I dreamt up a Mercy Replacement so weird I had to share it

General Discussion
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Maybe it’s cringe as hell to share an Overwatch dream, let alone admit to having one. But you got to hear me out on how absurd this was. So the idea was that I and friends were playing new support heroes that came out, and one of them was a blatant overpowered rework replacement of Mercy while letting Mercy still be in the game. And yes most of this dream was me playing the made up character and complaining how she basically replaces Mercy, even if you could have them both on a team.

TL;DR: Don’t remember the character name. Black hair in a bun and Wifeleaver cleric style Valkyrie armor. GA longer cooldown no slingshots and set to E. No Rez. Shift is now an omnidirectional momentum transfer dash. Heal beam and damage beam are normal. Six second flash heal with cooldown reduction with damage boost damage dealt and beam target elims. Her gun shot faster and stronger explosive rounds with the same firerate. Glide attracts to beam target. Double jump twirl with Cassidy damage reduction. And the ultimate is a reduced movement cooldown battle mode with bigger stronger shots.

I don’t remember her name though, no. She did however have black hair in a bun and her own Valkyrie suit colored more and given more detail like Wifeleaver’s Cleric skin, but missing the white.

So, she’s like an overpowered rework. What did that look like? Well she still had heal beam and Mercy’s Damage Boost, disgusting. She lost resurrect actually. Guardian Angel or the ability like it was moved from shift to E and lost both the strength of the slingshot and the ascension with lftctrl. It also had a much longer cooldown. But, she gained a new omnidirectional dash that carries momentum afterward on a short cooldown for independent movement on shift. She still had Mercy’s flash heal, but the cooldown was 6 seconds, could be sped up a little bit by her beam target dealing damage if using damage boost, and the cooldown would instantly go down by 2 seconds if her beam target scored an elimination. And her gun would fire faster projectile harder hitting explosive rounds at the same firerate. Because she obviously wasn’t broken enough already!

But it gets worse when you factor in the passives she had. Glide would now pull you toward your beam target while active, with a stronger pull strength the farther you are from them as long as it remains connected. It also had the TF2 Medigun follow effect for movement abilities instead of Rocket Jumping and Sticky Jumping. So she would quickly follow a Genji Dash, a Venture Drill Dash, Shion motorcycle, all without using GA. So long as she remained in the air using glide. As such it could also bring you upward if your beam target is above you. But it gets worse. She also has a double jump! Yes. A double jump. How does it work with glide? Well unfortunately it would always get used if you hit jump again in the air if you meant to glide while it’s off cooldown. But what she did is an air step pirouette that is mostly lateral but does go slightly up in the middle to theoretically clear some ledges before going back down. I don’t remember the cooldown but I remember it being disgusting to pair it with the shift dash right after since it carried momentum, making it disgustingly easy to get away or return to the fight without a GA target if using both cooldowns. Oh and the pirouette gives damage reduction like Cassidy roll. How good for her.

And lastly the ultimate, which was comparatively boring, kind of like Mercy’s actual ultimate. Shorter cooldowns on all three movement abilities, self health regen, and her gun shot slower more powerful shots that exploded maybe about half as big as an Emre heavy shot? But less damage in falloff from center.

So uh, yeah. Again maybe it’s cringeworthy to share a literal dream about a video game I actually had like a total no lifer, but my brain overcooked some seriously overpowered crap and I just couldn’t let it go unheard.

On a less fun but silly related note, said dream also featured a new king of the hill map with Sonic style dash panels. With there also being paths outside of spawn that were automated dash segments like in a Sonic game to send yourself into a starting position of your choosing quickly, and no way back to spawn except to die once you’re out of it.

Edit: Reminder that in the context of my Overwatch dream she was selectable alongside Mercy. Mercy, unchanged and playing identical to how she is in the game right now. I was really mad in the dream they did Mercy so dirty to give what felt like an overpowered rework to a new character. And yes I see the irony of the timing with plenty of people stating D.mon seems like that for Reinhardt lol

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i remember something like mercy but not a dream. still its another game… furia from paladins. plays nothing like mercy really but has the angel aesthetic BUT is an angel of vengeance or fury

i was like, i wish she was in overatch

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Then we can throw in Angela from Marvel here also (-;

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i have yet to try that hero out kinda. been meaning too but never got around to it. last time i played marvel for only 2 hours and that was just to try jubilee. ended up only playing jubilee for 2 games and the rest of the 2 hours i played scarlet witch and black widow since rework for black widow heh

then i played luna snow for the last hour, i still like luna snow better than jubilee

i forgot to play angela or try that hero out

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When I play Marvel I stick to strategists. Mostly Luna, Fox, Cloack&Dagger and Mantis.

But I don’t play much, since experience there is miserable when you get 5 dps instalocks.

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Ironically the hero I dreamt up would still be broken, but less broken in Rivals. In the case of Rivals though I think all that would need changing for the most part would be number tweaks. Way more in line with a Rivals character. Minus a few underbaked characters like my beloved Rocket Raccoon.

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Honestly, Furia was way more enjoyable than Mercy has ever been.
Would gladly swap Mercy for Furia.

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Also, while we’re sharing OW dreams, I had a dream like a week ago where I was in a deathmatch on Colosseo spectating a Moira just sucking at a Hog for like 30 seconds straight without the hog moving or doing anything other than periodically tapping breather, when BOOM, she whipped out a DEAGLE and one tapped him.
Suddenly someone mic’d up and was like “what the f----?” then everyone swapped to Moira and found that healing was replaced with a Deagle and suddenly a new meta formed.

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Hell yeah. Deagle Moira meta let’s go!

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Now you need to make her in Workshop!!! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Sadly I lack the knowledge and talent for that. But now that you mention that; I totally would if I could. I’d be kind of sad to lose resurrect and obviously there would need to be number tweaks, but if a Mercy rework had to remove resurrect since Mercy haters hyper focus on that as if Mercy gave a legless person running shoes as a gift with chaotic glee in her heart, then the one my brain cooked up wouldn’t be horrible I think.

A quality of life improvement I would add at least as an option would be to make the pirouette a double tap in the air so, for the most part, you aren’t accidentally triggering it while trying to manage glide.

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Wait a minute.
Am I SPECIAL? (as in, a DIFFERENT kind of Mercy hater? I feel so honoured)

I actually don’t think rez is the most egregious part of Mercy’s kit.
Blue beam is, though I think support in general is at the centre of almost everything wrong with the game. (Not to say support PLAYERS are, mind you)

Blue beam shifts breakpoints.
It also becomes an annoying balance angle where they roll the dice on which DPS they want to kneecap based on blue beam.
Blue beam is the actual “irrelevant thing oh, that’s awful, nerf Genji” but instead of Genji it’s “when Mercy damage boosts heroes, they become too powerful, so we’re nerfing the heroes she boosts”.
It’s like like giving prison time to underage drinking but not the person handing the alcohol.

Partially same reason I think Ana is a fundamentally awful hero even though I don’t hate playing her.
Nade ruins tank balance.
Sleep ruins fun.
Nano ruins DPS ult balance.
Either the DPS ult is anemic because “if enabled too powerful” so the ult becomes dependent on it, or an ult is strong on its own and becomes a braindead “I win” button when nano’d.

And worst of all, part of why we have KIRI and SUZU.

One of the only supports that isn’t problematic is Illari, and that’s because she’s straight up just a DPS they threw in support.

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No you are not unique. There is a lot of haters of blue beam. But none of them can bring to the table a rework for it that wouldn’t make it even more problematic in some other ways or completly kill her identity.

How exactly? When 2 players work together they should be stronger than 1 person they are fighting against.

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It’s not cringe at all.

“Never accept the world as it appears to be, dare to see it for what it could be” — Og Winton

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The thing is that it’s often the delivery method of the damage. Breakpoints may change, but there’s two characters involved. It’s the same idea as getting shot by two people only with one damage source and it’s amped. Of course the real solution then is something they would 100% be unwilling to do due to complication. Keep base damage the same for characters, but changing dynamically how much of a boost they get from damage boost. In my eyes, counterplay is ultimately the best solution. And if a specific Mercy duo is running the game for a time, it isn’t necessarily the fault of Mercy or the DPS, but rather the lack of counterplay. I know making entire new characters is time consuming and giving existing heroes new counterplay can have unintended effects, but no one can convince me that the solution to double shield wasn’t to add proverbial scissors to cut the proverbial paper shields of yesterday wouldn’t have been the best solution. Heroes specifically designed to ignore or bust shields are in short supply, making shield juggling between two tanks a forever strong strategy.

All that last part of the counterplay rant to say, unironically cause I really mean it; let Genji’s shurikens deal triple damage to shields.

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I was kidding. I don’t think that it’s particularly unique, but I saw the opportunity.

Unfortunately, I agree that most reworks suggested for blue beam do not create a healthier iteration or do not resolve the core issues, however, I don’t necessarily think that changes whether or not it is healthy.
E.g. The devs have struggled for the last decade to make Roadhog anything but a garbage design, but unfortunately, there’s a saying about polishing that.

As for the second part, my critique was somewhat less about the fact blue beam shifts breakpoints (which I do think is its own issue) and much more the fact that DPS are frequently balanced BASED ON blue beam, which is a fundamentally terrible way to balance, and has been a thing for forever.
“We nerfed Ashe because Mercy”
“We nerfed Pharah because Mercy”
“We nerfed x because y” is essentially repeatedly acknowledging that y is to blame, but punishing x for it every time.

Now, where I do actually think that the shifting of breakpoints is inherently a bad aspect of her kit is simply the fact I don’t accept that parasitic value is healthy.
While I agree that 2 players working together should hypothetically be stronger than 1 person, is it really 2 players fighting one, or 1 player fighting another player with a buff.

I’m not even saying this with any contempt for people who play Mercy.
It is somewhat a point of consistency for me.
I can acknowledge as a hitscan player that I have had matches that genuinely went WAY easier because I had a Mercy pocket.
I can also acknowledge that I’ve had matches where I was playing against a much worse same hero/role player, but Mercy was like the toxic version of “The Great Equaliser”.
(I had a match the other day against a GM Freja with a Mercy hard pocketing them, while I was also playing Freja. I felt like I had to have utterly god tier positioning to make up for the tremendous advantage provided to them. Though I did win and promptly logged out for the night after because it was pure stress.)

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Sure. I can admit that it could go for something that is healthier. But that brings us to the core issue. What?

It’s ok if you think it should go. It’s ok if you don’t even have idea what it should be replaced with. But before we delete it, we need that idea from somewhere.

OK. But again, what else can we give mercy that would solve this? I didn’t see anything that would work, or didn’t fundamentally break her identity. That’s the issue.

And as a person that do enjoys Mercy from time to time, I am all for change to blue beam. But to what?

Yes, it’s 2 players fighting one. Mercy doesn’t do anything else while she is “buffing” or healing someone. It’s all she does.

It’s like in WoW when Pally gives you BoK. It’s a buff, because then pally goes and do their own thing. Imagine if pally would need to stand there, do nothing, and only channel BoK - that’s not really a “just a buf” it’s all that player do, so it’s 2 people working for a specific goal.

Imagine they would had a Zen, that would also shoot at you instead of Mercy. You shouldn’t win that anyway. The “it’s Mercy so we don’t count it as 2v1” is inherently flawed.

And notice that if Mercy is just pocketing that person, they are not doing anything else on the map. So if you try to engage that Freya solo, that’s 2v1. You SHOULD need to sweat and have god tier positioning/mechanics/game sense to win 2v1.

Again, it’s 2 players working towards a goal. And any other support shooting the same target will add more dps to the equation than a blue beam. Mercy adds less because it’s way easier to pull off than, lets say, Zenyatta. Also it swings ult economy, that’s partially why it’s less added damage.

Ask yourself. How would that interaction would look like, if you had your second damage going after that duo? What if your support would help you and make that 2v2? Looking at it in a vaccum as “1v1” is where frustration comes from. Because GM and their Mercy pocket isn’t 1v1, it’s 2v1. And, logically, to take on this you need to be THAT much better (hence your stress and clear sweating throughout the game) or you need to create 2v2. Or better yet 3v2 and then YOU have an edge.

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The main distinction is that if I get hit by a rail and a volley, both of them are required to succeed their mechanics check.

Ultimately, I’ll concede that I don’t have a solution for Mercy.
In fact, I could probably make a video with suggestions on how to improve or fix the design of almost every hero in the game that needs anything, but Mercy is one that I don’t think I could rework without tremendously changing her gameplay loop, which I realise would be undoubtedly as alienating as the initial rework to Symmetra, but instead of going from a niche hero with a 3% pickrate to 0.75%, it would be closer to 20% alienation.

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Sure. That is a difference. I admit that, holding blue beam on someone doesn’t require any mechanical skill, and it can’t fail (unless the boosted person misses).

Wasn’t my point that it requires the same amount of skill. My point was both situations are similar in a way that both are 2v1.

And that’s fine. Mercy IS unique in a way. Since amount of MECHANICAL skill that is needed to play her is nearly non-existant.

And that’s her entire point. She was released with this game BECAUSE she is low skill (in terms of mechanics) hero. Because Overwatch was made as a game for ALL people. Ones that come from other shooters, but also ones that comes from different genres. That’s why we still need her.

One might wonder if that’s a good desing philosophy. If it is a good idea to cater to “hardcore shooter players” and “casuals that played BG2 before ever hearing about OW”. I don’t know. But because it is designed this way, I can find my heroes in it, and just have fun in QP.

So, we do agree that blue beam can be problematic. That it can feel frustraiting to people that meet her. And that it could go. But we both don’t know how to change it, so it needs to stay for now (until we get the good idea).