I thought Mercy was supposed to be useless now?

General Discussion
141

The issue isn’t that Mercy “is useless”. The issue is that when it comes to supports, just about every other support is a better pick than Mercy - Across all elos, and she needs to be made more viable in the meta.

And If you’re going to use statistics, you should probably mention her pickrates as well and her comparison to how other supports are performing.

Mercy’s winrates look “high” in those areas, because her sample size is a lot smaller than it was before the nerfs.

Her pickrates are 1.62% in GM

2.65% in Masters

and 3.44% in Diamond.

This number climbs steadily up to 8% in Bronze. Currently the elo with the most Mercy usage by the way.

As you see in her win and pickrates, generally the higher her pickrate, the lower her winrate. This has happened to Symettra and Torbjorn as well. Less people playing the hero = more skewed data on how viable they really are. So winrates alone don’t tell the whole story.

If we are to use winrates, and look at the big picture, compared to other support heroes very little has changed. She is still the worst support pick on average across all the elos, with one of the top 5 lowest winrates on average in the game. Beaten only by Roadhog, McCree, Winston, and Sombra. Solidifying her as a niche pick at best, and a troll pick at worst.

Note: Her being niche or a troll pick isn’t a problem by the way. The issue lots of people have with her is the fact that she isn’t engaging or rewarding to play, with very little impact. So playing her kind of pales in comparison to what other supports offer in their kits right now. But anyways, back to the stats!

In Bronze? Mercy is the Second Lowest. With only Ana being lower.





In Silver? Mercy is the Second Lowest. With only Ana being lower.






In Gold? Where Mercy is usually the strongest? She is once again the second lowest of the Supports. With only Ana being lower.






Things only get worse from here…

Platinum? She is the at the bottom of the Supports with the Lowest winrate.





Diamond? She is once again, at the bottom of the Supports with the Lowest winrate.





Masters? Mercy is the Second Lowest. With only Lucio being lower.




GM? A special case. Even with Mercy having the highest winrate than any of her other elo’s, Mercy is still the third lowest support overall in winrate. With only Lucio and Moira being lower.





So in short, is Mercy “useless”? No she isn’t. Is she a viable pick however? Looking at those stats? Debatable. Is she underpowered and in need of some sort of compensating tweaks or buffs? I believe so. As of right now, there is very little going for Mercy that would make you want to pick her outside of personal preference, with the utility creep of other supports going on, you are better off picking Zen or Ana in higher Elos, and Lucio, Moira in the lower elos. Or… Just pick Brigitte since she’s consistently viable in all of them (and is arguably a lot more rewarding and impactful to play than Mercy to boot, in my honest opinion). :blush:

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls :blue_heart:

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142

This 4500 Mercy player also complains about her being useless because she is.
At diamond+ Ana is always a better pick over Mercy because of Ana’s endless utility & main healer properties

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143

Mercy is only as useless as the player using her. She’s still the most consistent healer by far and her rez is invaluable. I have yet to be outhealed by anybody else while using Mercy this season, even in top-500 games. I’ve also been enjoying chasing down snipers while in Valk (which is the best ult in the game for that).

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144

Pharah’s win rate is also really high in GM looks like the are using that combo in GM after the Pharah buff

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145

Both sides of this argument seem eager to embrace hyperbole.

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146

You do realize that your personal experiences with the hero don’t represent the entire playerbase right? Like if you are having huge success with her, then hey, great! But that doesn’t mean that everyone enjoys her or finds her useful in this current meta, and stats prove that she still does, in fact, need to be looked into. :blush:

We should also remember the Pharah buffs, and the utility creep among the supports. Both of these factor into Mercy’s effectiveness in this meta right now, and why in GM she’s doing well, but not so well in just about every other elo.

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls :blue_heart:

1 Like
147

The point is that it can be done by anbody who’s good enough. I know that many Mercy players aren’t finding success with her right now, but it’s not a Mercy problem; It’s a skill thing. I know most of the player base wants her to be easier like she used to be, so I definitely don’t represent the player base, but anybody can get better. Changing Mercy’s design to accommodate the majority would be bad for the game as a whole even if it felt better to most Mercy players.

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148

I heard a rumour on my discord that her HPS was supposedly increased back. Not sure where the rumour came from.

That was very much untrue ofc, but you can see Mercy’s pickrates pick up vastly this patch as players returned for the Halloween patch. Honestly, it can be attributed to returning players alone.

Give it time for people and returning people to realise she very much still sucks and nothing has changed from last patch unlike the hoax imply. She’s not better just because her stats fluctuate for two whopping days lmao. 2 days don’t make up for month long averages of her sucking.

As a bonus, I noticed on this patch that for some reason, overbuff pretended my profile was private suddenly when it has been public ever since we got the option to hide career profiles and this is the first time it’s done that. So Overbuff bugging out with profiles is another reason for fluctuation.

2 Likes
149

I love how you just said everything that needed to be said. I think people got used to her being overpowered for way too long.

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150

This,

I would take a look at the stats after the event and see if it makes a difference. A few percentage bumps after a few days in the top 3 elos is laughably inaccurate. It doesn’t say alot for the health of a hero who is supposed to be strong in the low-mid ranks, while still being outclassed by just about every other support (as proven by my previous post)… Only time will tell I suppose :blush:

~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls :blue_heart:

151

This.

If anything, new pharah is very good versus Goats because she can spam more rockets now against fat targets and pharah has always been decent vs doomfist.

Just because the hero mercy leeches from the best got a buff, doesn’t mean the sidekick mercy is now somehow OK because a combo is good.

Heroes should be good on their own merit, not cuz someone else’s merit. At worst, it means mercy can never be buffed to her just state because the pieces around her get overbuffed. She might even get nerfed because “pharmercy is too gud plz nurf it”. Watch it happen.

152

As for the all-mighty overbuff…
Don’t private profiles screw up the statistics?

153

Depends on what you mean by ‘screw up’ - they increase your uncertainties but you still can make a decent approximation. There was a good explanation on this some time ago:

154

Useless in a different way though.

She has no way to directly impact a game by herself. Everything in her kit is limited by the amount of value you can get, where as an Ana can get much much higher amounts of value out of her kit, by herself.

Mercy isn’t a troll pick, she’s very close to it. Pretty much if the enemy team has a player that plays Ana then you’ve basically lost, there’s nothing you can actually do about it.

Also, winrates on a small a scale of 1 week won’t represent much, small changes in data at this time frame are normal, and can have a lot of variable factors affecting it.

155

But what else can we use? Overbuff is the only data we actually have to work with.

PS: Not every healer needs to have burst heal, just like Sombra doesn’t have for example. She has her cons and pros just like all other heroes in this game.

156

I think there might be something off with Overbuff’s records in the last couple of days

Just yesterday I checked my record (public profile) on Overbuff and and realised it was displaying my past Season’s Final Comp SR not my present. As of just now, it still is showing outdated info.

157

imo, the ultimate situation is that Ana -will- end up eating a nerf if the current climate continues unchanged for months. We’ve all seen it happen time and again with the ‘meta healer’.

I’d rather not see that happen, I don’t think she deserves it. I’d rather see Moira and Mercy get changes. What I’d -really- like to see is small reworks for both. Moira -needs- utility, raw healing output isn’t enough to compete in higher tiers. Take a little away from her current kit if need be to make room. Mercy, I’d like to see Valk reduced to 10 seconds with 1 instant rez charge, and a new skillshot-ish utility put on E.

158

Mercy needs little buffs
NOT MAJOR
just little buffs

symmetra needs big buffs ;-;

159

I open my eyes
I try to see but I’m blinded by the white light
I can’t remember how
I can’t remember why
I’m lying here tonight
And I can’t stand the pain
And I can’t make it go away
No I can’t stand the pain
How could this happen to me
I made my mistakes
I’ve got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me
Everybody’s screaming
I try to make a sound but no one hears me
I’m slipping off the edge
I’m hanging by a thread
I wanna start this over again
So I try to hold onto a time when nothing mattered
And I can’t explain what happened
And I can’t erase the things that I’ve done
No I can’t
How could this happen to me
I made my mistakes
I’ve got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me
I made my mistakes
I’ve got no where to run
The night goes on
As I’m fading away
I’m sick of this life
I just wanna scream
How could this happen to me

160

If you are going to use overbuff statistics you have to look at all of them.

Especially Pickrate. Mercy is at a 4.6% pickrate at gm in the support category.
Ana is at 41%
Lucio, Brig, and Zen are in the 16-15% range.
The only one losing to Mercy in Pickrate is Moira at 3.7%

Winrate is not the only statistic to determine how useful a hero is…

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