I convinced a Mass Resurrect Hater that it was healthier to still be around

[Macster-11267]

So I think it’s time I challenged the Developer Team to see if I can convince them as well.

TL;DR This isn’t a #RevertMercy post. This is a fix so please read before you jump into the comments and start writing stuff that isn’t factual about my argument or irrelevant please and thank you!

First off,

Let me introduce myself. My name is Macster and I play for my University team as their Main Healer! I am a GM Mercy player (But can play other characters too btw!). I have been playing Mercy since season 1 and have been through every iteration of Mercy so I have a lot of knowledge about this hero. I wanted to personally share my views with you the Developer Team as to why Mercy isn’t going in the right direction and provide you with some Advil (Solution) to your Headache!

Next is the fun part so please grab your reading glasses and prepare for a read because this is a long one.

I want to point out the flaws I’ve encountered with Valkyrie Live and I’ve come up with two main reasons.

First,

• Promotes Individualized Play
  • This is my biggest complaint. Mercy on Live is promoting players to go off on their own and not play as a team. Countless times in my GM games I’ve seen players run out of the spawn doors not aware of their surroundings and get sniped by a widow. Other times I see off-supports not playing around their tanks and end up getting 1 shot. Other times I have Genji’s and Tracers thinking they can 2v1 the backline.
    • This isn’t healthy for the game in any way. This is why Mercy players feel like playing her is a chore. We aren’t there to assist our teams in getting kills anymore we are there to cover up bad mistakes by our fellow teammates with a push of a button. Instead of being punished for making a mistake and having to wait for their respawn timer and think about their actions, Mercy appears and uses her “Mistake Forgiveness” ability, and as an added bonus will even pocket them afterwards.

Second,

• Valkyrie on Live isn’t Game Changing
  • Mercy players love the ability to fly, don’t get me wrong I enjoy it a lot. Having the power to fly around and dodge bullets that are targeted at you is a fun feeling. The problem I find is even after the speed nerfs I feel like my ultimate is still used to bait out DPS ultimates.
  • That’s how I feel I get any effectiveness out of it because I use it as an ultimate baiting tool, which I don’t think is your intention for an ultimate. What she does in Valkyrie was stuff I had to really try and do to build up a Mass Resurrect, which was:
    • Staying Alive
    • Switching between Healing/DMB
    • Using GA effectively
  • The problem is Valkyrie does that all for you and makes it even easier for you.
  • That’s why Mercy players don’t feel any engagement towards the fight anymore. They have been given an ultimate that does the things they used to have to do for them. Mercy Mass Resurrect was powerful and gave players that moment of, “You did all that work in keeping your team alive, here is a powerful tool, to bring back players in case you can’t prevent an inevitable death.”
  • The other issue I would like to discuss is the Tempo Resurrect mechanic you handed out to the community like it was free candy. That was a skill that took me a long time to master and then after the rework I was given the ability for free and even easier to utilize. My question is why? Honestly, that’s it. Why was this mechanic given out to the community easy to use?
    Personally, I knew it wasn’t going to work out well because Tempo Resurrects were a lot better to utilize rather than 5 man Resurrects. Just like it’s easier and more effective to use a Reinhardt shatter on 2 people then it is to get a 6 man shatter. It’s the same thing. Does that mean Reinhardt should get a rework to make his ultimate shatter 1 person every 30 seconds? Nope because that would be busted.

Now I’m going to talk about Mass Resurrect:

First,

• Teamwork/Impactfulness
  • Mercy’s Resurrect was known to be a very powerful tool. The way it worked forced teams to play together and to stay close in order to make Mass Resurrect more effective. That is the equivalent of any other defensive support ultimate in the game right now.
  • It required teams to protect each other and play with one another rather than scatter and play as individuals. This ultimate gave that moment to Mercy players to show off how impactful they were, it felt like the spotlight was on the Mercy player for once which is something I miss having.

Second,

• Game Changing/Decision Making
  • This is pretty simple, to sum up. Mercy’s ultimate was able to prevent death, therefore making it a force to be reckoned with during an ultimate fight. The decision making goes hand in hand with every other ultimate in the game. It provided us with an analyzing tool that kept track of enemy ultimates as well as when we can safely use it to A. Tempo Resurrect our 1 ally that was sniped or B. keep it in case an ultimate was going to be unleashed against our team.
  • Whereas Valkyrie on Live doesn’t offer that decision making. It’s basically two things. 1. Using it to survive 2. Using it for engage. That’s it. The rest is positioning yourself out of sight of the enemy and peaking every so often so your beam doesn’t cut the connection. Valkyrie doesn’t provide that same ultimate tracking that Mass Resurrect provided when it was still around making her gameplay stale.

Now let’s talk about Mercy in general:
Making a 1-star hero this simple should never be a thing.

• Let’s take a look at Soldier 76 for example since he is a 1-star DPS hero.

  • He has a harder base kit. ie. landing shots on enemies, landing his rockets and when to utilize biotic field.
    • What we can conclude from this is Soldier 76 has a harder to use Base Kit. But the game compensates him for utilizing that harder base kit and gives him an easier to use ultimate that is even more impactful than his regular left click.
  • If he is a 1-star hero like Mercy is shouldn’t he get a rework to make his whole kit easier to be effective?
    • Will we be seeing his basic kit get easier to use having Tactical Visor incorporated into his basic kit so he has aim assist all the time? Obviously not because it would be objectively broken.

• Now let’s take a look at Mercy 1.5 (Mass Resurrect + Invulnerability)

  • Mercy had 4 really easy things that she could utilize.
    • Easy to use Healing
    • Easy to use DMB
    • Easy to use Mobility
    • Easy to use Resurrect ultimate
  • The treatment in making her more balanced was either 1 of 2 things.
    • You make her base kit harder to use.
    • You make her ultimate harder to use. (<-- The answer)
  • The problem was Mercy as a hero was given too many exceptions to her kit to make her an easy to use 1-star hero.
    • The fix to that was to make her ultimate more counterable and harder to utilize.
  • What we could’ve seen before this rework was some adjustments on how her ultimate could be executed since it was fairly easy.
    • The biggest complaint was that Mercy could use Mass Resurrect behind walls.
      • Which should’ve been taken care of with a simple fix to make her Mass Resurrect Line of Sight.
    • Next was the counterplay issue.
      • The ideas to give Resurrect that moment of counterplay would’ve been to make it work a lot like Lucio’s Q, where he has that 1 second of being vulnerable before his ultimate gets pulled off/activated giving the enemy a chance to react.
      • The next idea was to give tanks the ability to counterplay Mercy as well. We see that Lucio and Zenyatta both have their ultimates blockable by barriers letting tanks have a chance for counterplay. My other reasoning behind it is, “If DPS can’t get a kill behind a barrier Mercy shouldn’t be able to get a Resurrect behind one either.”
  • I feel like implementing those three adjustments into Mass Resurrect would’ve made a tremendous difference and would’ve saved you from this nightmare.

• Next is the E ability:

  • Mercy players were asking for something that could help us assist the team better during the Mid-Fight (The fight where nobody has ultimates)
  • So looking at the MegaThread you can see the number of ideas people had come up.
    • What I saw was many different ideas because everyone is trying to get your attention so they are coming up with ideas themselves in order to better Mercy.
      • Mercy gains an ability that will give her vertical momentum and provide a knockback to enemies around her.
      • Mercy gets a miniature version of Valkyrie that isn’t as powerful but provides the tools necessary for engagement (and flying of course!)
      • Mercy gains the ability to heal her targeted hero with 150HP instant heal. (Brigitte has that now so that’s a no)
  • Then here is my idea.
    • Mercy E ability will become Valkyrie (So we can still fly of course! ) Adjust the speed/Give the beam range maybe a 1.5 boost in length instead of double?
      • Her beams become single target instead of chained to all allies.
      • The beams attached to the hero gain new effects.
        • Having the Healing beam attached to her target will give them a 10M radius of a blind effect (Something that hasn’t been done yet in Overwatch)
        • Having the DMB attached to her target will give them a 10M radius of sparked damage to surrounding enemies they attack with Left click damage/Ability damage.
      • This will help give Mercy several different tools that will give her that decision making/beam prioritization back but with a boost.

There is nothing wrong with making a 1-star hero a little difficult to play/master. Going in this route gives that skill ceiling and diversity between tiers that players desperately want back again. It will separate the tiers a lot more which is something I personally want back as a Competitive Player.

Right now I think Mercy has lost her identity as a hero. To me, on Live she doesn’t feel like the hero she once was. I feel like I’m more of a sidekick than a hero. I feel like my duty when playing Mercy on Live is to assist the heroes during the battle and to make the work they put in even easier. In movies where a hero makes a mistake, their sidekick is always there to protect them and that’s what I feel like when I’m playing Mercy.

Under no circumstances should a hero feel like a sidekick. I completely agree that Mercy needed to be taken out of the spotlight. I agree she needed to see less play but turning her into a heroic figure into a pocket sidekick wasn’t the right decision I can assure you.

I know you will do the right thing. But keeping Mercy that way on Live because she is balanced will not solve the consistent feedback that you are getting. Send out something saying you will look into her show us that you care! I just want to be valued as a player. Not being screamed at 24/7 to get a Resurrect and to sit and pocket them. I want to be active during a fight moving from ally to ally using an ability to actively help out my team during a Mid-Fight and when my team can’t prevail “Prevent them from losing hope on the fight and prevent them from dying!”

So please have Mercy on this post (No Pun Intended) and actually take the time to read it! Thank you!