Can we all just agree with one thing about Mercy?

I don’t want power creep in this game if they want to make mercy good again i will say nerf other healers rather than buffing her.

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She definitely has a design oriented around her healing capability. Why she needs to be a “main healer” as defined by the community, this fact does not prove. Mercy’s kit isn’t designed to be a main healer or an off healer – it’s designed to be Mercy’s kit. If the community decides, “At high level play and/or to maximize her effectiveness, Mercy does less team healing and focuses on pocketing heroes and recovering deaths,” then that’s how the community decides to use her.

Ultimately I just can’t see why characters, any hero at all, need to filter into such restrictive categories. If Mercy and Zen suddenly become meta, and they’re the go-to supports, are people really going to call Mercy an off-healer in that situation? Or if Zen and Lucio become meta, which one of them is the main healer? I know it’s hard to think of heroes this way because we’re so used to them fitting nicely into little roles, and by design these heroes do tend to sway towards these slots as either healing-prioritized or utility-prioritized. But what even makes any hero “meta” is so dependent on the rest of the atmosphere of the game. There are so many influences that can suddenly make heroes go from outcast to center stage without even getting into direct changes.

Sub-roles like the ones we’ve made only help us define characters after a meta has formed, after we know whether or not the synergies line-up into being a highly effective strategy. Blizzard doesn’t focus on balancing heroes into these sub-roles because of this, and instead focuses on making heroes unique from one another while still contributing similar values to their team.

And for Mercy’s case, I think people need to accept that the strength of her healing has to come from its consistency and applicability, as long as Mercy has all the things that make Mercy, well, Mercy. Frankly, she shouldn’t be allowed to have high raw healing output if her primary method of distributing that healing is through a tether beam that can’t be interrupted and requires no significant aim. And the moment we want to branch away from that, such as suggesting other methods of healing or adding healing abilities, we have to start asking lots of questions about the rest of her kit, which in turn intrudes on her identity. Do we want Mercy to be who she is, with the unique characteristics that she has? … Or do we all just want to play Moira, but call her Mercy? This is what bugs me about so many fan-suggested Mercy changes, so many either want Mercy to be as she is – but flat-out stronger at no cost, they only care about how powerful she is, or they want Mercy to have a totally different kit with entirely different design philosophies.

I want Mercy to be what she is now, an adaptable healer with a team-oriented kit and the mobility to enable all of that. I do not care if at high levels of play, we all decide to call her an off healer or a main healer or a gamma ray. I’m far more concerned with how healthy she is as a character and what fun can be had from her kit, and then as secondary concerns, I would worry about where she belongs in the meta, and whether that role truly speaks to her design. If she’s still Mercy as we know her, but arbitrarily called an off healer because someone else is pumping out more healing on her comps, then I’m more than fine with that. It’s more important that Mercy is unique and playable than that she directly compete for being better at making health bars move right. At least, in my opinion.

This is true! which is why ana and moira and bap can significantly out heal her in fights - even when she did have 60hps. It was only over the course of an entire match did she get more healing overall but she didn’t have strong healing at the right times which moira and ana have.

60hps wouldn’t change this. It would just enable her to heal quicker in more difficult fights where healing is needed. Keep in mind her healing has always and always will be single target. Mercy would be able to main heal again and not necessarily replace ana moira but she would then be a viable alternative to the two

Thats probably because you play on console, where you can get away with Mercy as a main healer since the ttk is much longer and people whiff shots much more often.

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After what i estimate to be around 3 dozen attempts at console shaming by you, I have started counting. This would be console shaming attempt number 2+3D

The games are the same - same name, same heroes, same maps, same modes, same etc etc etc

Also: console players are not lesser in any way shape or form than PC players

They arent, they are balanced differently, have different metas, and the controls are vastly different to where playing on a mouse and keyboard on console is seen as such a huge advantage the developers want to remove the ability for players to do so and using a controller on pc is basically throwing.

The game is very different between the platforms and optimal strategies are different as a result.

If it was the same, controller wouldnt need aim assist.

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Thats the main issue with mercy though. Shes a single target healer that has nothing to stop her from healing. Buffing her is a lot less attractive to the dev team because mercy is so consistent on the healing. Hold left click, heal a target forever, if you buff her healing then suddenly it’s heal at a oppressive rate forever. My worry is that they want to keep mercy where she is and not expand her kit because she’s an entry level healer, but that is just speculation. The problem with mercy in my opinion is her consistancy. Ana heals the most, yet her healing is the least consistant. The healers with the most consistancy heal the least zen, mecry, lucio (even though his overall output is high.) The issue is because of this consistancy mercy’s output nets her high healing numbers, yet the max you can get out of her is less than ana or moira because of their inconsistancy and ability to make plays.

You want mercy to heal, you have to first lower her healing output conistancy and then raise the maximum output. As she is right now she heals 50 regularly and 60 on an ult.
Drop the consistant healing to 40 but then add a condition that the mercy player has to reach in order to get that juicy 60 healing. I’ve allways said she should have 40hps and then boost it to 60 for a second after she gaurdian angels to a target or resurrects a target, but only if its not the same target. And this isn’t the only idea. People have said give her a healing boost on the reload button.
Ultimately she needs more to her, ressurect needs to have some additional downside so the devs can bring down the cooldown otherwise the gameplay isn’t there for mercy. Because like it or hate it she is balanced, her consistancy is the area of her that is drawing away from her potential and fun. Ditch that and then mercy can be fun and engaging without being oppressive and can retake the main healing spot.
I understand the opinion that she just needs buffs because all the other healers are better but I’m with blizzard, she does have the most consistent output and that has to change or else she is stuck where she is.

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I would like this as than they could make supports about more than just healing, currently healing is so necessary they can’t have supports like old symmetra, which is a shame as it really limits what a support can do.

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60 HPS is unlikely going to happen, also modding the way her HPS functions through gain and decrease could affect gameplay feel as this may dissuade those in charge from making it.

Right now she is reaffected by the fact that you can go Moira and Ana and get comparable healing done with them so long as you can use them. Mercy herself has little to no reward or impact making it dull to play

It’s not even about Healing, even if you can heal… it’s really boring to play her, no chance of PoTG, no change of a game changing alt, no chance to be recognised for your efforts and just pure discrimination for being a Mercy and being undeserving for your skills.

60 HPS or not, Moira and Ana’s problem is that they have to be high enough to force people off of Mercy and onto them as she became a we need a support, let’s pick Mercy and was always the first choice for any support player. Also their values are high enough that they compete with Mercy meaning if you run Ana/Mercy or Moira/Mercy you have a battle of Healing Done which directly conflicts with Mercy’s ult gain.

Actually this is a thing… a lot of people don’t realise this but Supports generally get their Ultimates through the number of healing done, 60 HPS enabled Mercy to gain it quicker so long as Ana/Moira weren’t stealing heals from her… Ana being a tank healer primarily means she has access to a bigger pool of HP to gain ult from… Moira outputs higher than Mercy so she is in direct competition.

The less Healing Mercy does, the slower the ult gain… which is why a Dead Mercy is a Useless Mercy, if you could kill pre-rework Mercy and keep her dead, it could take over a minute to gain her Res ult and by then you have already dealt with 4 to 6 engagements.

So to enable to Mercy to heal at 60HPS to MAKE UP for the lack of Healing Moira and Ana does, you would have to nerf their healing.

Truth be told, 50 HPS isn’t an issue the issue is compensation… Resurrect was able to cover for 50HPS, if Mercy can’t keep the entire team alive, she has Res to undo it, but because 50HPS was designed for Mass Res, Skill Res is not suited for it plus the down sides to skill Res makes it difficult to pull off Res in the first place and often killed Mercy.

Because it was never their goal to make Mercy super viable, at the time a lot of people considered it a hard nerf and was praising that the witch was dead. The goal was to curb her pick rate and her reliance on Resurrect so that other healers could be picked and at least look interesting in OWL

She still is but she can’t compete with Ana and Moira, her situation is the exact same as before Ana got nerf, only difference is that she lacks res to cover her weak heals.

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There’s no point in buffing Mercy to be a main healer when you can just run Moira, do more healing with 50%+ less effort.

No sense in breaking a balanced hero to compete with someone who takes far less effort with greater/same pay-off.

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Isn’t this an oxymoron?

Not really. Mercy is balanced, I’d say the other isn’t.

Moira can’t even compete with Ana as she is. Doesn’t that mean Ana is OP too?

Probably. I’d be fine with a nerf to Ana tbh. I’d rather have a full rework for Moira too.

Its not? Even in low ranks she gets outhealed.
In GM she is worse than Bap, Ana and Moira by far and on par with Brigs healing

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Then I recommend you to check the stats again.
Both monthly and weekly stats shows a pretty close average healing per match.

If she is getting outhealed, then it’s only by a very small margin, which is not a bad thing. Mercy doesn’t has to be on the top of the charts after all.

By the Devs admission she is supposed to top the healing per game charts tho

Mercy’s previous healing output made her nearly irreplaceable in any team composition. Even after this change she will still be able to deliver more healing over the course of a match than any other support hero, but it should allow for other healers to be more viable.

sauce: Overwatch 2 - Patch Notes

If you’re sorting by average all ranks, Ana and Baps get hard sandbagged by low tiers.

Sorting by any timeframe at GM level play has Mercy averaging -2k hpg from Ana (who herself is about -2k from Moira) and +300-600 hpg from Brig.
In Gold any timeframe Mercy only averages about 300hpg more than Baps, he surpasses her in Plat.

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So were you gone the week in comp when they banned Moira AND Ana and Mercy was still the least picked support in GM by far?

Pls read this thanks:

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What? I didn’t say just ana and moira. I said mostly brig, but also ana, bap, and moira. Lucio might be considered really strong, but if he is - it’s not because his healing is crazy high.

If all healing except mercy, zen, lucio gets nerfed, I think mercy will see a lot more use.

That’s…so dumb though. They already nerfed Bap and Moira’s HPS by 20% even though they’d been fine since their release and now you wanna nerf them more? ??? Yeah let’s nerf all the healers even more even though most DPS are grossly powercrept and no one wants to queue tank or support. Uh huh.

Or we can just buff Mercy’s healing instead of trashing every other hero to force a bad healer (Mercy) into being played.

She needs more healing to not be an off healer. Nerfing other healers won’t suddenly make Mercy able to heal tanks. She’s not bad because other healers outhealer her, she’s bad because she CAN’T HEAL ENOUGH. Other main supports heal a normal amount, especially after their HPS nerfs, Mercy still can’t keep up when all she does it heal all game and these other healers do DPS. That’s pretty telling.

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