I’ve always been a die hard fan of Blizzard. Through Starcraft, Warcraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo, and now Overwatch. I joke with my kids about how ‘Blizzard know best’ as they balance characters and tweak abilities.
I loved how they would generally give characters some good news, some buff, even when receiving an overall nerf, just to keep the character fun.
But these Mercy nerfs are really starting to crack my belief in Blizzards decisions. The relentless nerfing with not even a little buff to help seems uncalled for.
I was glad for the return of Mercy’s ‘hop’. But since then it seems to be nerf after nerf with no care for the fan base trying to survive as the character who wields a heal staff in a shooting game.
They misjudged, and she remained at a near 100% pickrate. Similar to Ana currently.
Who is probably going to get a nerf or 2 next patch.
It was fairly early right after a nerf back then.
It makes sense that they thought it would balance her pickrate out.
That was the sledgehammer nerf to her ult.
Mercy maintains a highpickrate despite her current situation. She’s a popular character even at her weakest.
While I know winrate isn’t everything - if a character is balanced, you’d think Blizzard would realize the others just need buffing. Ana probably would have done well with her buffs alone, without needing the other healer bodyslammed.
And if this were all true, Reinhardt would have already been nerfed. His pickrate is not only higher than Mercy’s was pre-nerf, he maintains a a very high winrate (something notoriously hard to high pickrate characters to do).
But this won’t happen. Because the community loves Reinhardt.
Blizzard balances around feedback, and doesn’t lend much weight to stats. So Ana might stay this strong, or not. It depends more on what people say than her true performance. If there’s a lot of complaint threads, then yes, then she’ll be nerfed.
A 100% pickrate as you’re using the term, is not displayed literally in overbuff. The %s are relative. By Overbuff’s metric, mercy was areound the 10~11% range (all heroes view) or 30% range (support or tank only view) that indicates a close to 100% pickrate.
If you care to look at historic stats - before the latest Mercy nerf in particular - and look at the all heroes view, you’ll see Reinhardt above Mercy in pickrate.
But it doesn’t matter because the community is happy with this.
The question then… will the community be happy with Ana?
She has been a must pick for over a year.
I think that’s what pressured Blizzard into nerfing her like this.
Reinhardt has been out of the meta for several seasons.
He became meta because other charcters that synergize around him became meta. Remember all those buff Rein threads during season 8 and 9? I do.
Mercy however, has been sitting on a must pick status for over a year.
Not to be spiteful here, but If that were true, Mercy wouldn’t have been a must pick for over a year.
she has got less then ein in past 6 months, but the rework happened before 6 months, meaning she had way more at one point, especially during dive and shieldbreak meta, so while rein was a revlant nieche, mercy was just 100% allways the best choice.