How to actually win games as mercy

General Discussion
1

Since the healing nerf Mercy has stopped functioning as a main healer, she’s now more of a utility hero like Lucio, or Zen. (which is where her kit suggest she should be).

Stop playing Mercy as a 1 hero pocket:
-You’re leaving your other support with 4 people to heal without taking advantage of the full value of damage boost and heal. No on is going to be on fire the entire game, you need to jump from player to player to keep everyone up and enable other people’s big plays. Thats part of being a support, helping other people to look good.

Prioritize healing over damage boost:
-Remember the biggest advantage you can have is the numbers advantage, if you let one of your teammates die so Mcree might eliminate Pharah you’re putting your team in a position where you’ve lost one teammate and may still have a Pharah as a threat. Unless you’re likely to loose 1 to kill 2 you should be healing.

Call out rezes, and non rezes

  • You’re rez takes too long to do it on a whim safely, and your team has no idea you’re planning on doing it. This is your call, let it be known. If no one responds (either through voice or action) bail. You’re more valuable alive than dead, and bringing back a teammate is seldom worth the risk of loosing a support. If you have to bail tell your team, if someone suicides tell them you can’t rez (this also is a nice way to tell someone they’re being suicidal and need to play with the team).

Call out successful rezes, and failed rezes
-Rez is your most powerful ability, so everyone will act entitled to having it used on them. By calling out when you have used rez or its been canceled and put on cooldown you mitigate your teams risk of tilting because you didn’t rez them when they had ult even though you just used it or it got canceled.

Communicate rez cooldown
-I know, I’ve been focusing on rez a lot in this post. That should tell you how important this ability is even now, if you see a teammate die communicate your rez cooldown, this is so they know whether or not you’ll be able to rez preventing tilt.

Don’t rez a teammate that ask not to be rezzed.
-This is the BIGGEST mistake you can make as a mercy, a teammate asking not to be rezzed is swapping to another hero (most likely because their current hero isn’t working) if you rez them you’re forcing them to stay on a bad pick or run all the way back to spawn to swap out then run back (doubling their respawn time). If you start rezzing and they say no 180 cancel that rez and accept that it’s on cooldown.

Take advantage of your mobility
One of the biggest advantages Mercy has over Ana (her main competition) is her mobility. Ana can’t shoot Widow while she’s tucked in a corner but you can glide up there and get off some heals. Clever usage of Guardian Angel can greatly increase your ability to support teammates in hard to reach spots or to get yourself into a hard to reach spot. Mobility is king in this game, and Mercy has it.

I hope these tips help you improve your Mercy gameplay.

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Dude the amount of suicide angels I see now is insane. Nothing like watching your mercy Press F on your corpse in the middle of a fight with no teammates around.

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It’s almost as if Mercy skill floor and ceiling were actually raised. :rofl: Some people here on the forum however will try very hard to convince you she is more brain-dead than before. And that using Valkyrie is apparently easier than pressing a button for instant reward.

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Run her in triple support comps. Your job is to exclusively pocket someone though.

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Even in those comps you need to be swapping who you’re healing, this falls back to my point that no one is on firing the entire game. If you’re pocketing a person while someone else is on fire you’re not where you need to be. You need to be using damage boost to help whoever is on fire be that much more on fire.

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Its valid to pocket someone whos not performing to help them perform. Its equally valid to pocket someone on fire.

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You forgot:

  • Track ults: warn your team when most enemy ults are up, especially those nasty Gravs, Dragonblades and Dragonstrikes;

  • Be positive and keep team morale high;

  • Shot call all the time on priority/low health targets and tell them when to push;

  • Use Superjump to keep yourself airborne most of the time. Avoid being on the ground as much as you can;

  • Keep tab on the whereabouts of your team at all times, and have at least 1-2 people to where you can GA immediately if things get bad;

  • Try to prevent blaming between the team and see if you can encourage the player that is having troubles with toxicity (Sombras and Symmetras especially need to be nurtured to talk to the team and coordinate);

  • Learn to harass the backline with Valk. Getting a pick early can be decisive, especially if that pick is Ana;

  • Taking out the Widow or Pharah with ult is important. More important is to learn headshots to take out enemy flankers or get quick kills during ult, in order to resume healing ASAP;

  • Preferably duo queue with a tank main.

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8

If someone isn’t preforming they’re not landing shots or blocking damage or healing pocketing them isn’t going to change that just make it slightly better.

If someone is on fire they’re landing more shots than usual for their rank, healing more than usual for their rank, or blocking more than usual for their rank damage boosting that won’t change it either but it will amplify the effect of them playing at their best (which will win more games).

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Or just play Zen, Brig or Lucio if there is a main healer on the team already, the result is much better.

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All healers have a place, zens low mobility can make mercy a appealing main when a back line harasser is present.

Brigs need to be near her team and dealing damage to heal can be pushed out if a team is willing to widdle from a range then engage when they’ve gotten a few picks.

Lucio has amazing mobility and peak healing but his lack of upward mobility or big sustain heals makes Mercy outclass him when thats what’s needed.

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Realizing that locking yourself into a 1.75 cast time in the middle of the enemy team isn’t going to work, isn’t ‘skill’. That’s just called common sense.

Valk only requires skill when you go battle Mercy with it. Holding M1, or sometimes M2, and hoping your team doesn’t die is not skillful.

Mass Rez, on paper, appeared to be skill-less with no thought or effort required. That couldn’t be further than the truth. A lot of thought went into Mass Rez, and good positioning was extremely important.

Oh, and because you love Titanium threads so much, here you go:

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Personally anyone that uses the term “Common Sense” has never worked in a service job, there’s no such thing as Common Sense. So learning that soft locking (since you can break rez) yourself into a rez is a skill while a very low level one it still requires more skill. Also realizing you can break rez is a skill, or learning where to position yourself is a skill.

Everything you can learn is a skill. You also have to consider that a ton of players started without ever playing a FPS before and some are really slow to learn the basics of FPS games.

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They should still know that the enemy team can kill them. And therefore, if they apply a little bit of logic, they should realise that if you stand in the middle of the enemy team, you die. So, locking yourself into a cast time in the middle of the enemy team is practically guaranteeing your death.

That’s not ‘skill’. That’s common sense and basic logic.

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I think you underestimate how little people think when they’re playing a game just to blow off steam. Which is why shot calling can be so important you can put out a plan explain your thought process and do the thinking for your team.

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Yeah, it’s almost as if you now need positioning, situational awareness and team communication to pull off a successful rez. I would call that a skill, dunno about you.

The alleged mind games. You realize I also have played Mercy right? Since beta. Hiding and pressing Q when everybody dies is not quantum physics. My 12 year old sister could do it successfully which means literally anyone could do it. And don’t even try to claim that hide&rez wasn’t a thing.

Ah Titanium, already destroyed plenty of his claims. Not to mention, the dude’s suggestion is blatantly OP and I have to question anyone’s objectivity thinking it’s a good idea. Also someone who hasn’t played the game for one year now (his own admission) is out of touch quite frankly.

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You need basic situational awareness for rez. As in, “Are there enemies nearby?”. And, the positioning is just “Am I in the middle of the enemy team? If I am, maybe I shouldn’t rez.”

Animetic does just fine without team communication, and she’s around GM.

Obviously you weren’t that great at Mercy considering you used Hide and Rez, which was much worse than Tempo Rez.

Congrats. But, there’s a reason that Hide and Rez was only used as an SR exploit.

I know it was. But, it definitely was not an effective strategy unless the enemy team couldn’t win a 6v5 without blowing all their ultimates.

You say you’ve destroyed everyone’s claims.

It’s quite hard to balance your ideas without being able to test them out.

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Yeah, Mercy has always been the easiest hero in the game. Not really surprising.

Again, it isn’t rocket science.

Never bothered to get to GM (I’m not in my teens and have a lot of responsibilities), but being in the top 10% of the OW population and playing the game since beta sort of attests that I kinda have an idea about what I’m saying. Apparently the devs and the pros agree with my opinion since you know…mass rez is not in the game anymore.

Considering it was done at pro level, I beg to differ.

Not everyone, just the usual suspects.

You don’t need to do drugs to know that it’s a bad idea. And Titanium’s idea doesn’t need to be implemented for anyone to know that it’s a bad idea. Having mass rez and reviving dead allies on top of having 150 AoE Burst Heal for Mercy herself and living allies at the same time plus an extra ability on top of that is more broken that Valkyrie 1.0. And you really really have to question the objectivity of anyone supporting this idea.

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how to ACTUALLY win games as Mercy

  • have a competent team
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Thats how to get carried, not how to take an even game and turn it into a win. Or flip a loosing match into a win.

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Mercy has 0 carry potential and is completely team reliant. Winning a soloQ game as Mercy depends completely on who you’re matched with, you have no control over the game as Mercy. (diamond and higher)

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