[Feedback Thread Continued Part III] Mercy Updates - Jan 30, 2018

[MizuKun-11878]

I honestly think they don’t know what to do with Mercy.

[Astrobiology-1687]

Yet, somehow a Diamond Bastion main with almost no experience on Mercy does?

[Holybreaker-1957]

1. Why are you mentioning your rank? It holds no bounds in this. Great job that you’re diamond rank, I guess???

2. With all of the changing, reworking, etc w/ Mercy it actually kind of is hard to actually understand where Blizz wants Mercy to stand. How hard is that to understand?

3. I do understand your post, however responding to someone who has put a lot of hours into Mercy asking what are they trying to achieve with mercy in the way you’ve responded was uncalled for

[pandorah-11721]

I’m a Mercy main.

I personally agree that they should put Rez on a resource meter. For now, she’s just a boring rezbot. You don’t have to earn it. Perhaps an average time of 20s or so if you’re consistently healing.

60hp/s should stay. It negates Winston’s damage, and punishes the enemy for not focusing down the target a Winston dives onto. Players being focused by the entire enemy team will be outdamaged, anyways.

Rez animation doesn’t need changes. It announces the fact that it’s a key game changer, and should be punished immediately. In lower ranks, you don’t get punished for using Rez – the enemy don’t often focus you down.

Rez cooldown if failed – perhaps a 20s cooldown. If you died while Rezzing, you should have it by the time you’re back in the fight.

[Astrobiology-1687]

I’m not undermining the fact that they have a lot of experience on Mercy. They said that they think Blizzard has no idea what to do with Mercy; they didn’t say what THEY thought Blizzard should do with Mercy

[TobiasAlec-11572]

Mercy

@GeoffGoodman

Primary fire healing beam reduced 17% from 60 HP/s to 50 HP/s.

If you recall, this isn’t just a nerf. Mercy in 1.0 had 50hp/s at the start of the game. Though this is certainly a step in the right direction, it’s not going to solve her issue, and it’s not going to stop her from being a must pick.

Why? Simple. Because there’s still a glaring ability that needs to be addressed. Ressurect. As long as her ressurect is on a 30 second cooldown and NOT in her ultimate in the form of mass res, she will stay on top of the other healers.

I’m calling it now, I think this nerf is not a completely bad thing (in fact, I doubt a lot of the mercy mains care all that much), but I believe that they are dipping their toes into fixing Mercy - meaning, bringing her back to where she was both balanced and engaging to play. I believe that this nerf will NOT affect her pickrates as drastically as people are saying. She is STILL going to outclass the other healers.

Notice though, that in this thread: Upcoming Balance Changes for Support Heroes

The other two main healers in this post are getting buffs. That’s right, both the main healers, Moira and Ana, are getting buffs. This is a GOOD thing. It seems that the devs are understanding that just nerfing mercy constantly alone won’t help the other healers, they (especially Ana) need buffs to stay viable.

Also note here on Ana:

@GeoffGoodman

That said, she has a couple disadvantages that can be difficult to overcome, such the potential to miss your targets, not having any mobility options, and having a more difficult time keeping herself healed up.

They are aware that Ana’s lack of mobility is becoming a problem. I hope this is a tease that they’re going to test out some sort of mobility buffs for her in the future as well. The 300hp on Nano boost is an amazing start, let’s hope they continue to buff her. She needs these additions the most in the hero roster.

Moira is getting some more utility as well, which is great:

@GeoffGoodman

Moira is a strong hero that doesn’t need a ton of changes. The resource change her is mostly to help her out in the situations where you’re just not able to get close enough the enemy to drain them for resources. Now if you’re team is sparring with the enemy team at super long ranges, you’ll have a bit more resources to work with to keep your team topped off.

Lucio also gets a nice buff as well, as well as a revert to his radius (was larger in 1.0):

@GeoffGoodman

We’re increasing the radius of Lucio’s Crossfade aura to allow more flexibility in how he moves while still maintaining his powerful support songs to help out his team. His ultimate is also being increased to help counter large spikes of damage. For example, Junkrat’s ultimate can deal a maximum of 600 damage, which Sound Barrier can now potentially negate completely. It is worth noting that even though the initial shield he provides is larger, it still takes the same amount of time to destroy itself.

Once again though, even though the buffs to these other healers are great, as long as Mercy has a rez on cooldown, I predict that these buffs will not be enough to lower her pickrates. They need to keep going with this and Revert Mercy, putting her ult back in Q, and thus raise her skill floor - making it harder to pull off. Maybe swap Valk and put that as the E move in it’s place, tweak both with the modern checks she has now (LOS, bunny hop, delay, etc.) and keep her vulnerable during her res.

But for now let’s wait and see. As long as they keep bringing back elements of her old kit, carefully and thoughtfully, I think both sides will be happy with the end result of Mercy and the other healers. For those people wishing for a Mercy revert and have been fighting for it for so long, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and it looks like they’re finally starting to listen.

[Melke-1420]

Way too optimistic
Blizzards precious streamers would throw a fit if Mas rez in any form returns

[RaysofGlory-1937]

That is one hell of a clickbait title

[sourmoth-1880]

Honestly they could put Mercy’s healing to something absurd like 30 hp/s and she’d still get picked most of the time because res on cooldown. I still wish they’d revert Mercy to her original launch build

[Hauven-2768]

Unfortunately this nerf also cripples Valkyrie further. Even a Winston can now outdamage the healing during Valkyrie . She’ll remain a highly popular hero after the nerf goes live, perhaps a short term dent but she’ll soon be popular again if so.

[TobiasAlec-11572]

@Deserted-21781

Unfortunately this nerf also cripples Valkyrie further. Even a Winston can now outdamage the healing during Valkyrie . She’ll remain a highly popular hero after the nerf goes live, perhaps a short term dent but she’ll soon be popular again if so.

Yep, every time they nerf her healing, Valk becomes more and more irrelevant. It’s becoming a growing issue. I wouldn’t be surprised if they see that and realize how far down the rabbit hole this Valkyrie was. The funny thing is that Valk was never good at preventing Ult spam, now it’s unable to save anything that gets hit with any team wiping Ult.

Mass rez is the only way they will be able to solve this problem, and these tiny reverts finally look to be pointing in that direction. For now, it looks like even Geoff realizes that even this nerf won’t solve her pick rate issue.

@GeoffGoodman

Mercy is intended to be able to consistently pump out more healing than any other healer over the course of a match. While this is currently true, the difference in healing is so significant that it makes it very difficult for other healers to compete with her for a spot on a team. Reducing her healing output will close this gap a little, but she will still maintain her status as the go-to pick for raw healing power. We’ll keep an eye on her to make sure she is still a strong pick.

[Tsene-21123]

Lmao as if.

Keep hoping to see that 5man res again pal.

[TobiasAlec-11572]

Lmao as if.

Keep hoping to see that 5man res again pal.

Will do!

Way too optimistic
Blizzards precious streamers would throw a fit if Mas rez in any form returns

I honestly hope they throw a fit, I really honestly do. They did it the first time and the end result was her being an OP queen for 5 months. I think at this point it will just be seen as “the boy who cried wolf” and be largely ignored, which will be great for the game right now, and for Mercy - for once.

[Bergmaniac-2621]

It’s the opposite, it’s an indication that Blizzard refuses to admit that putting Rez as a regular ability was a mistake and are still trying to balance around it.

[Aranea-11410]

After what they did to Sombra is hard to believe the balance changes they make.

[Positive-11139]

Get ready for more damage players than.

[Melke-1420]

considering that it was Seagull’s questions that revealed to us that the devs are still looking at Sym… I’m a bit hesitant to say they aren’t catering to those precious streamers.

[TobiasAlec-11572]

considering that it was Seagull’s questions that revealed to us that the devs are still looking at Sym… I’m a bit hesitant to say they aren’t catering to those precious streamers.

And you are entitled to your opinion. I disagree, I think there’s going to be less and less opportunities for blizzard to cater to the pros. Constantly alienating the playerbase hurts the game in the long term, and eventually they’re going to run out of things to nerf with Mercy. Because of this, I think a revert isn’t a matter of if, Its simply a matter of when.

[Silawatsi-1430]

I doubt Mercy will be able to keep her status as a viable solo-healer after her healing gets nerfed.

Which means that there won’t be any viable solo-healers.

What do you think this will do to your games? Will this affect you personally as a healer/flex main, or indirectly as a tank/dps main?

[Naz-11562]

It’s a Winston buff so

Also outside of niche sombra-as-a-support comps you don’t want a solo healer. So it’s probably a good thing.