You’re doing it wrong, then.
He still does require positioning, like most other heroes.
Then how do you suggest one gets the maximum benefit out of it to also potentially turn a team fight?
1 Like
Fine, let them make Mercy whatever you all want her to be then. Bless.
Removing Mercy from the game would work as well… why treat the symptoms when you can just cut out the tumor?
Hey, don’t take me too serious there.
I would prefer if she got an ability to do burst heals or dmg that would be cool and engaging I wouldn’t even be mad if that was her ult an ability that provides burst healing and dmg
Are you saying there is some special method to press Q that you need to train for? Maybe lean your chair to the right, stick your foot in the air. Drink Pepsi with your right hand while keeping your left hand rested on Q waiting for the specific time?
Because Mercy literally is Press Q, no mechanical skill involved beyond that.
The whole timing shtick is something Every Hero has to worry about and then some. Mercy never had the “And then some part” for her ultimate.
Even her current ultimate you still have to “time”
Especially if you want to avoid a Genji Ulting and kill you.
The problem with her Current Ult and Previous Ult is. Her previous ult was meaningful when she did Stick her foot up on the chair drink pepsi with her right hand to press Q.
Her Current Ult is now just a glorified movement ability to defend your self.
Otherwise the thought process was , find the most ideal place to revive the maximum number of people and press Q and ideally in a situation after enemy has used all their nukes.
Defensively the same way and reason for when an Orisa uses her ult, except that you can heal or damage boost. It requires good game sense and it will stop an already committed push dead, unless they burn an ult of their own.
Yes, battle Mercy is fine too if your DPS needs help on cleaning up hard-to-hit targets.
I guess I’ll make use out of something I typed up a few hours ago…
Mercy’s ultimate in her 1.x versions required a lot of thought and management to use to its full potential. It created another layer of engagement to her base kit for two reasons:
- Resurrect was the only ability Mercy had that allowed her to change the tide of the battle.
- Resurrect had variable impact and uptime.
For these reasons, optimizing the efficiency and effectiveness of Resurrect became a layer of complexity by itself within Mercy’s kit.
With the current Resurrect, that mind game is gone. The variation in impact and uptime has been removed. Therefore, using Resurrect has come down to a question of only “if” and not “how”, simplifying the complexity of the ability down to looking both ways before crossing a street.
The fact that Resurrect isn’t earned also removed another part of Mercy’s kit: the risk/reward balance for charging Resurrect as fast as possible prior to a teamfight. Seeking more charge for Resurrect meant that the player had to play more aggressively, sometimes flying out of position to heal an ally that would normally be considered too risky to attempt to heal. If there were no allies to heal or amplify, the Mercy would often draw their pistol and expose themselves to enemy fire for the chance to gain more ultimate charge.
When executed properly, these risks felt really good to take and profit from. If they failed, the player overstepped their boundaries and should learn from their mistakes.
The current Resurrect isn’t earned and Valkyrie fails to close that gap, so that dimension of Mercy’s base kit doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no reason to place oneself in jeopardy.
Adding insult to injury, not only has the alteration of Resurrect removed its mind game and the risk/reward game, but Resurrect now feels terrible to use because of its cast time and self-inflicted incapacitation. The ability interrupts and contradicts what is normally a smooth flow of mobility.
With the changes to Resurrect alone, two dimensions of Mercy’s kit have been removed, and a third is disrupted by the ability’s new form.
Now we have Valkyrie.
In Mercy’s base kit, there are several skills that keep the player engaged:
- Healing prioritization (who to heal when, who gets to live if the player is forced to choose, how to keep everyone alive despite taking significant damage).
- Utilization of damage boost (knowing when and on who to apply damage boost to maximize damage and ultimate charge gain while compromising as little amount of healing as possible).
- Guardian Angel discipline (knowing who to and who not to fly to, knowing when to cancel GA and use Angelic Descent in conjunction with it to maximize mobility without increasing the duration between GA uses, knowing how to line up consecutive GAs to establish line of sight or enter GA range of another ally).
- Positioning (basic positioning is required to have good GA discipline, but it also includes peaking and obscuring enemy sight lines to the player without reducing healing output and placing oneself in advantageous fighting or escape locations if they were to be attacked. A player that has good positioning is often less dependent upon GA discipline, but it is impossible to remove the necessity for GA discipline entirely).
- Awareness (this is needed to utilize the above skills. If the player isn’t paying attention to enemy and allied locations and how the two are interacting with each other and herself, she will not be able to capitalize on various opportunities or detect and respond to threats.
Valkyrie tosses just about every one of these out the window.
- Chain beams removes the need for healing prioritization and most of damage boost utilization except for knowing when to switch between heal/damage beams (which has also been simplified). There’s no need to switch between targets to juggle the health of teammates if everyone is receiving the same benefits regardless.
- Mercy’s free flight at 9 m/s and uninterrupted regeneration removes the need for GA discipline. There’s no need to chain GA uses or figure out how to navigate throughout the map with a limited mobility ability when the player can ignore those limitations by just flying there by themselves.
- Mercy’s 30 meter range on her beams in conjunction with her limitless flight removes the need for positioning; flying as far away from the fight as possible while still being able to heal the team is the best way to use it, removing the vast majority of threats to the Mercy in the process. Any chip damage the enemy will be able to deal from that distance against a target with that hitbox and that speed will be mitigated by her constant regeneration.
- The fact that the need for every other skill has been heavily reduced combined with the fact that most “threats” aren’t actually threatening in Valkyrie removes the need to be aware of the situation.
In conclusion, the changes to Resurrect removed a large portion of Mercy’s engagement and now disrupts the flow of her basic kit. Valkyrie completely removes any engagement left in her kit for the following 15 seconds.
Given the choice, I would play Mercy that doesn’t have E-Resurrect or Valkyrie over one that does. However, that would be throwing so I just don’t play.
4 Likes
Old Mercy has never been close to be OP.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
3 Likes
Yes, it was she is viable. Thanks Devs I can look at Overbuff too. The complaints are based on making her feel fluid and not punishing and inline with the intent of the rework or rework the rework with Rez changed to being not a cooldown, but they didn’t bother with replying to that because they not interested in changes right now.
Well its not even about the right now, its about just making things less punishing to play and more rewarding to play well.
There were fixes needed but really they were fixes needed the SR system and putting back Mass Rez’s risk factor but in a way that felt better to play against. Instead of throwing it away.
1 Like
The problem with Blizzard is that their motto tends to be “If it’s not broken, break it so you can fix it.”
Except they’re really bad at fixing things.
4 Likes
Mercy’s kit has always been one of a healbot. Old Mercy only had two modes:
Healbot.
Walking ultimate.
In fact she was much more of a healbot back then, since there was little to no depth to her base kit. All you existed for was to heal and get ult charge, then you switched it up when you became a walking ultimate. She has always been one-dimensional like that.
It’s also funny how some ask for Mercy’s skill ceiling to be increased when Resurrect on CD does just that. But now it’s just considered “unfun, too punishing, and a suicide button”. Why ask for Mercy to have hard to master skills to increase her skill ceiling if you can’t work with the existing ability that does just that?
Well, my ideas and thoughts are going to get looked over like most others ideas.
I truly do find it hard to believe anyone goes through this and talks about our complaints, tips, ideas, opinions. We’re being ignored now…
Again, the same can be said of Widowmaker headshot. She just move the mouse and click. That is not a demanding action. You are underplaying all the aspects that comes before you just do that last step, which is “pressing Q”.
3 Likes
She’s not even a healbot now. She’s used for damage boost, with the healing being a nice little bonus.
1 Like
From a spectator standpoint, sure; the player isn’t a spectator though… unless they’re using Valkyrie.
Much of the activity for the player wasn’t visible. Unlike most heroes, a large portion of Mercy’s engagement was derived from a mind game brought about by her ultimate due to its flexibility and mechanics in conjunction with Mercy’s base kit.
Right. Because taking a complex ability with variation in availability and value and simplifying it to the point of being mindnumbingly intuitive makes it more difficult to use.
Right.
Because the ability that supposedly does that doesn’t do that.
2 Likes
As I have said to previous people.
Mercy mains don’t like the Valk 2.0 because it does not give a meaningful impact to the game for the word, “Ultimate” - you are free to look up my previous posts to confirm.
That is something I totally agree with.
Also the reason Mercy Mains loved Valk 1.0 was because you couldn’t do a 5 person res, but you could do a 3 person res + you got insane mobility out of it. So you felt much more active member of a team.
Again something I completely agree with.
The rest of what you are describing is basic mechanical skill for any hero.
Character prioritization and situational and spatial awareness. That is literally the base skill of almost any PvP style game. I am not writing it as an insult, I am simply stating a basic fact of any PvP game.
What differentiates Mercy from other characters is going beyond that base level of skill. Ana for example having to aim not only location but trajectory to land her Biotic nades to have maximum effect. Having to aim her sleep dart to land that ulting Genji.
Zenyatta having to predict in advance where the enemy might be to land his volley.
His Discord \ Harmony are 0 skill abilities in the end of the day. Your main focus is simply again basic prioritization, high health or high threat characters for discord.
High value friendly units for harmony.
Lucio and Zenyatta ultimates again are basic low skill ultimates simply based on timing. Zenyatta \ Lucio best time to ult is when the enemy tries to use a nuke ( Genji Blade \ Reaper Blossom \ Hog \ Zaraya ult combo \ etc ) What differentiates the best Zenyatta’s is going to be their accuracy in the end of the day.
Mercy lacks that “mechanical aspect completely” and gets more situational awareness as your beam doesn’t even need to be facing the same direction as the person you are healing ( gameplay settings ) You can actually GA a person without looking at them. ( Gameplay setting )
I agree Mercy needs to be more engaging,
But disagree any high level skill is involved, it is just the basic skill required by any PvP player under different circumstances.
For example since Mercy does not actively participate in combat - it would have been useful if she had more “commander” style abilities. Being able to mark and designate threats that appear on other peoples screens. Similar to how Zenyatta’s discord orb works only for Zenyatta.
Even though it would do no damage, it would be extremely valuable in terms of providing support for the team.