Even the way of playing Mercy Custa talks about, it’s not any different from the other supports. You can more comfortably shotcall BECAUSE she has less things to worry about, due to her insane mobility and lack of weaknesses.
Other supports have to worry about the exact same things, while also having to worry about a lot of other things Mercy doesn’t have to worry about in the meantime. Hence why it’s easier on Mercy.
I get that you like the character, which is fine.
But you’re trying to sugarcoat a turd here.
If Mercy is easy to play in the pro scene, someone should have told that to Dallas Fuel during the Inaugural season. The amount of times Harryhook has basically thrown himself into the enemy…
It’s almost poetic that the biggest whiners about Mercy earned their FuelsBadMan reputation partially because no one in there could play her correctly for the longest time.
Another thing is that all these aspects of being a main healer that supposedly make Mercy hard actually have nothing to do with her kit. You could just as easily have a Rein who shot calls and ult tracks, or maybe an Ana does that. That simply has to do with being a good teammate and nothing to do with Mercy being an easy or hard hero. Like when you break it down to the hero instead of the role, Mercy needs to worry about very basic things to be considered good: she has to make sure that she’s out of LoS when she stands still for rez, she has to damage boost when her team is full, and she has to keep LoS on teammates for escapes.
A Mercy that only damage boosts when the team is full is a suboptimal Mercy. Much like a Lucio who never speedboosts unless the team is already out of trouble is pretty useless.
She should damage boost when a DPS is using an ult or making a commited attack so they could get that bit of damage that allows them to kill-confirm. Mercy is a pick that will by default reduce the team’s overall damage. To deal with that, she needs to damage boost far more often than most Mercys actually do.
Deciding when that commited push is worth leaving some healing to the other healer may not be too difficult, but the wrong choice could result in a teamwipe. And simply staying on heal isn’t always the best option.
I made some shotcalls, if you’d call them that, last year, and it helped win matches.
I think the reason people overlook a good Mercy is because they don’t make mistakes that are blatantly obvious. I still make obvious mistakes, but that’s because I analyze myself after each match, and realize what I did wrong. I hopefully improve.
As far as “…Ana and Zen can!”, I’m not saying they can’t; they just have more survivability to worry about. It’s harder to callout and worry about others when you’re a sitting duck and have to worry about your own safety. It’s even harder to do in pubs. You can’t always assume your allies will have your back.
Zen and Ana can be just as good, if not better, at making shotcalls than Mercy, it just depends on the atmosphere and your allies.
Harryhook actually moved over to playing Zen most games while Custa was still on the team and he did better with that. He wasn’t great at positioning at the time, but he’s definitely gotten better at it. To be fair, he hadn’t had a lot of practice on Mercy then, like most pro players, because she wasn’t as viable in her 1.0 version.
Only thing OP about her is her VIABILITY in comps. She’s NEVER a bad pick in any comps. Not even Tank Metas since Valk provides the one thing she lacked, AoE heals (and is probably the only Comp where you can get good use out of the AoE).
Ana has her own burdens, which are also significant. They’re just different than Mercy’s. That doesn’t make Mercy’s challenges less significant. I’ll admit that the main thing that keeps from playing Ana is how hard it is for me to make all of my shots. I traded that burden for a strategic one because I’m better at that.
I agree with your post in general, but this part especially. I think this is why people instantly blame the Mercy if they die. “OMG where r muh healz?!?” all the while forgetting the dozens of times they were spared death that match because of that same Mercy.
It’s very easy to spot a good Mercy if she’s on the enemy team. Far more difficult if she’s an ally (unless she’s like … insanely good. XD) It’s the same for healers in WoW, tbh. Bad teams can make good healers look bad. Good healers can make bad teams look good. Same phrase applies to Mercy.
Anyway, yeah, I don’t main her, but I have played my fair share of the hero. It always annoys me when someone says she’s a no-skill hero. I just … facepalm. She’s a very easy hero to pick up, I don’t think anyone can deny that, but she’s very hard to survive on without practice.
In fact I think that’s the number one skill Mercy players learn first and foremost - survival. Similar to being new to Tracer, in a sense that when you first pick up the hero, you will die… a lot. A WHOLE lot.
I’ve watched GM DPS mains on YouTube play Mercy and they are absolutely terrible at it (Bazza is one example, but there are others). If she was a no-skill hero, they should have no problems. So yes, I’m a firm believer that she takes skill, but that skillset is just different.
Signed,
A DPS main. (Breakin’ dem stereotypes, yo.)
Everyone will defend their main hero, i can say winston takes lots of skills in order of win an disscussion. The reality is other Mercy, Winston, Moira, Brig take a lot less skilll than Mccree, Widow, Tracer, Ana and Zeny
I put a example:
Winston only need godly gamesense in order of be playable you need zero mechanical-skills
Mccree needs the brutal gamesense and godly mechanical skills to be playable. Everyone with a mininum of common sense, will understand this point
Seagull has commented on Mercy game play in the past as well. Basically he said solo q style of Mercy is easier than other heroes, but in tournaments she’s not easy.
Like most everything. Ranked and professional plays are very different. The fact is everything is hard at the highest level, facing a 6 stack who spends 10 hours a day perfecting their team play.
But just because Mercy is hard in OWL, doesn’t mean she is on ranked.
He gave a PR response to Mercy being so easy to play. You can do it without having any game skill at all. IN other words anyone can do it. He’s being nice about it. Every good player keeps track of ults and do some sort of call outs.
I agree with all of this. Seeing the enemy Mercy makes people wonder why THEIR Mercy isn’t that good, ha.
I think part of the Mercy hate does come from the fact that she’s easy to pick up. She does have a low skill floor because her mechanics aren’t hard to understand and people can perform her basic functions effectively without a lot of practice, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be played in a very high-level way that goes way beyond her mechanics. It’s rough being the primary target all the time while still trying to do your job.
![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d74zh8edaijub.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=5" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
So yes, I’m a firm believer that she takes skill, but that skillset is just different.