Here’s what i think about when trying to play mercy.
“NOPE. Hero is, Was and will be the most boring thing to play imaginable. So no thanks”.
Here’s what i think when i see a mercy on our team.
“Do we have a dps for her to damage boost? If yes, Great. If no, Then why is this dude playing mercy? To heal tanks? That’s basically the equivalent of throwing. When a hero’s not viable in a situation DON’T PICK THEM”.
She’s not played because the bits of her kit that are valued for SR are kind of terrible and she functions as an off healer or mandatory Pharah/Ashe pocket and people get bored of that hilariously quickly.
I just want to chime in that since I am seeing a lot of talk about 50hps vs 60hps for Mercy, her healing was buffed to 60hps after the release of Ana (September 2016) in order to compete with her.
Ana’s healing hasn’t changed since then, and from other posts we can see Mercy’s healing increased only around 300hps since her rework (and then fell after her healing nerf).
Also calling rez a utility imo is almost laughable because it has the longest CD in the game (Sleep takes second place at 15 sec) and a cast time that takes longer than majority of the ultimates in the game.
I have more things I want to say, I’ll be back but these are the pressing things that I want to say now. I will respond to my own post (and any responses) later.
What I don’t understand with this Mercy isn’t fun nonsense is what are you even doing when playing mercy, if its just healing then okay that isn’t fun but if you don’t take in consideration in the fact that mercy has a free hand to do other things then you’re not gonna get anywhere especially in rank. Mercy isn’t just this spectator in fights she is also an angel that can look over the team fight and tell her teammate where the enemies are positioned and who’s ult might be ready. Like quit looking at mercy as this goddess she isn’t gonna win you every fight she is depended on her team and that is pretty much what you signed up for when playing the only support that can’t dish out damage.
Both of those are a bit too team-mate reliant to really be utility. If you want huge utility for a healer, that’s what Ana and Lucio are for. Way more useful per fight than either Rez or Damage Boost.
Um, what? That’s what utility is. It makes your team perform better.
Rez relies on your team-mate suddenly performing better after performing badly enough to get killed. Damage boost is overall more useful, but more often than not Mercy’s healing is needed more than the boost. Plus, team-mates often don’t make much use of being boosted and it doesn’t effect any of the commonly used wombo-combo or highly destructive ults so I dunno. It has its uses, but I wouldn’t call them huge utility.
Hey, even when a DPS is wrecking the enemy team, they still get killed sometimes.
Fair enough. I still not really sold on how worth it is though, or how much utility it actually offers. It’s useful in those niche situations where you can safely use it and that’s about it.
I don’t think that was over healing, before ana was nerfed into the ground she highly outshined mercy. Thus the need to buff mercy and rez over and over. Blizzard just can’t do anything small and nerfed ana hard and fast and didn’t give her the nano buff until almost a year later. But her healing wasn’t the problem, her utility was. And even then, she still was okay. Mercy was just getting more play with her easy access Sr exploit. But she wasn’t actually winning.
It’s not that it’s mandatory for me. It’s about what is being taught . Mercy has a niche of consistency and that’s something you have to learn in lower ranks. You can be a good widow mechanically in gold but if you aren’t consistent, you don’t help. Soldier, rein, and mercy are the archetypes of their classes and offer consistency. So of course mercy is good when learning that basic. You can be good on ana in gold, but doing a hard carry in her requires things outside of mechanical skill.
So if you can get all you can from ana in gold… You don’t belong in gold. Whereas mercy is very simple, so I feel like if you’re in gm on her, you should be a god. Untouchable, pistoling, and fluid. Because an ana of equal skill offers inherently more utility. So your value of consistency on mercy needs to outweigh Ana’s potential.
That was only moth. And I feel it came from not actually reflecting on what makes Rez strong and not understanding the value of flexibility.
Well, first of all, she was overall balanced before this revert back to alpha/beta/seasons 2-3 old mistakes. Once more, fun is subjective, so there was no reason to change her in the first place apart from an exploit used by a bunch of people, something that only required QoL changes, never this huge revert back to old problems that were fixed before for good.
Second, statistically she is not good, as other guy has said.
Third, winrates mean nothing. Why? I guess then we should have nerfed Sym when she had pickrate close to 0% but a winrate of 62%, being the highest in the whole game despite her being a troll pick.
Last but not least, when you change something, first comes design, then comes balance. If the design is bad, there is no use in trying to balance it. That’s what happens with Mercy nowadays. She is bad design, but since the devs are unable to admit a single mistake, they are desperately trying to balance the unbalanceable. They have wasted millions and millions of dollars in the greatest garbage of design they have ever made, something that should never have passed the ptr. Now, having bad numbers, they are trying to let her in the dust now that she is not mandatory but underwhelming in comparison with the other supports. Why? Because they are desperately trying to win/recover their money. Soldier being gay without any event coming nor nothing, (just some kind of breaking news) is a fair back up of this.
Blizz is having a crisis, and Ow is in its worst moment so far, so the team is trying to recover costumers and stop the bleeding. However, I could say they also don’t know how to do it, because their attempts are being mediocre already.
P.S.: I must correct now your last point.
That’s not selfish. That’s finding a middle and better ground. Blizz took away the hero that so many people loved just to appease a few people. Very few keeps loving her as she is (however, a lot more love the character). Not wanting a solution to this problem, unexistent before, is the really selfish attitude.
Simple answer:
Because of the ult!
A lot of mercy players want something that feels more impact-/skillful, while all the others are simply still traumatised about the moth-meta and want to change nothing anymore at all.
I play Mercy decently often and she feels fine. Most of the skill in playing Mercy involves staying alive in a firefight where everyone is trying to kill you, which requires good awareness of the locations of both your teammates and enemies. Being able to make the split-second decisions to risk the rez when allies go down is also important.
I do think Valk is somewhat less interesting than her old ult, since there’s not as much question about when to use it or what to do while it’s active, but it’s by no means character ruining.
I think a lot of the problem is that many of the people complaining ONLY play Mercy, so they’re probably sometimes getting countered or getting burnt out on the character. You’re not intended to just play one hero all the time, different characters have different synergies with different comps and maps, and this is also true for the support class.
I’m sorry, but do you have any proof of this?
How I see it are the Mercy mains the minority compared to the rest of the entire playerbase.
And how are you so certain only a few like the current version? Is it not a possibility that only a few don’t like the current Mercy?
I don’t know. There aren’t any stats of this.
Mercy had problems with all the 3 points of the balancing triangle. Player feedback of the entire playerbase (and not just Mercy mains), developer feedback (they didn’t like hide and rez) and data (Mercy was F-tier).
The rework was a mess and terribly handled, but i can’t call the rework unjustifiable.
Mercy in her current state is balanced and viable. (Just not meta.)
Being boring to play alone is a bad reason to change a hero, because fun is subjective.
So how I see it is there currently no real problems with Mercy, and is asking for buffs, rework or a revert selfish, because you would only screw those who do like the current (balanced) Mercy just so you can have more fun yourself.
[Starts to take cover.]
Incorrect. This is a video game if something isn’t fun, it should in fact be changed.
Who said anything about screwing over people who currently like her?
I’ve seen and made numerous different reworks. They honestly run the gamut from “Weaken the healing chains and strengthen the main beam” and nothing else to bringing back Mass Resurrect to turning Mercy into a ridiculously self sufficient flanker (don’t ask… it was weird).
Just because someone wants Mercy to be changed doesn’t mean they’re trying to alienate her current players.
If this was the case, then heroes like Genji, Hanzo, Tracer, Moira, Mei, Doomfist, Bastion and Torbjorn would have all received changes to make them more fun to deal with.
Yes, fun is important, but so is balancing.
The real challenge is to find the middle ground.
I do.
If it’s not a straight buff, then a revert or a rework would screw those who likes the current Mercy, because just like those who like Mercy 1.0, will they lost mercy 2.? (which version is she? ).
But let’s put fun aside for now. Do you think it’s smart for blizzard, as a company, to put more time and resources in revamping an already balanced and somewhat viable hero? Not to the time and resources it take to balance that hero after the rework.
I get they aren’t trying, but unless it’s not a revert or a rework, is it something unavoidable.
The rework Mercy received was a mess, and the way they balanced her was one of the worst I have seen in video games. Mercy is currently balanced and somewhat viable, so I don’t see why they should repeat it and risk it again.
To be honest, they shouldn’t reworked her imo. I get why they did it, but there were better ways. If rez and hide&rez was a problem, then adjust it. If her low pickrate was a problem, then buff her. A rework should always be the last choice.
But I also think the current Mercy is balanced and should not be changed.
Good job not addressing the fact that many Mercy players still have fun playing her. I’d even call these the actual Mercy mains who still play the hero, while maybe wanting small tweaks. Not those who spam forums all day with revert/rework topics and haven’t played her at all since mass res got removed. Especially after the devs said they like where Mercy is right now… 
Regardless of whether it is “smart” or not, it is the right thing to do.
I never said fixing this would be easy. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. After the massive backlash No Man’s Sky got after release, was it going to be easy to actually go in and fix everything? No. Did they do it anyway? Yes they did. In the process they’ve regained a ton of respect.
The other thing to consider is… until they do something, this massive amount of resentment is not going anywhere.
The resentment over DVa didn’t end until she got a rework.
This resentment over Mercy has been going for 1.5 years. It isn’t going to end until Blizzard addresses it. Also… there’s really no telling how many of the people they’ve pissed off have told anyone and everyone they know to never ever buy Overwatch. How much is THAT hurting them?
Your entire post is inaccurate. There are a lot of different opinions on Mercy, and a whole lot of people who play Mercy think she’s in the best state she has ever been. And regardless of the opinions people hold they won’t change until the hero does, and that’s ultimately up to the developers. So, arguments will continue since Mercy won’t change.
I mean… They did
Symm too. It wasn’t always about balance either. Lucio was literally only changed for fun.
Yeah… Cuz they did with Mercy already. She needed tweaks, and they chose rework instead
Agreed
Same reason as before : design.
I definitely don’t. I would think it would mean more work.
Hard agree. But for me, mercy didn’t even have her issues properly adjusted in the rework just like symm and torb. 
Just a giant waste of time.