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

First off: thank you for reading my rework idea and putting in your two cents. I’d like to continue the discussion and elucidate the reasoning behind some of my decisions.

The bust heal on rez: at first, I wanted to just make it heal everyone back to full. But then I realized that it would bring in another tank meta, so I lowered it to only fully healing squishies. Anything more would devalue squishy heroes in favor of tanks.

I agree with you on LoS only being for solid objects.

The E ability has quite the story behind it.
At first, I was dead set on Mercy having bust utility as an E (like a cleanse), so that she wouldn’t be so ult-dependent and could make a direct contribution during non-ult fights.

Then I had an epiphany.

First off, a cleanse wouldn’t work because of the way it would alter Mercy’s relationship with Ana. Ana is supposed to counter Mercy, not the other way around.

Second: giving Mercy strong burst utility would have her edging in on territory that’s not hers to take (e.g. Ana, Lucio, Brigitte).

Third: the human element. If it were up to me, I’d make the superjump bug an official feature and dump Valkyrie in the compost. But. Many players have come to love Valkyrie and the freedom it provides. Many never knew Mercy before she was able to fly, and would be justifiably upset that the Angel with wings isn’t able to properly use them anymore. If Valkyrie went away completely, their experience would be wrecked like ours was wrecked when mass rez was removed.

Fourth: appealing to the devs. They spent a lot of time coding and animating Valkyrie, and I assume that they would be loathe to throw all that work out. Plus, it’s easier to modify an existing asset than it is to create a new one from scratch.

So, I was faced with a puzzle: how do I give flight to an already mobile hero without overpowering them?

The immediate, most obvious answer would be to give it a low uptime. But players would be very unimpressed with such a “simple movement ability” having an extremely long cooldown. Other movement abilities are normally on a much lower cooldown.

So, what kind of bells and whistles can be added to make the low uptime feel justified for the players? Plus, there’s still the problem of risking Mercy becoming ult-dependent if something isn’t done about it.

That’s when I juiced up the beams a bit. A bit of extra healing to appeal to players who want to literally swoop in and rescue allies, and a small speed augmentation to damage boost to help allies kite enemies and confirm kills on fleeing targets (because raising damage boost past 30% is mathematically a Bad Idea).

I do expect Mercy to get some kind of durability nerf to balance out the extra mobility. Raising her regeneration delay from 1 second to 2 sounds like the ideal solution.

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Just as reminder:

  • mass resurrect couldn’t be used to save yourself, unless there is at least 1 teammate dead nearby. Except nanoboost, all other support ults can be used selfishly(including Valkyrie).
  • unlike ults, that prevent death, invulnerable teammates don’t contribute to fight, until effect is over;
  • unlike other ults, you couldn’t activate it as soon as you see incoming high damage ult; you had to survive longer, than your teammate(s), to bring them back, usually while other team hunts you down.

Players just didn’t pay attention to Mercy, by usual FPS logic “if something isn’t shooting at me, it’s no threat”, and then were frustrated, once all their awesome ults were undone by that “no threat” hero.

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So any news about butchering Mercy yet?

This. This is why so many people keep insisting that Mercy in her current state is “fine”.

It’s because Mercy’s actual state now “finally” matches their perception of her: a harmless ornament that’s a good sidekick, but can’t actually do anything to stop a DPS rampage.

Rez wraps Mercy up with a bow and makes her an ez kill. Valkyrie can’t actually save anyone. DPS now only have to worry about other DPS shutting them down.

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Give it time. Seems like everyone is getting out the pitchforks and torches while marching, and sadly the Blizzard devs are their destination.

Can’t wait to see ruined Mercy once again!

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Makes me glad I just gave up on this game. :expressionless:

Maybe in a few months I’ll try it again, but it’s not looking promising.

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I barely play these days. The only thing that will get me back as a regular player is if they fix Mercy.

Factoring in what we know of balance schedule:

Symmetra 3.0 by the end of June
July PTR has been confirmed for big Sombra changes
We haven’t had a new hero in a while, so that’s probably going to be what’s happening in the August PTR
Torb rework has been confirmed to be on the devs “to do” list, so that’s September
The devs have never done big reworks back to back, so October is out

My best guess is that IF there’s going to be another Mercy rework, it’s going to hit the PTR in November at the absolute earliest. Blizzard prioritizes looking at unbalanced and unviable heroes first, so Mercy is definitely at the bottom of their priority list.

4 Likes

Be my guest. The swamp will be bigger then!

Oh boy. I wonder if by the end of summer, the garbage dump will reach 20k posts? We can listen to people complaining about Mercy in the meantime. I bet many who complain now were the first to celebrate Mass Rez’s departure. Hah.

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It’s already 11k, so that’s possible. Unless the new megatrash will be created in the meantime.

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Onward to 20k! :smiley:
How can they say “Mercy is fine” when she has 3, almost 4 Megathreads? xD Hilarious.

To them she’s fine, nothing wrong with your own opinion.
Truly funny thing is how their movement lost impact and split into “Nerf Mercy” :stuck_out_tongue:

Grunt: “Sir, we’re receiving reports that Mercy is still able to outplay DPS without 1v1ing them with a widowmaker sniper rifle at dawn on the ceremonial field of dong measuring honorable dueling.”

Shadowy Figure: “This is very serious. PRESS THE RED NERF BUTTON IMMEDIATELY.”

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But Trump said he would drain the swamp. He would never lie to us…:neutral_face:

The goal with the idea of a burst heal, to use res without dead allies is, to shift the power of Mass Res more to the midfight. So it should be far more than 200HP. I understand your concern about Tank’s, but as an Ult it would be way less regular than for example Ana’s healing Nade. Even 100% HP would be no problem for the start, if it’s too strong, the amount of healed HP can still be adjusted with a set number.

As i already stated, Movement abilities, healing and utility abilities can cause some balance problems. I generally thing that those are really not a good idea. The only movement idea i can think of, which might be not to strong, is a change to GA. The idea is that, if you have no target, Mercy jumps up. That would only work on the ground. The height would be just enough to reach the balcony on first point Eichenwalde (or that first bridge in the training area). If GA is used that way the CD would be 0.5s longer.

But your right, if we give her a new movement ability, even if it’s only something minor, her slef heal would need to take a bit longer to kick in. 1.5-1.75s seems reasonable for me.

The E… i wouldn’t give her one (partly because i have her weapon switch on E), it has to much potential to be broken. A small self defense ability, like a Aoe knockback might be fun to try but more is no real option.

Where did they say that? As far as i know he lost priority at one point.

I think they said Torb was next after Sym. They didn’t mentioned changing their mind, I think.

Well… i know that this is from a long time ago, but it seems like they have something in between Sym and Torb.
The hopes for that being Mercy are more or less dead, but he is obviously planned for later. Unless they said something about that, i may have missed that.

I wonder who that someone is. I’ve heard about how they wanted to do something about Reinhardt, but it still might be someone else.

Unfortunately, I doubt it’s Mercy.

And Torb being put off further? Nooo!! :persevere: