Potential Solutions
Get ready for another copy/paste of a section that was also a copy/paste!
3… 2… 1…
Build 1:
Resurrect: Removed as a usable ability unless Valkyrie is active. One again sets Guardian Angel’s cooldown to 0 upon use. Does not have a cast time.
Resurrect needs to be locked behind an ultimate if it is not an ultimate by itself. It is impossible to balance Resurrect and simultaneously make it feel good to use if it is locked behind a basic cooldown.
Double Jump: By pressing the jump key twice in rapid succession, the player gains extra lift, the animation showing Mercy’s wings activating to give her an altitude boost. This can be used to establish LoS to targets on high ground, or get a better view of allies who are currently obscured by closer allies. It cannot be used more than once since touching the ground.
This is mainly out of preference, but Mercy would feel better if she wasn’t 100% dependant on allies to not be a sitting duck.
Valkyrie 2.0:
- Duration reduced to 8 seconds.
- Free flight removed.
- Current beam setup removed.
- Regeneration passive during Valkyrie removed.
- GA range during Valkyrie reduced from 50 meters to 35 meters (30 is normal GA range).
- Resurrect becomes available when Valkyrie is activated. Upon using it, it has a 3 second cooldown, and will continue to run on 3 second cooldowns for the rest of the ultimate.
- Once the ultimate ends, if Resurrect is not on cooldown, the player has 6 seconds to use it before it is no longer usable. If it is on cooldown, the ability completes its cooldown and then has 5 seconds to be used before becoming unavailable.
- New passive while Valkyrie is active- Angelic Presence: All allies within 8 meters of Mercy including herself receive an uninterrupted 10 health per second.
- Mercy no longer points her staff at her allies and engages a healing stream, she now swings her staff in an upward arc at a rate of once per second whilst using one of her streams (damage boost or healing). Each swing causes an eight-meter cone AoE effect of the current beam, but amplified because this is an ultimate.
- If Mercy’s healing stream is activated when she swings, all allies within the AoE receive a burst 100 HP. If her damage stream is activated when she swings, all allies within the AoE receive a 60% increase in damage for 1 second.
- Pistol damage during Valkyrie increased from 20 to 25.
- Mercy’s base movement speed and Angelic Descent horizontal speed increased by 0.6 to 6.1 (5.5 is the base movement speed for all heroes except Genji and Tracer, 7.1 is Lucio’s speed aura).
This forces Mercy to be in the fight, as Mercy has neither the free flight, nor a 30 meter beam range. Being this close to the fight will jeopardize the player, yet it still open lots of opportunities for the player to feel heroic. The reduced duration and increased stats makes Valkyrie more potent but for a shorter duration and less annoying to play against, as Mercy is now directly in the fight rather than 30 meters away. Because Mercy is now forced to be in the fight, commitment is required to use Valkyrie, and the player must use it carefully because of the reduced range and duration. Target prioritization will need to be considered in the event that not all players can be healed in a single arc of Mercy’s staff.
Variant 1:
Rather than a Double Jump ability, 3 seconds of free flight at base movement speed are granted to the player upon hitting the jump key twice in rapid succession. This ability has a 7 second cooldown, which begins once its 3 second duration has ended. This results in a maximum uptime of 30%. Can be used in Valkyrie.
This is mainly to appease the players who enjoyed the free flight granted by Valkyrie and want to keep it to some degree. Note that none of the other bonuses from the current version of Valkyrie (chain beams, range increase, etc.) apply to this ability.
Variant 2:
Free flight is added to Valkyrie.
This variant was created for the same reason Variant 1 was created; to appease the players who enjoyed free flight. I, personally, would not prefer this variant, but it would still be miles better than Mercy’s current iteration.
Build 2:
Valkyrie:
- Duration reduced to 10 seconds.
- All outputs (healing, damage amplification, pistol damage) increased by 50%, Meaning: Healing -> 90 HPS, damage boost -> 45% increase, pistol -> 30 damage.
- Primary beam range reduced from 30 meters to 20 meters.
This makes Valkyrie more potent with a shorter duration, making it feel more impactful. The reduced beam range is to prevent players from spending the entire fight in the skybox, and makes it feel a little more fair to play against.
Resurrect:
- Players can now reduce the cooldown time for Resurrect by healing/dealing damage/amplifying damage.
- Cooldown is doubled or tripled.
- Movement penalty upon activation reduced from 75% to 50%.
- Mercy can now heal, damage boost, and shoot while reviving.
If this change is executed properly, this could overall be a cooldown nerf to Resurrect without feeling like it. The cast time was modified in order to make Mercy feel less helpless upon using Resurrect.
Variant 1:
Duration of Valkyrie reduced to 8 seconds, outputs increased by 60%: 96 HPS, 48% amplification, 32 pistol damage.
This is basically the same as the above version but even shorter and more potent.
Variant 2:
Valkyrie has a 10 second duration, primary beam target receives 120 HPS/60% damage increase, secondary beams apply 80 HPS/40% damage increase.
The goal for this was to create a need to prioritize targets. To do this, the strength of the primary beam was increased while the strength of the secondary beams were decreased.
Variant 3:
Valkyrie has an 8 second duration, primary beam target receives 128 HPS/64% damage increase, secondary beams apply 85 HPS/43% damage increase. Mercy’s blaster deals 32 damage.
Variants 1 and 2 mixed together.
Build 3:
- Mercy reverted to 1.x.
Guardian Angel:
- GA modifications from Mercy 2.x applied.
Resurrect:
- Range reduced to from 15 meters to 10 meters.
- Line of sight requirement added.
Valkyrie:
- Added as an E ability.
- 4 second duration, 12 second cooldown. Cooldown begins once the ability’s duration has been exhausted, allowing for a 25% uptime at the very most.
- Primary beam range only extends to 20 meters, down from 30.
- Movement speed reduced from 9 meters/second to 6.5 meters/second.
- Guardian Angel range is not extended when Valkyrie is active.
- Passive self-regeneration is no longer constant.
A revert is the most definite fix. The line of sight requirement and range decrease were applied to Resurrect for two reasons; one, to compensate for Valkyrie becoming an E ability, and two, to incentivise tempo-resurrections without forcing them. Note that the charge requirement was not increased for the latter of those two reasons.
Variant 1:
Resurrect has a 15 meter range and no line of sight requirement, but can Resurrect a maximum of 3 players at once. If more than 3 players are within range, the 3 closest players to Mercy are revived.
Just an idea. There really isn’t any justification for this idea, and there doesn’t really need to be.
Variant 2:
Valkyrie no longer grants free flight, GA range is once again extended, beam range is again set to 30 meters. A double jump ability is added to Mercy’s kit.
This allows Valkyrie to be used to heal allies that are otherwise unreachable, but does not make Mercy herself unreachable. The double-jump was added to provide Mercy with a little independant mobility.
Variant 3:
Valkyrie’s primary beam applies 80 HPS/40% damage increase, secondary beams apply 53 HPS/27% damage increase.
Valkyrie but with the added requirement of healing prioritization.
Variant 4:
Any combination of Variants 1, 2, and 3.
Have fun.
Build 4:
A build I stole from ReinStein (with permission, so i didn’t actually steal it) and then modified:
Valkyrie:
- Removed.
Resurrect:
- Is once again Mercy’s ultimate.
- Now uses a charge/stack-based system, stores a maximum of 3 stacks. 1320 ultimate charge is required to gain a single stack of Resurrect.
- Cast time removed.
- Resets GA cooldown upon use.
- Otherwise functions like Resurrect does currently.
This fixes the issue that Resurrect is not earned and adds variation to its availability. I didn’t just pull 1320 charge out of my butt; I took the amount of ultimate charge the average competitive Mercy player was earning every game by healing/damaging/amplifying (11562.4), added the passive ultimate gain from existing for 10 minutes (3000 charge) to total 14562.4, and decided I wanted the average Mercy to earn 11 Resurrect charges/game. 14562.4/11 ~ 1320 (rounding to the nearest ten). For reference, Resurrect from Mercy 1.x required 1625 ultimate charge.
New E ability: Alter Stream
- Pressing E activates Mercy’s chain beams, which function as they currently do in Valkyrie but without the primary beam range increase. Pressing E again returns the beams to normal.
- The strength of Mercy’s beams is decreased, reducing her damage boost amplification to only 10% and her healing to only 20 HPS.
- This ability has no cooldown.
This adds more depth to Mercy’s allied prioritization, allowing her to choose between affecting one ally with a potent beam or multiple with weaker beams.
Changes to damage boost in relation to ultimate charge:
- Ultimate charge is no longer generated based on how much damage a target amplified by Mercy is dealing, but by how much damage is amplified.
- For every 2 damage amplified, Mercy gains 5 ultimate charge points.
There’s a reason for this change. If you are not interested in watching me crunch numbers, I suggest you skip over this part. If you enjoy math like I occasionally do, feel free to stick around.
Currently, the amount of charge Mercy gains from amplifying teammates is determined by the total amount of damage the ally in question is dealing to enemies. Note that this is not the base damage, but the amount of damage the ally is dealing total, after Mercy’s 30% damage increase is factored in. This is then fed through a 2/3 conversion ratio before giving us the final amount of ultimate charge gained through damage amplification. In other words…
If [player currently being amplified by Mercy] deals 200 base damage to [enemy], Mercy’s 30% amplification increases that damage by 60, resulting in a total of 260 damage dealt. This number is then multiplied by 2 and divided by 3 (because reasons, the developers slapped a random conversion ratio on top of this), resulting in a grand total of 173.3333… ultimate charge gained from this endeavor. 60 damage amplified resulted in 173.3333… charge points.
Why the developers made this conversion so unnecessarily complicated is beyond me, but I digress. The reason this is no longer an effective system is because of the proposed E. Why? Let’s compare Mercy’s normal damage boost to the suggested chain boost:
For Mercy’s normal boost, she gains 173.3 charge for 60 damage.
For Mercy’s group boost, let’s assume she is increasing the damage output of three allies, all of whom are dealing 200 damage. With Mercy’s 10% increase, she is increasing the damage of each ally by 20, for a total of 60 damage amplified. However, the targets she is boosting are dealing a total of 660 damage. If we slap this into the same conversions currently in place for Mercy’s damage stream, we get 440 ultimate charge gained; here lies the issue.
Normal: 60 damage amplified = 173.3 charge.
Chained to three allies: 60 damage amplified = 440 charge.
The amount of charge gained is not consistent with the amount of impact Mercy is creating; this is why I very strongly suggest that Mercy’s charge gain from damage boost is determined by how much damage is amplified rather than how much damage the affected allies are dealing.
If we want the current charge rate for Mercy’s beam to remain unchanged while solving the issue, we simply divide the amount of charge gained from the normal scenario by the amount of damage amplified in that same scenario:
173.33…/60 = 2.88…
So, for every 1 damage amplified, Mercy receives 2.88… ult charge. Because Mercy has the potential to gain ult at a faster rate by amplifying/healing more than three targets, however, I figured it would be better for Mercy to gain 2.5 charge/1 damage amplified to counterbalance. Hence the 5 charge for every 2 damage amplified.
Variant 1:
Resurrect stores up to five stacks. The range of Resurrect is increased to 15 meters and all allies within the radius (and within LoS) are Resurrected upon a single use of Resurrect. Mercy receives one second of invulnerability upon using Resurrect, and she can only use Resurrect once every ten seconds. If she uses her ultimate, it is put on a ten second cooldown.
This makes Resurrect feel more epic to use, but still actively incentivizes tempo-resurrections rather than mass-resurrections because of the line-of-sight requirement and limited invulnerability. The cooldown upon using Resurrect is inflicted for two reasons; One, to prevent Mercy players from abusing the invulnerability by chaining Resurrections, and two, to make the Mercy player think carefully about how they use Resurrect. Ten seconds is the same time it takes a player to respawn after death, so a Mercy must consider how they use Resurrect if multiple allies are down at once and some are not reachable.
Anticipated Responses
There are several reasons for this section. First, I want to see just how well I know the forums. If the anticipated responses listed in here appear in the replies, I get a point (which have absolutely no value whatsoever). Second, I get to prepare my counterarguments ahead of time, because I’ll have two days or less to respond before this thread gets locked and tossed into the oversaturated garbage pit. It’s also more convenient for me to type stuff up now than it is to bring it up for probably the 20th time. Third, this is a test to see if the person replying has actually read the post. If they make one of the statements listed in this section without addressing the counterarguments made here, I will know that they haven’t actually read the post… at which point, I will be justified in the fourth reason for me making this section. The fourth reason is that I get to be condescending and laugh at those who pretended to read the post but didn’t really.
Shall we begin?
"Just play a different hero."
There are so many things wrong with this statement. First, there’s the fact that I have refused to play Overwatch since October 21st, cutting off the statement entirely. The statement assumes I’m willing to play Overwatch at all.
Second, the solution to a single issue or multitude of issues isn’t to “play someone else”. That doesn’t make the problems go away. It abandons and ignores them, leaving them to fester for longer.
Third, sure! I would play a different hero. I would play Mercy… but she got removed and replaced with something else through the rework. The hero I would play doesn’t exist anymore.
I wouldn’t have a problem with the current “Mercy” existing if the old one still existed as well.
"Mercy’s playstyle hasn’t changed."
Well, I can already tell that you didn’t read the post… or maybe you did, but you didn’t process the information from it. One of the main purposes of this post was to show how Mercy’s playstyle has changed in a negative way. Shall I make a brief list?
- Movement penalties in Resurrect disrupt and contradict Mercy’s normally-fluid gameplay.
- The game of balancing risk and reward to maximize ultimate charge gains is gone thanks to Resurrect being on a static cooldown, removing a layer of complexity and engagement in Mercy’s kit. Rather than playing in the fight, the best choice is to play far off to the side of it.
- Resurrect is now a constant trickle of annoyance and frustration for the player that has a skill ceiling at the skill floor. It is no longer rewarded through performance; it is given regardless. It no longer feels like a privilege to use; it incapacitates the player. It is a restrictive participation award.
- The mind game of using Resurrect is gone, removing 1/4th of Mercy’s engagement. This mind game was then replaced by a question with a clear yes/no answer.
- Mercy no longer has the capacity to change the tide of a teamfight. She functions against the opposing team like radiation poisoning rather than sudden impact (unlike every other hero in the game).
- Valkyrie drops the skill ceiling of Mercy’s kit below the normal skill floor. It completes all of the player’s tasks for them.
- Valkyrie removes any remaining engagement for 15 seconds as the player enters a glorified spectator mode.
- Valkyrie is an “ultimate”, but not really. It doesn’t have enough impact to be considered an ultimate, especially being that it’s a channeled ability.
The parts of Mercy’s kit that weren’t removed entirely by the rework are now dotted with intermittent disruptions and contradictions.
"Mercy doesn’t need buffs."
Uh… Congratulations? You missed the point of the entire post, if you read it at all (which I will bet money that you didn’t). I don’t want Mercy buffed. I would be happy if she were reverted, which would be a net nerf. Your assertion isn’t helpful here, as you’re trying to argue with someone that’s on the same page.
…Unless of course you have specific concerns regarding what I posted in the “Potential Solutions” section. In that case, please, voice them.
"Mercy is balanced, therefore she is fine and doesn’t need to be changed."
Why then, was Mercy reworked in the first place? She was balanced before the rework. That logic does not apply now, as it was never applied when they decided to rework Mercy in the first place.
If the reasons for the rework in the first place were justifiable despite how faulty and self-contradicting they were, then the reasons behind a second rework is also justifiable.
TL:DRs
Terms and Conditions:
I’m being a nice person in typing up this section. Normally, I would make you read all 107,500+ characters above this section to not only get the gist, but to understand the assertions thoroughly. However, because I have spare time at school and nothing better to do, I decided to add this section again. These are your taxes at work. Pay your taxes, people; you’ll get TL:DR versions.
However, this TL:DR comes with Terms of Service. By using this section, you agree to the following terms and conditions:
- You recognize that the TL:DR fails to thoroughly cover the subjects and leaves out important details.
- You will not base counterarguments off of this section, nor will you quote or reference it in creating counterarguments.
- You will not attempt to criticize relevant subsequent arguments or counterarguments from other posters without first reading the relevant section(s).
I can be an insurance company when I grow up!
Resurrect/Valkyrie:
- We have an ultimate on a cooldown and a basic ability on an ultimate. Each had to be mutilated to be forced into its respective place.
- Resurrect’s mutilation destroyed the player’s enjoyment of using it by applying a slow/disable to the ability. Obviously, a 2 second incapacitation isn’t exciting or engaging.
- The cast time penalty for Resurrect rivals or exceeds those of other ultimates (I wonder why?
). It also interrupts and contradicts the rest of her kit. - Resurrect is no longer earned, removing the reason to play aggressively and instead incentivizing cutting risk whenever possible. The problem is that taking the safest path is neither exciting nor impressive.
- The mind game of maximizing the value of Resurrect is gone, replaced with a simple “if” question rather than a more complex “if and if so, how and when” question. The decision has come down to checking for a specific set of parameters that are trivial at most to identify.
- The skill floor of using Resurrect is the skill ceiling in both availability and utilization.
- Resurrect no longer passes a rewarding feeling onto the player. “I became a stone for two seconds before reversing someone’s pick”.
- Valkyrie’s mutilation made an otherwise decent ability absurdly long and obnoxious to use. 15 seconds is triple to quintuple that of an acceptable duration for Valkyrie.
- Mercy’s “ultimate” offers no reward for any additional risk taken. The optimal distance from the team is 29 meters while in Valkyrie, driving the player out of the fight.
- Valkyrie completes Mercy’s tasks for her, taking an already-fractured kit and removing any remaining engagement from it.
- Valkyrie’s low impact in contrast to other ultimates renders it useless in teamfights when other ultimates are present. Combine this with how low its skill ceiling is, and the player feels helpless and useless as they watch their team get massacred from 29 meters away.
- Valkyrie is a glorified spectator mode.
Developer Comments:
- Hide and rez was a bad strategy, often leading to a second wipe. Changing Resurrect because of poor play is equivalent to changing Rocket Barrage because Pharah’s occasionally kill themselves.
- “We didn’t like hide and rez. Now go hide in the skybox with Valkyrie.”
- Disengaging for a short duration in preparation for ultimate usage is something most heroes do at some point.
- “Mercy should never stop healing. This is why she cannot heal while using Resurrect now.”
- “It’s not fun to play against.” Well, I just love being killed by a literal aimbot. Or… you know… anything, really.
- “Resurrect now plays better for Mercy players”, except it doesn’t.
- “Mercy should be about mobility and healing. This is why she can no longer move while using Resurrect. This is also why her healing numbers have barely risen since before the rework.”
- “We don’t want Mercy to be a rez-bot. This is why she is now brain-dead when it comes to using Resurrect.”
- “Valkyrie should be a game-making ability.” Present day Valkyrie says hello.
- Developers are ignoring the feedback. “We’re reading responses daily… Don’t worry, we have no idea what the problem is.”
- The latest update: “We still have no idea what the problem is.”
Potential Solutions:
- Build 1: Resurrect is only available in Valkyrie. Valkyrie gets overhauled.
- Build 2: Resurrect is a mini-ult. Valkyrie is shorter and more potent.
- Build 3: Revert Mercy to 1.x, add a modified Valkyrie as an E, do some other things.
- Build 4: Resurrect is a single-target ult with multiple stacks. E is a toggle weak chain beams button with no cooldown.
Anticipated Responses:
I had some fun.
TL:DRs
This is a check to see how awake you are. Here, hold this:
https://i.imgur.com/hxgPTNW.png
And with that, I conclude my massive post. For those of you who are curious, this post contains 112,125 characters.
