy to spend more time healing.
Mercy’s blue beam needs a buff. There needs to be a compelling reason to use it when yellow beam is also an option. If you want to look at it another way: a Mercy using yellow beam should not always win against an enemy Mercy using blue beam when their McCrees are dueling.
There are two ways I can think of to make blue beam a compelling option: buff the damage boost to 50% which allows McCree to one shot people, or add damage resistance to its effects to offset the lack of healing. A damage resistance of 35% would reduce Widowmaker’s headshots to 195 damage, for your reference. 25% is effective against Hanzo headshots.
I believe damage resistance would make blue beam a compelling option without making it feel overpowered, and finally give Mercy more meaningful decisions to make during standard gameplay. It would also make Mercy a more reliable counter to high burst damage, adding to her niche role that resurrect currently isn’t quite enough to fill.
With this change, the most effective Mercy players would need to carefully manage their beam choices using their allies’ health as a resource, just like Moira managing her healing resource but with a significantly more tangible risk.
You’re a healer. You should be using the healing beam more. Damage boost is just to melt down targets faster, not to get off insanely stupid combos and make everything a one shot ability.
While it doesn’t sound like Mercy need a buff, and if she ever was I don’t think buffing her damage boost is the way to make her fun again, I think you’re wrong about the use of the damage boost.
Sometimes, or rather quite often, it’s better to help your DPS kill someone off so they won’t take anymore damage, than to heal that person. Especially now that Mercy’s healing is nerfed you may actually be a more efficient healer by either shooting or boosting to prevent damage from ever being taken, than to heal someone.
This entire paragraph is bad. Widow will become useless, and/or Mercy will be a must pick again for the possibility to get one shot headshots off. We don’t need a support who basically acts as a second rate of fire or extra health by holding down right click
Pharmercy is easier to take down with Mercy’s now lower healing. While 35% damage resistance would make it harder to take Pharah down in one shot, it would not protect Pharah against sustained damage.
If the best counter to Pharmercy then becomes Bastion instead of Widowmaker, all the better for console players where Pharmercy is actually good. Pharah is kind of hard to run at high rank on PC, especially with the hitscan range buff and Mercy’s low healing.
Also keep in mind that as a counter to Pharah, Mercy’s blue beam would affect Pharah’s ability to kill her targets quickly with two direct hits. The blue beam damage resist buff would apply to all of Mercy’s pockets, including Pharah counters like McCree and Widowmaker.
Lastly, if 35% is too much, the value of the damage resist could be lowered. Even with 30% damage resist, Widowmaker could still one shot a Pharah.
There are ways to address the problems you may have with this damage resist idea without totally throwing it out the window like Blizzard did with Mercy’s Resurrect ultimate.
Didn’t she receive a healing nerf because a main healer was apparently healing too much. Bahaha
Doesn’t other healers also heal and deal damage to enemies? Mercy’s only way of damaging enemies is through damage boost. Without it she would just be a healing lamp post. While in ult she would be a flying healing chandelier. I’d rather have an LED feature at times to spice things up with a blue light you know what I mean?
I will not, because listing it as an option serves a useful purpose. It illustrates the idea that buffing Mercy’s damage boost value further would cause problems, but that there are other ways to buff Mercy’s blue beam. I’ll change the post title for clarity.
I like this idea in theory but can imagine with certain synergies it would be absolutely busted. Damage boosted Genji can instagib 200 HP characters while blading, and the only thing that balances that is that he can be instakilled by snipers himself. Removing his weakness to that on a base ability with no cooldown would probably break the combo. Nanoblade is already iffy to me tho because of that lack of weakness, but at least you’re paying two ults to do that.
I think isolated problems like that should be solved by changing what actually causes the problem. Removing Genji’s Swift Strike animation cancel and compensating him by restoring his old 8-second ult timer would be good for a lot of reasons separate from the rest of this discussion, one of which is that Nanoblade is too powerful.
Damage boost is extremely strong. There are a number of situations where I will intentionally use damage boost even when other allies need healing. If you default to healing every ally you see, you’re not playing Mercy to her max potential.
It is very true that it’s significantly harder to find opportunities to damage boost after this nerf though
