Im so confused with the mercy changes

General Discussion
7

Uhm let’s see, first is what you could consider her class, she’s basically a Cleric, like a real white mage kind of deal, no holy magic that deals more dmg than regular black magic

They made her originally as a better than most healers in the game, which at the time was the number she got now, 50 hps, this number was the highest amount of healing a healer could dish out and her ult as you know was mass rez

Mass rez wasn’t all that bad but potentially could enable crazy powerful strategies that started creeping up slowly but surely, strategies that encouraged counter intuitive gameplay like commanding people into point suicide and whatnot

More importantly is the fact that original mass rez didn’t have invul frames and it took longer to charge than valk currently does, so the ult itself was heavily gated as it should be, the price to pay for such a powerful ult was Mercy’s viability and it was soon obvious that her place in the game was non existant, as such people claim she was balanced before when in reality all she was, was an incredibly shackled character by the sole existance of her ult

Buffs followed soon, they made her a better healer with 60 hps and added invul to rez, admitedly this version of Mercy was sort of balanced but considering she was just overwatch’s least dmg oriented character, all she was able to do was heal as much as she could and then focus all of her mental process into rezzing, rinse and repeat, her mobility was subpar and her contribution to the team was sort of low, she was sluggish and pretty dang boring if I may add

The idea behind Valk was to release Mercy from rez burden, freedom allowed developers to go ahead and increase her survivability by adding more mobility, valk increased her total healing output and gave her a cool flying moment, her utility as a scout shot through the roof with this as well but people tend to overlook the power of scouting abilities (sombra…)

but the truth is that Rez was still just too powerful, even after all of the nerfs to it, Rez has remained one of the best skills for almost a year, be it single target or AoE, Rez is just that powerful but there is only so much you can nerf a skill and the goal is never for a single skill to be balanced, the goal is always to balance a character’s value for a team and Mercy’s value has never been just rez

Valk single handedly increased her healing done by quite a bit as well as added mobility with bunny hop and math is very simple here, if you added something that increased her healing output, then nerf her healing output to what it was originally

Yes now we have characters who heal between 70 hps to 140 hps but they have to fight against reliability, something that Mercy has a ton of, lowering her healing is literally meant to lower her value because currently she just has too much

it has nothing to do with hating Mercy, it’s just the right thing to do

3 Likes
8

because blizz are not allowed to revert changes by some mysterious dark force

9

I totally agree, as a Mercy main from the very beginning of Overwatch, I can say with certainty that it wasn’t always hide and rez. I was always with the team, trying to make sure NO ONE ended up dead, and the rez would be used then, if absolutely necessary.
There were very few times I would be in the back as my teammates died, and even then that was mostly because I had been picked off previously and was returning from spawn, and most times that would only result in a 2-3 person rez.

10

Blah blah blah all filthy mercies use hide and seek and reverted my hard pressed q kill wahhh

Stop generalizing. Most skilled mercies doesn’t do hide and seek.

11

You should at least try to give Blizzard credit. Do you really think that their staff of developers, genuinely, not one of them ever had the idea, “What if we tried to add more ult charge to this ult?” Do you really think that, or is this an exaggeration?

Taking this a step forward, you can probably work it out yourself on why Blizzard didn’t do this very straight forward change. The problem with Resurrect as an ultimate wasn’t just its power value and a need to keep it restrained. The problems run much deeper. The ultimate encourages Mercys to play in a way that was counterproductive to how the character was designed to play; it was unfun for the enemy team to expertly get a team kill only for one mistake – not killing this one hero first – to cost them that game; and it overall limited what Mercy could do in the mid-game because her ultimate had so much potential, she had to be balanced around the fact that her ultimate could revive five players and completely undo what the enemy team just spent all their resources doing.

So just slapping more ult charge to the ultimate… was not going to fix it. Just making an ultimate harder to obtain doesn’t fix a lot, not when the ultimate itself is a balancing mess.

This was just really funny to me, it really shows that your average consumer just… has no idea how game development works. I mean to honestly think that Blizzard’s FIRST idea for adjusting Resurrect was to go for this huge rework, when a “simple answer” like your suggestion was right in front of them… You can’t make this up. Yes, Blizzard DEFINITELY considered just making the ult charge longer, I guarantee you they had that idea and I guarantee you they were smart enough to immediately acknowledge that more would have to be done, haha.

12

Why are people still complaining about something thats been gone from the game for a year? Why cant mercy even be poked without a forum explosion? Why cant the people who make threads about either side of this subject just go away?

13

Nah I played Mercy back then and every team push, if I had ult and saw we were losing the push then I’d hide and swoop in at last second to get 4 or 5 man rez and suddenly we have number advantage and we have better chance of winning, nothing detrimental about that

14

Soo… you’re a game developer?

15

I’ve worked in game development, wouldn’t call myself a game developer (I’m a writer). And also you don’t have to be a game dev to understand game development, especially something as simple as “why not just make this one value bigger.”

16

Blizzard is incompetent AF when it comes to balance their own damn game. There you go thats your answer.

Maybe because people invested tons of hours into a hero and now have to witness Blizzard breaking the character apart. Just a guess.

1 Like
17

This sentence speaks the truth.

This one also.

1 Like
18

What’s been fundamentally changed since the rework? Literally nothing. Just some number tweaks, no changes to her gameplay no changes in tactics. Shes been meta for God knows how long and is the most consistent healer in the game. Mercy mains literally won the OW lottery and cant stop complaining about how there hold on power might not be forever.

19

We prefer to get the old “troll pick above plat” mercy back. (Before the invulnerability)

20

WHAT?! I mean yeah her base kit is still the same more or less but… no sorry I dont want to repeat this again here if you really care read this. Its a longer thread and a bit older but still good.

2 Likes
21

You and 10 others do. And then 20 other forum mercy’s think shes too weak and needs more and 20 other forum mercys want another rework and 20 other forum mercys want rez removed and 20 other forum mercys want instant rez back. Theres no way to make you all happy. It’s literally not possible. I understand that constantly dealing with these tweaks is annoying and its be nice to get her somewhere nice where she isnt dominating every other support or even against your wishes simply not a troll pick and viable but everyone wants something different from mercy and there isnt a way to satisfy one group without angering the 5 other directions people want her to go

22

At least when she was troll pick nobody cried for a nerf, while in this current situation every day you see a new “NERF OP MERCY” threads and not long after blizz will cater for it as they have been so since the OP rework.

23

Yeah and those people are dumb. They dont consider the fact that the mercy on there team also gets nerfed or that she literally cant fight back. The oll “just click the head” meme literally is the strategy for dealing with her it’s seriously that simple. I didnt think this recent nerf was needed just like how 6 weeks ago nobody thought it was needed either. Shes my most played healer by miles I have almost 50 hours on her and it’s the most satisfying thing to pocket a rein while he just gos crazy on the enemy front line. I honestly think shes a blast the way she is now. I guess it just confuses me why people insist on making her so controversial.

24

False dude. Most Mercy’s never hide and rezzed. In fact most Mercy’s would go for 2-3 man resses instead of 5 man. A few bad apples spoiled the bunch. Its unfair to act like it was the majority and not the minority. In fact the majority were punished because of the outcries against the minority.

25

I’ve linked this video before! Here’s the original developer update highlighting Mercy’s rework:

At around 1:30, Jeff states the reasons why the dev team was unsatisfied with Mass Res.

  1. For DPS players, it was disheartening to watch all their kills be undone in an instant
  2. It encouraged (some) Mercy players to let their team die, which was counterintuitive to the healer role

Even if they increased the ult charge required for Mass Res, both of these problems would have still been present :sweat_smile:

There have been some nifty solutions to these problems that have been proposed on these forums though, I would suggest you check them out!

26

What people don’t get here is that Mercy with mass Rez was essentially useless, I’d rather her be useful than be useless.