I second that feedback for the devs who deeply care and read it.
It’s something I could accept, if it wasn’t weak at keeping your team going. Some ults are not exciting at all, but they get things done.
I agree!! But the forums are different than the community as a whole. This went larger than the forums. It involved every form of social media and even got pro attention.
I honestly doubt anything will come from this either, but if anything, maybe they’re considering some form of buff for her?
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I really hope so! I’ve seen speculation that they’ll buff her healing to 55/s which I think is a really nice even ground for people who want Mercy to heal more but are afraid of her outshining other supports again.
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As we all could see on example of Moira, pure healing doesn’t make support best, if it’s not combined with utility. With all slowdowns and cast times, resurrect doesn’t make a good utility, when utility abilities of other healers usually affect multiple players too.
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I just realized I never actually posted my own feedback on these threads. So, here goes nothing:
tldr: Valk is too forgiving, clashes with Mercy’s kit and lacks room for player expression, plus it’s too difficult to balance because of chain beams. It would great if Valk could be slightly tweaked to allow for more skillful player expression and a better fit to Mercy.
- Little thing first: Mercy’s on fire rate seems to be forgotten. Looks like it was never adjusted to account for the changes. It’s a feedback system that tells the Mercy players “you are not important” because Mercy is rarely on fire.
_ - Valkyrie covers too many skills deficiencies of Mercy’s already shallow skill pool. Other ults designed around covering for skill don’t do it as much and they do so on heroes with higher skill ceilings (example: Tac Visor covers for aim but nothing else). Valk is both bloated with skill-covering powers plus Mercy’s skill ceiling isn’t that high to begin with, the result is that Valk essentially closes the skill gap making Mercy players feels like the ult is doing the job for them.
_ - Valkyrie also seems incredibly restraining balance-wise. Anything you give Mercy needs to be considered in the light of her ult, which is a “boost” for all Mercy’s powers. That means any impact Mercy has, needs to be toned down because Valkyrie comes in and takes that up several notches. Neither of her beams can be great, because then you get overpowered chain beams, and then that breaks the balance more than Barry Allen going for a light-speed jog breaks the timeline. To a lesser extent that is also true for her pistol, it can’t be great because Valk will make it fire endlessly with faster projectile.
_ - On top of all that, Valkyrie’s impact is spread out, to quote Bildo, it’s like butter over too much bread, a “swiss army knife of an ult”, which can do almost anything to a serviceable degree, but it can’t be great at anything…
Combine all that and I believe it’s the reason Valkyrie has been called “spectator mode, unimpactful, auto-pilot, boring, etc.”, even since its release when it was completely meta-defining broken overpowered.
I can’t know what goes on behind the scene nor am I an expert on the subject, but it seems unfair to give criticism without pointing out possible solutions. So, at the risk of sounding dumb, I would suggest removing Valkyrie’s powers which cover for skill (chain beam, flight, infinite clip, insane self heal) and shift those powers into more skillful options. Mercy is already very newcomer friendly, easy to pick up hero, she does not need a ult that cover skill demands, it doesn’t make her better, only more braindead. For instance:
- Instead of chain beam, focus on single target strength, allowing for target selection during Valk just as much as out of it.
_ - Instead of flight, focus on Guardian Angel. It’s her core ability, why make it redundant during Valkyrie? It’s non-sensical. Remove flight and make GA better during ult.
_ - Infinite clip and projectile speed only enables spam and covers for aiming. Remove that and improve the pistol in other ways, like increased damage, increase RoF, options that don’t cover for as much aim deficiency.
I also talked a lot about Mercy’s skill demands, I think she’s fine in that regard as well. Newcomer friendly and yada yada, I don’t think that should change. Mercy is great because she’s among the more accessible heroes. However, Valkyrie seems to drop the ceiling on the players toes, for all the reasons mentioned, and it’s not great for her kit. Whatever the low amount of skill her base kit might need, it should stay there during ult, otherwise you just get too close to a very unrewarding auto-pilot.
Overall Mercy is GREAT, but Valkyrie kind spoils the fun, like a lump of feces in the soup. Her mobility is truly the core of her kit the way I see it, GAing around beam juggling to get everyone is fantastic and that’s her uniqueness and what makes Mercy, well, Mercy. It’s not res, I don’t think, even though that’s also unique it’s not why people pick Mercy outside of the pro-scene.
Have a nice day everyone. May you pass through the Iris.
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Since her healing was nerfed, it’s usually why Mercy is picked, to resurrect. Just like Zenyatta isn’t picked for his healing orb.
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I think it’s her mobility. Phamercy and whatnots.
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Mobility is pointless, if teammates are dying and can’t be brought back. It’s my issue with Valkyrie - sure, I almost certainly will survive, but my team almost certainly won’t be so lucky.
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I’m going at it from a fun perspective, it’s what makes her kit good to play, GAing around and beam juggling.
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It makes her kit reliable, and has little to do with fun.
Not sure I get what you mean.
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Mobility of Mercy has little to do with fun, but it makes her easier to use with uncoordinated teammates, when you can get to nearly anyone with single ability use.
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I think it’s fair to say a lot of people think ping-ponging around beam juggling is the fun part of Mercy, and it’s what gets taken away by Valkyrie and by the multiple nerfs.
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Valkyrie could be fun, if it was strong ult. But it’s not.
You still can ping-pong around with GA, but…it’s kind of useless now.
I don’t think that’s true. It used to be strong, 15 nerfs after its issues haven’t changed, as I have argued above.
How strong it is literally doesn’t matter to me.
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And those nerfs took away fun part, since Valkyrie without resurrects was, indeed, boring ult with little power.
Valk has no impact, you move slow enough even for a junk rat to link up shots in the air to kill you. It saves no one. Youre basically flying and watching your team mates die, hoping to death that no one knows how to hit a very slow moving target.
edit: auto correct fix
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And it would still be boring even if they gave it insanely powerful buffs… It’s a design issue, not a balance one.
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I meant, that they were supposed to replace those resurrects with something else, rather than simply nerf Valkyrie.
Boring ults can be acceptable, if they bring significant power surge with them.