I think there’s some confusion in this thread about skill ceiling and skill floor, so I’ll try to explain. All heroes take a certain amount of skill to play, either mechanical (aim, cooldown use & timing) or situational (what we call gamesense, ult usage & timing, target prioritization, shotcalling, communication). Some heroes require more or less skill to be effective, which is what we mean by skill floor. A good example is Lucio – at lower tiers, you can still be fairly effective with his kit, meaning his skill floor is fairly low. Having low skill floor heroes is good for the game! The majority of the playerbase plays at gold or below. There’s nothing wrong with this. Lots of people are picking up this as their first FPS game, and it’s great to have heroes that are slightly easier to start playing with while learning the ins and outs of Overwatch. This is part of the reason why Mercy is so popular – her base kit is excellent, and fairly easy and intuitive to use.
A character’s skill ceiling is more difficult to define, but look at characters like Genji or Ana – there is a HUGE difference between the stats of a bronze and a GM Genji, which basically means that putting in the hours to train & improve your skill with these characters results in having a much bigger effect on a match. The “ceiling” is reached when an increase in skill doesn’t correlate to an increase in impact – you are already “maxing” out a character, so to speak, using their abilities in the most efficient way possible such that there is no room for improvement.
I can confidently say that all of the heroes in this game have a reasonably high ceiling – except Mercy, that is. This rework has actually LOWERED her skill ceiling. A low skill ceiling is a big problem, and the reason people playing her are calling her “no fun.” These players don’t want Mercy overpowered again – they only want their skill and hard work to translate into real tangible impact in the game!
Let’s look at her new abilities in turn and discuss the ceilings and impact of each.
Resurrect
Cooldowns in this game require either mechanical skill (like Tracer’s blinks) or gamesense/timing (Genji deflect) or, more often, a mix of the two (Ana grenade). Mercy’s E requires no mechanical skill besides, stand close enough. You can’t even choose between two rez targets if the souls are on top of each other! Since there’s no way to improve mechanically, the only way to use this ability “better” or “more efficiently” is knowing when to press E – but it’s been shown through statistics that, on average, Mercy is getting about the same amount of rezzes per game across all ranks. This is one of the warning signs of a flat ability – the skill ceiling is just barely above the skill floor. Sure, a bronze Mercy will perform more risky rezzes and die, but it’s just as risky to rez at higher ranks when the enemy is more focused on killing an immobile Mercy, and so the decision on when to rez hinges almost entirely on, will I die if I press E? There’s little point in saving the rez for another target, when the ability is this hard to pull off – you’re better off using it as soon as it is safe to to maximize impact. So, as soon as you learn when it is safe to rez and when it’s not, there’s not much else to learn, practice, or improve upon with this ability. You cannot charge it any quicker or use it more often by being more skilled. Using this skill at its maximum efficiency is based entirely on whether or not you can press E and not die, which is a fairly easy lesson to learn when you are punished with death for using it incorrectly.
Valkyrie
Mercy’s new ultimate showcases what I’m arguing even more clearly. The skill ceiling of using this ultimate is practically nonexistent, as it seems to be used almost exclusively to increase Mercy’s survivability and movement. Her once-difficult job of beam management is made stupidly easy through chain beams. Her once-difficult job of staying alive is made so much easier with self-healing that never stops, and her incredibly fun and engaging movement and positioning ability, Guardian Angel, the main ability that separates good Mercy players from bad ones, is instead turned into a mindless “hold spacebar and hide.” Do you see the pattern? Her ultimate lets Mercy do her normal job… except now it’s even easier to accomplish! There are also some statistics that say that she is even less impactful during her ult, as flying up into the sky with glowing wings can make you a damn easy target. Her nerfed mobility during Valkyrie means it’s even more important to hide while using it, and the absurdly long range of her beam makes that pretty easy, too.
Is this what we were promised?
A “more engaging” ultimate… that lets her do her normal job, except it does it for you, doesn’t counter any enemy ultimates at all, removes the fun and hectic flight path of GA and lets you instead be motionless in the sky, and has no downside to disengaging from the fight and hiding in safety at max beam range?
A “more balanced” resurrect ability… that’s available at the start of the match, is “earned” by simply waiting 30 seconds, is extremely punishing when used in a risky setting, and therefore is limited to only during the safest of times, like before and after team fights, to save your teammate that extra walk back from spawn… Engaging and impactful!
Do you remember having to fight for that last 5-10% of her ultimate, back when it mattered? Efficiently using both of her beams to maximize ult charge, healing riskier targets, staying in the fight and making riskier plays in order to charge it before the enemies got their ults… Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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