The top 2% of Ana players average 11.8k.
Remember, the average healing for Mercy is 11.7k.
Blaming the discrepancy on low rank players simply isn’t valid when even the Ana’s with the best healing on record barely beat out Mercy’s overall average.
Oh she can, but there’s the condition that I talked about: she NEEDS to work with another support to survive and with the rest of the team to keep everyone alive.
The amount of buffs needed to give Mercy a weakness by comparison would be massive, and turn the game into a complete stall meta.
The amount of buffs required to make all other healers outperform Mercy (as a support, not strictly as a healer) as they do now would be massive, yes, but that is not and should never be the goal. The goal should be to put all supports on even ground, and I think they would have been without any change to Mercy in the last patch.
You may disagree, but there is no way to prove or disprove that claim without Blizzard giving us the opportunity.
I think aiming for complete variety at the highest ranks of play isn’t going to happen.
And hasn’t really ever happened.
It’s a good ideal to work toward, though, for any reasonable person on either side of the Mercy debate.
It is. But going from no variety to Ana+ Variety on second pick healer. Is a huge improvement.
And probably the best variety that’s possible at those ranks.
We went from Mercy + Variety on second pick healer to Ana + Variety on second pick healer at GM rank. Zen was a popular second, but not ubiquitous.
The only “improvement” that someone like you might see there right now is that the current flavor of the month happens to not be Mercy.
More like Mercy + Zen, plus barely anything else.
Am I missing something here?
We’re not seeing the same thing.
Zen is still second place now. He received no changes. Lucio received buffs and now gives him some pretty even competition, though.
The same way, Ana receiving buffs would have given Mercy competition without any changes to Mercy.
He’s linking old data from a prior patch that he’s been unable to give a valid date for.
Ah, I see. Would have been a little better to start out with the clarification.
If that’s the case, then he’s not wrong. Over the course of the 6 months prior to the recent nerf, that’s pretty much how GM was. There’s not really a solid date needed, it was true for so long.
I’m pretty sure Hanzo/Zarya was worse, when that was a thing.
It’s 8/6/2018
The dev post on the balance changes was 8/17/2018.
I think mercy isn’t the dominant healer anymore, but rez is certainly a very powerful ability still. Use her more for a pocketing hero for DPS heroes
I’m seeing the patch notes for 1.27.0.1 listed in the game launcher on 8/9/2018. That is when Mercy’s nerf went live.
The dev post quoted by OP was posted on 7/18/2018.
Where are you getting this 8/17/2018 date?
Huh, guess I misremebered.
Oh man, thank you for the laughs. Bookmarking this thread. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsW9MlYu31g“over the course of the match” and she still does.