Changes to Make Mercy Wholesome

General Discussion
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After playing quite a bit of Mercy 2.0, and reading several books worth of Mercy Mains posts on here, I’ve decided to come forward with a proposition of my own.

First up, Mercy’s Ultimate. While I really love flying around the map and bringing to life my Battle Mercy fantasy, as a supportive ultimate Valkyrie is kinda bland. Now I am not saying that Valkyrie is a bad ultimate, but when you compare it to Resurrect, it’s not near as satisfying to use. I personally would love to see Resurrect return to Ultimate status with some changes.

There would almost definitely need to be a Line-of-Sight restriction on it to help prevent Hide-and-Rez, as well as making the cast time longer than before. I don’t think that Mercy should regain her invulnerability, but instead receive a CC immunity. These modifications will allow for Mercy to still keep a small bit of the skill on ult casts that her players loved, but not so much that it feels like a slap in the face of the opposing team.

I know this is a pretty much a meme at this point, but I do think that Valkyrie would be awesome as an E ability. It should grant Mercy about 6 seconds of flight, enhance Guardian Angel from 20 m/s to 25/ms (the current enhancement is 30 m/s) and increase Mercy’s
Caduceus Staff on about a 20 second cooldown. Instead of chain healing/boosting this change will simply enhance the amount of healing from 50hps to 70hps and enhance the boost from 30% to 35%. These changes allow for Mercy to increase her teamfight potential without making Valk feel like a discount Transcendence/portable Supercharger, add a bit of depth with the unlimited flight, and it will still fulfill the Devs image of Mercy as the go-to single-target healer

When it comes down it, I want Mercy to be in a state that is liked and enjoyed by not the OG Mercy mains, but those who love Mercy 2.0, and most importantly, those who have to play against Mercy. Have a great day everyone! (Especially you, Devs. You do your best to keep everyone happy :))

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Lovely suggestions, thank you for taking the time to write this. <3

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Dont really think she needs 70/hps and adding unlimited flight to E will make her problematic at lower ranks if she had mass rez on top of that.

Also giving her CC immunity would limit counterplay to killing only essentially which should never be considered the only counter.

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So my issue is with Valkyrie being an “E” ability. It would become a “run from ults” button, where you, for example, see Genji blading up ahead so you pop that button and fly up so high that even his dash doesn’t make it up there. People already freak over Mercy hopping around, escaping fire. This seems like it may be a bit too frustrating for the enemy team to take on.

Also, let’s say you got killed but the battle still rages on the point. You (as Mercy) simply have to pop that “E” and now you’re up above the walls and can GA to your teammates, rejoining the fight WAY faster than maybe even speed Lucio, depending on the map.

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I think that Resurrect should just be removed altogether. Here’s a video discussing an idea for a new ability that could replace Resurrect (by YouTuber Blame The Controller).

If you don’t want to watch the video, here’s the ability concept:

Miracle Worker
Type: Single target buff
Range: 30 meters (same as that of Guardian Angel)
Duration: 3 seconds (1 second longer than Zarya’s Projected Barrier) or until lethal damage is taken
Cooldown: 15 seconds (5 seconds longer than Zarya’s Projected Barrier)

Effect 1: Buff duration expires, and the target is healed for 100 HP.
Effect 2: Prevent death when target takes damage that would normally kill them and sets the target’s health to 50 HP.

Mercy places a spell on a targeted ally. This buff will trigger an effect after 3 seconds or when the target takes lethal damage.

If the buff expires with no lethal damage taken, the target is healed for 100 HP.

If the target takes lethal damage, death is prevented, and the target’s HP is set to 50 HP.

This is an ability that could save someone from death, regardless of the amount of damage taken, just like Zarya’s Projected Barrier. However, Mercy wouldn’t directly benefit from this like Zarya does, the cooldown would be longer, and the buff would also last a little longer as well. The target would also be healed.

If the target takes damage that would normally kill them, they don’t die and is instead immediately healed for 50 HP. If they don’t take any damage that would kill them during the three-second period, they are instead immediately healed for 50 HP.

Due to the long cooldown, Mercy players would have to prioritize when to use this ability, even more than Zarya players and Projected Barrier. She couldn’t just use it willy-nilly. If a target is saved from death, they are healed, but the amount that they are healed for is so low that they would need to be healed by Mercy or another healer afterwards; otherwise, they’d likely die right after the buff is over if the enemy is focusing them.

The reason I agree with this idea is that Resurrect is impossible to balance. It is the only ability in the entire game that affects dead players. This Miracle Worker ability would affect players in the battlefield. It would prevent someone’s death (or just heal them), rather than undoing their death.

If you think that this would be overpowered, don’t forget that Zarya has a similar ability that can save anyone from any amount of damage, even if it surpasses the health of Zarya’s Projected Barrier.

Here’s another long-winded post where I explained why Mercy is in a really bad state right now.

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Line of sight would not change anything, since Mercy was in LoS during the actual cast of Hide and Rez.

Lots of people dont seem to get this.

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Ok, I’ll admit that having both enhanced healing and unlimited flight would be too much. I think the flight can go, but I stand firm on her enhanced healing. I agree with the decision to drop Mercy’s base healing from 60hps to 50,as it did feel too strong at all times. 6 seconds may be too long, but being able to overcharge your staff for a short duration to save a teammate would definitely help her out

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You know, I bet we could get movement that’s as fun as Valkyrie by tweaking GA and the passive featherfall.

Guardian Angel:

Gets a third targeting option: contextual. It’s a hybrid of “guardian angel prefers beam target on/off” by enabling Mercy to fly to who she targets, but if no one’s there she flies to her beam target instead. It gives Mercy a lot more flexibility with GA, instead of having to choose between the benefits of each targeting mode.

The superjump bug is made official, and gets incorporated into the bunnyhop technique. Press jump during GA to cancel it into a bunnyhop. Press crouch during GA to cancel it into the superjump.

Passive featherfall:

Gets updated into a true glide. Mercy would be able to get between most platforms on her own with this, as well as being able to superjump up to high ground from further away.

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This would actually be interesting vs widowmaker aswell seeing as when applied to a hero it would essentially prevent death upon taking fatal damage so widow would hit the max damage headshot but wouldnt get the kill, she would have to work a bit harder.

The lower tiers would probably love this but upper? eh…we’d have to see.

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Thing is if you give her 70/hps where does that leave the rest of the supports? Mercy is a reliable single target healer in the sense of shes the only healer in game who can guarantee thier heal through everything.

Making that 70 per second on what’s essentially a 14 sec cooldown may push out some of the other healers in that regard.

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My suggestion would be Valk on E as you described, then ultimate being a single targeted res without cast time. It won’t be as powerful but that’s the price of having Valkyrie as a regular ability

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70 hps puts us right back to the Mercy/Zen meta where every other healer aside from those two is just basically throwing. No thanks on that.

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I dont think giving Mercy independant movement is a good idea that would make her too hard to get. Otherwise rez should definitely go back on Mercys ultimate.

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I would be OK with the heal beam being 55 or 60/s.

Also I have been thinking maybe they should just drop all pretense she is the TF2 Medic and remove rez for Uber and move that back to ult with Valkyrie moved to E ability a little nerfed (nor unlike Torb’s rework). For OW uber should probably be a bit shorter in duration than in TF2 to not be too OP.

1 Like