Well, in theory you are correct. But as you may have noticed on the forums there are plenty of people who are not happy with Mercy and how she turned out. While there are plenty of people who prefer her the way she is now, and perhaps even only started to enjoy her after her rework, there are a massive amount of people who don’t like the direction she’s gone. You can’t possibly tell me that there isn’t room for a change that would appeal more to both categories of players. A change wouldn’t necessarily have to make people who currently enjoy Mercy like her less. Thinking there are only two options is narrowminded and perhaps why we’re in this very hateful forum discussing Mercy time and time again…
3 Likes
I like Valkyrie.
I personally find it fun, and as many people have and will point out, fun is subjective. What you don’t find fun, others will, and vise versa.
I like Valk because I feel it gives me free range of her kit, I can better take things into my own hand like taking out a Pharah, Widow, etc, or I can lead my team into battle with damage boost, as well as get to rez more easily.
I know many will disagree with me and call it “spectator mode”, but I find it’s the complete opposite.
2 Likes
Mercy is not the most difficult hero to play, but to be really efficient with her you need to apply yourself. As the only hero (to my knowledge) that has a 360 degree field of view while doing your job (you can turn and look around while healing) you have a responsibility to your team to anticipate enemy movements, call out tactical moves, and with big target on your back (like all healers have) you have to stay safe… but as Mercy you have great abilities to actually stay safe if you just position yourself cleverly. Mercy should never die, basically (or no more than once or twice)…
Mercy’s kit is easy… but keeping your team alive is difficult…
Hard disagree. Valkyrie is my favorite ability in this game by far. It’s the most versatile ult by miles and raises Mercy’s skill ceiling considerably.
1 Like
I’ve called it spectator mode on more than one occasion, but I realize it’s not that black and white. It kind of depends on what you choose to do with it. You could go Battle Mercy, you could engage and enable a push/defense. But what it comes down to, in my opinion, is that it gives you a longer guardian angel range and free flight, so your positioning is not as important anymore, it gives you chain beams, so your quick thinking in terms of target prioritization doesn’t matter anymore, and it improves your regeneration so survivability is not as difficult anymore… I prided myself by staying alive, by doing my job efficiently and making the quick calls/decisions. With Valkyrie I felt like it was done for me.
You need to be doing much more than that with Valk. Floating and healing is not always the answer. If you want to see some clips of how I use it, here’s a link to a thread I made a while back about it.
1 Like
Wow, that’s a bold statement. Versatile, sure… raising Mercy’s skill ceiling… that one you’d have to explain because I don’t see it… it dumbs everything down…
3 Likes
Agreed. It honestly feels more like an E ability than an ultimate.
4 Likes
It opens her options up completely for its duration. It’s the opposite of a “hit Q and forget” ult. For fifteen seconds, it’s up to Mercy to decide the best way to use her superpowers. Ideally, she should be mixing and matching ALL of them depending on the situation. She can top off the group’s health, damage boost anyone she can see (her GA range is crazy far with Valk active), reach that rez she couldn’t before, or chase down and murder someone and she can do it all within the same activation. No two uses are necessarily alike.
Mediocre Mercys will float and hold down M1. Great Mercys will use Valk to run the field and decide how that fight goes.
1 Like
And that’s where I disagree completely.
You still need to beam juggle between damage boost and healing, knowing how low you can let your team get before you need to heal for a brief moment of time, and go right back to it. You don’t need to have your team 100%.
You also are not just sitting in the air doing nothing but holding down left or right click. You should be moving with your team, weaving sniper shots, and helping pressure the enemy. You don’t have to go strictly battle Mercy or strictly healbot Mercy, but you are able to help your team finish off low health enemies or enemies who may have escaped your teams LoS by wallclimbing or using other movement abilities to get away.
The ult is what you make of it. If you choose to not engage with it to it’s fullest potential, yeah sure. It can be spectator mode. But the way I personally use it, it’s not that at all.
Though, admittedly, I do think it is too long as there are many fights that finish and I’m still in Valk until it finishes it’s duration.
And without an ult I could spend those 15 seconds doing the exact same things but with more difficulty. I would have more fun without the ult but performing the exact same things. I could beam juggle, I could pull out my gun and fire a few shots, use GA and the bunny-hop glide to get to my rez target…
Valkyrie don’t give you superpowers. It gives you a more powerful version of her already existing powers, but dumbs it down for you so you don’t need to make so much of an effort anymore…
That’s not beam juggling, that’s beam switching… Beamjuggling is when you have to switch from target to target to make sure nobody dies… Chanbeams does not even grant you the ability to beamjuggle anymore, lest people are extremely far away from each other in which case you won’t really benefit that much from your ultimate anyways.
7 Likes
It multiples you by up to 5, allows you to fly and more or less makes you un-killable if you have half a brain.
2 Likes
ALL of those things I could do without Valkyrie and have more fun doing it… Valkyrie just makes it boring to do, because it’s a lot less challenging to do.
I have never had a problem staying alive as a Mercy player. Granted, I didn’t play that much competitive, but as a casual player I had more fun between ultimates than during the ultimate… Valkyrie ruined my enjoyment of playing Mercy… that’s the cold truth
Also, free flight is probably the most boring part of Valkyrie. Guardian Angel is fun, and free flight is just BORING!!!
3 Likes
That’s sadly just personal opinion / taste, which is something we could argue about all day and both be right in our own way. I find the fact that I can have free flight while doing it extremely fun, and it’s saved my team quite a few times with the chain healing.
2 Likes
I’m not arguing its power. Valkyrie is not without its power. I just hate free flight, I hate chain beams, I hate the improved regeneration… I suppose I do like the extended guardian angel reach, and that’s about the only thing I find enjoyable with Valkyrie (but together with everything else I hate it too)
1 Like
It’s not the act of flight, it’s what it enables that can be interesting. There is more to flying than just hovering over your team.
2 Likes
Like exploring the map and seeing the sights? I know it enables you to get a better angle to fire at someone and what not… but it is a team fight, and flying off on your own is unwise regardless. So, in the end you’re likely to be close to your team, whether you are shooting your gun, healing, or boosting or watching flowers grow in the balcony garden.
1 Like
You’re right, we should change Mercy one more time than follow that.
I don’t understand the level of hatred towards Valkyrie.
2 Likes
For me, in additions to the statements I’ve made in this thread already, it represents the change of direction in the game. I came to enjoy Overwatch because Mercy played more like a hero from a MMORPG game where strategy, positioning, and tracking enemy movements (kind of like phases etc.) were more important than aiming and shooting. While Valkyrie does not specifically prevent any of those things, they ruined the enjoyment of those things. Mercy feels like a hero in a first-person-shooter game to me now, and she didn’t use to feel like that. To me it’s the death of Overwatch as a game for casual MMORPG players such as I. It is like Blizzard did a “bait’n’switch”… they advertised the game for casual players such as I, then decided to change direction of the game…