I am making this post purely because the Devs said they would be listening to see how Mercy feels after the changes and make a decision after the initial outcry that happens when any hero is changed. I’ve heard a lot of people excuse the changes as power redistribution, or just a straight buff, had a lot of debates and arguments while testing the character, and genuinely still think there need to be significant changes made. I’m going to touch on a bunch of different topics, how some changes might further complicate things, and why I think having a lower CD for GA is the lesser of two evils (doesn’t have to be 1.5 again, but 2.5 is a stretch).
I made a post on the forms over a week ago giving examples of how the GA changes messed with the synergy of her kit and overall feels clunky, some of my initial opinions about the passive, pocketing, and under 50% healing boost have changed slightly, but the examples still hold true so Imma refer to that if you’d like to look. But a quick explanation is that the GA nerf has created downtime where Mercy isn’t really up to much (teammates are too far, a res occurred but now there’s pressure from the other team and she can’t leave, your pocket dies oh no need to wait for your cool down to heal yourself and contribute to the team again, etc).
Synergy:
Again, my explanation of how the synergy has created downtime is in my previous post linked above, this is addressing how if Dev’s try and fix the synergy without a GA change or revert its opening up another whole can of worms. To fix the synergy she has with the rest of her kit, you would have to increase the amount of time her beam lingers (and possibly beam length), and do something about rez but again I do not care about rez, change it, get rid of it, give her an ability she can actually use more then 3 times a game, I’m indifferent. But Mercy only having to peak corners every 2.5 seconds, is not something that will be healthy for the game. Being able to have the impact that she has already while being able to remain in cover and out of sightline for even longer than before, won’t be fun for anyone. It’ll be even harder for her to kill, encourage a more stationary style of play, and probably be very frustrating for those having to play against it.
Pocketing:
Some people say it’s stronger, some people say it’s weaker, so I’m not going to be able to agree with everyone on this. I’d personally say its stronger now as long as you can keep up with the pocket, having quicker healing under 50% makes it harder for heroes without burst damage to do much of anything against it. @SamitoFPS (who’s ranked 1 in combined rn) tweeted a short video explaining and made some interesting points. But not everyone wants to play pocket mercy all game and that’s fair. The healing buff has incentivized her to fly around healing people up to 50% while making it harder to do that, which has in turn incentivized more pocketing, when that was the majority of what most people had an issue with in the first place.
Skill-Cap:
Those who honestly believe they’ve made the skill cap higher with the GA nerf, just haven’t played mercy, I’m sorry. What it has done is force lower elo mercy’s to be far more aware and proactive about positioning. But overall, making the ability worse which made the skill cap high, to begin with, doesn’t raise the skill cap. The logic there isn’t clicking for me. And good positioned mercy’s are still very hard to kill even with the GA nerf. Raising skill-cap and forcing people to play smarter by limiting the character, are not the same thing believe it or not. Just differentiates the good from the bad. But I think most would prefer having a higher skill cap overall and getting rewarded for getting really good at her movement.
Backward GA nerf:
This might be my only hot take, but I just don’t get this one. In some ways it makes sense, but then all that goes out the window when you can just turn the mouse around and it has the exact same effect as an old backward GA. Now you might be thinking, why are you complaining then? Mostly because it’s worse for quality of life. It’s only really hurting the console players, and now I actively do everything to avoid Backward GA, so nothing has really changed they just made it more of a pain.
Blue Beam:
Let’s just nerf the damn thing. Anywhere between 20%-25% seems fine to me, maybe that’s too much, some will think it’s too little, but hey what can you do? Mercy has to have a way of contributing to overall team damage somehow, so we can’t just delete the thing (I’ll get to “get rid of blue beam and give her a good weapon instead” after). So we gotta make some compromises here. I saw a great point on a Twitter thread that I cannot find now so my apologies, that in order for DMG boost to not make Soj one tap, it’d have to be lower than 5%. So idk about you, but it tells me that in this equation of whose really the problem, my finger is not pointed at mercy (if this is incorrect or you have the specific number or tweet lemme know, respectfully please).
“Get rid of blue beam and give her damage options instead”:
Other than entirely getting rid of the identity of the character, this still isn’t a great idea. Having a character that’s only utility and movement is based on the sightline of her teammates, and giving her damage potential is opening another can of worms I don’t think anyone is interested in, or anyone wants. To me, it’s like telling a Moira to go flank and then not letting them fade without a line of sight to a teammate. It’s not a great direction for mercy, and while this isn’t a crazy popular take I wanted to put my thoughts about it out there.
Community Hypocrisy:
Less to do about game mechanics, more to do about community. Personally I am very frustrated with the “you can’t aim so shut up” argument that people will default to. I have never seen anyone tell a Moira, Rein or Winston main that their opinion isn’t valid because of the character they play, and you cannot argue that those character’s have less aiming than Ashe, Cass, or Widow. And that’s not to discredit people who main those characters, it’s just a different skill set, Mercy included. Plus there is aiming in different ways for all these characters. Mercy doesn’t just fly around at top speed by keeping the camera in one direction like, again, it’s just a different skill set. People don’t seem to have much respect for anything other than hitting a 360 mid air headshot 5 times in a row. Like yeah that’s sick, but it doesn’t make their opinion correct if you know what I mean.
Utility:
Other supports have ways of protecting themselves or just do enough damage that a 1v1 isn’t the best idea dependant on the character you’re playing. Ana’s got sleep dart and nad, Bap’s got lamp and burst heal, Zen’s got really good damage and orb, Moira’s got fade, Kiriko can two tap a squishy, make herself invulnerable to damage, and teleport- you get the point. Mercy only has her pistol and a dream. Her GA was her utility and her defense, which can only be used with a sightline to a teammate or teammate’s corpse. Nerfing that, in my opinion, took away a lot of her options to advocate for herself. She’s entirely dependent on how good her team is in the first place, and her healing was never really that great compared to Moira, Kiri, or Ana. My general point is that they all have strengths in weaknesses. Mercy’s was that she’s hard to pin down, but on her own had very little value other than for things like stalling, which you have to be pretty good at mercy to pull off.
Final Thoughts:
I’m going to leave some points on what I think are reasonable changes, but my opinion is not law and I’m open to listening and hearing other people’s thoughts. Keep er respectful though folks I won’t be responding to insults or toxicity. Do I think you can adapt to the changes, yes, do I think they’re the end of the world and the character is unplayable, no, but sometimes it just feels really bad and weird with the synergy issues, and trying to fix those over just reverting or making GA cool down a bit quicker will be 10x more complicated. I’ll also leave a link to a Niandra video I liked a lot that touched on a lot of the mercy issues. And a final thing, please be respectful to other players, particularly devs. You can voice your opinion while also not being a jerk about it.
Mercy Kit:
GA cooldown between 1.5 - 2s (will lessen the damage to synergy)
Nerf DMG boost around 20-25%
Possibly give mercy less mobility during a rez, which will stop those crazy behind-walls or under-the-floor rezes. The issue with getting rid of it is she’d have to get really good compensation for that since rez can be very impactful, and I’m not sure what other ability would be equal to bringing a teammate back to life that people also wouldn’t find op or “oppressive”.
I’m indifferent to the healing changes, but constant regeneration during ult would be nice to get back.
