It’s because Blizzard like to do the complete opposite of what the community asks for.
100s of daily threads asking for Genji/Tracer nerfs?
Rework Mercy.
Still 100s of daily threads asking for Genji/Tracer nerfs?
Nerf Zenyatta.
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Mercy needed a rework eventually. She could only compete with Ana when the meta was absolutely horrendous for Ana and with the introduction of Moira, she would have become even more obsolete. She wasn’t really in a good place.
Now I’m not saying that Valkyrie Mercy is much better than the original, but despite any missteps Blizzard made, Mercy being reworked was an inevitability.
That’s because they knew how to properly shut her down. You could tempo rez with good teams. You could tempo rez with bad teams. I’m really not understanding how that validates your point.
And let me just say this, good teams were usually easier to rez because they knew what Mercy had to do to get the most out of her rez — they wouldn’t die on different planets. And they had faith in their Mercy coming in to save them if they died holding the point. Yes, good teams didn’t always need to be rezzed often. But it didn’t mean they were bad if they did.
Yeah, the “decent” advantage is not having to look after the only character designed to be defenseless in the entire game for 15 seconds, getting 15 seconds of almost guaranteed safety for a support is a pretty decent advantage in a meta where deleting supports is its main goal to victory.
Edit* And this may sound like I’m calling Valkyrie extremely strong, which I am, but it’s strong because the skill ceiling to kill Mercy is so incredibly high that it’s borderline ridiculous. That’s not a good ultimate if its strength is making your character so insanely invulnerable that the team can simply ignore you, and they often can.
Mercy’s ultimate should be strong because it poses the threat to an enemy team, not because for most players its simply out of the question to kill a Mercy during Valkyrie.
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Mass rez is more useful for bad teams that tend to all die, and die often
Relative to current rez every 30s with good teams and mass rez with bad teams, mass rez with good teams is less useful. Again, mass rez wasn’t trash, but it did not scale with the team doing better.
We already went over both of these points, and nothing you said proved that to be true.
multi rez, insta rez is an unfun ability and doesn’t belong in FPS games.
TL;DR They wanted to get rid of Hide n’ Rez, and her ultimate placed too much teamwide value on a single person.
Ah! Yes, I remember when this was the Hot Topic of the Overwatch community last summer.
Going back to the original question, I’d say there are two reasons why they changed her.
The first is to get rid of the Hide and Res Playstyle. There were players who would tell their team to group up on the point, get their enemy to waste ultimates on them (killing them in the process), and then just rez and wipe 'em out. Jeff himself also addressed these players in the announcement video. He said it was counterintuitive that a support player should ask their team to just group up and die. That was sort of the opposite of Mercy’s function; Rez was designed to be an emergency save after a bad teamfight, but players were using it as a part of a bait-and-switch strategy, which didn’t sit well with the devs.
One can probably argue that any DPS hero worth their salt would go after the Mercy first, so feel free to disagree with me there. Keep in mind, though, that Mercy can be a tough target, especially at lower ranks where people’s aim isn’t consistent.
The second reason why they reworked her is because she had too much teamwide value. Overwatch is a game of teamwork, almost as much (if not more) than it is a game of pure, mechanical skill. Heroes’ weaknesses are specifically hardcoded into them so that you rely more on your team, rather than your own skills. Is your Widow being dived by a Winston? Help her out by using Reaper or Roadhog! This whole system is why you can switch heroes in the middle of a match - you have to play a hero that adequately covers your team’s weaknesses.
So why am I saying this? Simply put, Mercy’s rez had too much value in relation to its team reliance. I like to compare Mercy’s and Roadhog’s reworks. For those who don’t remember, Roadhog used to be able to one-shot people right after hooking them. This basically allowed him to score a kill every 6 seconds. This, combined with his potent self-heal and his enormous health pool, made him a solo player’s dream. That didn’t sit well with Blizzard, so they reworked him to be more team-oriented. Now he drags players into the team, and he can’t one-shot them anymore; it’s the job of the team to help finish them off.
The purpose of Mercy’s rework was to also make her more team-oriented. Previously, Rez was just a simple case of “dive into the team, and press Q for instant SR.” It was the support equivalent of Roadhog’s one-shot hook; easy teamwide value (Rez instead of kills), all coming from one person. Now, Rez only targets one person, and has a casting time. You can only rez when it’s safe, meaning you should limit yourself to rezzing teammates who had proper positioning, and you must be protected while rezzing, otherwise any DPS with half a mind would focus you down before you got the chance. 1.75 seconds can feel like an eternity. Your team must cover you while you rez, otherwise you’ll just be another death.
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Oh- Haven’t seen a thread like THIS before
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Because of this:
https://clips.twitch.tv/LovelySwissStingrayPunchTrees
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Jeff literally explained the rework in the developer update focused on her rework.
Hello?
Unfun was only half the reason.
The other half was that Mercy completely abandoning her team and letting them die is counter intuitive to how a main healer is supposed to play.
Like if or not, no tweaks or limits would fix this.
I’m dissapointed that they didn’t even try to nerf/alter mass rez to “fix” the complaints about it, they just… deleted it.
Mercy 1.0 actually did need a rework. She needed some changes to mass rez to make it harder to pull off, and a mid-fight E ability to compensate - one that lets her make a skillful impact with her base kit (instead of relying entirely on mass rez to make a play).
Rez on cooldown was the polar opposite of what the Mercy players begging for an E ability wanted. We wanted Mercy’s skill ceiling to be raised, not driven into the ground.
Hide n rez only happened because there was an exploit within the SR system… but instead of fixing the system, blizzard deleted the symptom of the problem.
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Because 6v11 is never a fair fight.
For A. It was whoever was on the opposing side of Resurrect as an ultimate complained about it. Whoever was on the receiving end of the ultimate enjoyed it.
For B. You didn’t even need to kill Mercy first. Just get a pick in general. They are at a man disadvantage and Mercy would have either 2 options Resurrect the fallen ally or play at a man disadvantage. So there was plenty of counter play in those regards.
For C. I mean defensive ultimates have the power to counter multiple ultimates. The only thing that seperated Lucio/Zenyatta and Mercy was that 1 was guaranteed the other 2 has the potential to counter. If Resurrect was changed in a way that guaranteed was changed to potential would’ve made the ultimate fair to play against.
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Dude, the soldier was out of Mercy’s healing range until he stepped closer to her. Then he got the healing he asked for.
She could have flown to him, but that would have forsaken the ledge she had positioned herself on (that gave her a good view of the rest of the team) with no way to get back… as well as put her in plain view of the enemy Winston below her, who would undoubtedly pounce on her as soon as he knew where she was.
Her team should have stuck to her side of the point for healing. There’s an enemy Tracer and Winston on the point, she’d be killed as soon as she left the safety of that ledge.
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Double standards much? Spawn is narrow and predictable when a rip-tire comes out of it but if Mercy runs out of spawn it is a huge problem?
If you stand on point with your team and the enemy team dead you can easily watch both spawn doors and catch Mercy before anything happens. Also Valk is still pretty much skilless since it does everything for you.
I do think they could have gone another way by fixing the SR exploit bug and tweaking mass rez further instead of this horrid rework. Lets be honest the rework did more damage to the game than good. Most people are just happy she got nerfed away from must-pick status.
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Tire is both slower than Guardian angel and has half the health of Mercy. Mass rez was also a lot more valuable than tire. Hardly a double standard.
Yes, if the SR exploit was fixed and Mass rez was line of sight only, I think it could have stayed in the game. However, I believe it should have some sort of cast time similar to the current one. Maybe they could have made it more skill based by making it like McCree’s ult where she can’t move much and locks onto the dead players. The more health an ally as, the longer it would take to build up, or something like that.
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her safety of the ledge to the safety… of the tower no one can get to… You’re grasping at straws. She literally points out that she has her ultimate when he reqquests healing. That’s pathetic!
If you played Mercy with “0 effort”, you would most likely only get one ultimate during the whole round.
Unless the enemy team is a bunch of monkeys.