Mercy is easy to pick up but hard to master. There are some very advanced movement mechanics that allow her to go pretty much anywhere. Another mark of an expert Mercy is toggling off heal beam to attack beam just for the moment that your teammate’s bullets land; that’s when their attack registers.
Also, Mercy by this point has been weakened so much that keeping your team healed is a real challenge.
So, no, she’s not low skill.
Mercy only helps teammates, through them she effects the match. I just can’t do that, I can even stay alive as her for longer than five seconds. I say Mercy is easy because that’s the right answer but I have know idea how to play a shooter as a pacifist.
Zen is easier than Junkrat for me, and I’m a rat main. Managing the orbs? I can do that automatically. Defending myself? I have wallhacks, a debuff, a charged shot, and I will turn a corner and pounce that flanking Reaper. His projectiles are ideal for me, fast, with a big hitbox. Infact, his whole kit fits my skillset like a glove.
No anything but game sense, though.
Literally every hero requires these things. To say otherwise is some serious mental gymnastics, and to say that they don’t have an impact in ‘normal FPS games’ is also just flat out wrong. If you want an example, Winston is one of the highest skill heroes in the game due to complex mechanics yet requires basically no aim. Same thing with Doomfist.
You’re literally saying that to every post that agrees with you.
Look up “Confirmation Bias”.
Guess what? These things are skills.
Exactly opposite. In low ranks skillcellings doesn’t matter since no one can reach even lowest one. In high ranks difference between low skillcelling hero and high skillcelling hero is colossal.
No skill hero is a hyperbolic term to say a hero is easy. Obviously Mercy takes some skill just like every hero in the game, but her difficulty is on the easier end of things. If we were to compare all the supports using objective analysis of their kits, I’d say it’d be pretty easy to stack rank which ones are harder to be good with.
Ana is very mechancially demanding in every aspect of her kit and no mobility makes positioning super important. Zen is very similar and with a larger hitbox, though his orb abilities are mechanically forgiving. Lucio has high skill aspects to his kit like wallriding, aiming his weapon, and even boop positioning, but his aura is very autopilot as far as getting value while playing. Mercy does require good knowledge of teammate positioning since her mobility is locked to other players, but her self heal and lock on beam make her fairly easy to pick up and be good with. Moira’s escape has no restrictions like Mercy’s does, her weapon is more effective and easier to use, and her orb’s are effective so long as you’ve thrown them in the right room. Brig is the worst offender with the ability to chase people around with no fear of being punished for being kited thanks to her shield, she has 5 seconds of self heal for every touch she gets with an AoE weapon, she can combo any squishy with the smallest effort, and has an auto aim burst heal that overheals so that she can’t even waste the healing ability on a full health target if she tried.
tl;dr
Ana>Zen>Lucio~=Mercy>Moira>Brig
Mercy isn’t no skill, but she is low skill, like most supports.
Hoo boy you sure got me. Totally outplayed.
Except I’m not arguing that she’s no skill. She’s low skill because she requires the exact same non mechanical skills that every other hero in the game requires without all the mechanical requirements.
You literally said “No anything but game sense”.
Why the hell did you replay to me in the first place then?
I never mentioned skill ceiling.
No, there is obviously a skill tier difference otherwise all Mercy players would be GM. The thing is, there is very little difference mechanically between say a gold Mercy and a grandmaster Mercy, it is all in the gamesense and playstyle. This means that it is pretty often for random details to “click” within the minds of the players and the gamers will suddenly climb hundreds of SR at a time.
There is also a major problem with boosting among Mercy players. Because of how easy it is to maintain a near 50% winrate on Mercy–you have players who get boosted to high elo and play at a 49% winrate over many seasons taking months of time to decay to their “deserved” rank. This isn’t hyperbole, I’ve literally played with GM Mercy mains who didn’t know what blue-beam did. They had just played with their high SR friend and maintained their GM rank over multiple seasons with a 48% winrate. Keep in mind, these players would likely struggle to even maintain a 20% winrate on literally any other hero than Mercy which is why it is such a slap in the face to most players to call Mercy skill-dependent.
It kinda just is what it is though. Not much you can really do about it.
Mercy doesn’t require much mechanical skill, but she does require some game sense. She’s meant to be a beginner hero, which is perfectly fine imo. Game sense matters more than pure mechanical skill in low ranks anyway. I don’t think she classifies as ‘no skill,’ but she requires less of it to get value out of than most heroes. It’s wrong to say mercy mains have no skill though, because that’s not really true.
I’m loving the overall replies. To the people that are saying that Mechanical Skill isn’t very present, at least at not a demanding quantity, but she requires a keen amount of Game Sense, isn’t Game Sense in it’s own right a skill that has to be honed and developed over time? And on top of that, agreeing that most of the things i listed;
are all present in every hero’s core kit, I’m stating that it’s evermore present with Mercy because her ability revolves around these core concepts. I will revise however by stating that it VISUALLY has little impact, but functionally it is a requirement to hone these as a player in general to grow.
Skill is very dynamic and diverse in this game. That’s what makes this game good.
There are many elements to it, any givens person’s appreciate to that is dependent largely on what heroes they’ve played, what they’ve experienced.
The goal is to regardless of what we want to play the game provides the ability to do so. That’s the ideal.
Mercy isn’t “no skill,” but she is without a doubt the easiest hero in the game.
But that’s just her intended design; she’s the training wheels of Overwatch that foreigners to the FPS genre can latch onto.
It’s just that those training wheels had pretty powerful rocket boosters on them.
The act of healing being easy does not make healing easy. It is hard to survive as the number one priority target of the enemy team.
Brig is easier, just sayin.
Game Sense does not need to be refined as much as overall Mechanical Aim and such.
Game sense is far easier to pick-up than mechanical skill. Otherwise every silver portrait would be GM.
It is true that you do need those skills to play Mercy, but you need those skills on any hero and in some cases that ON TOP of overall mechanical aim, which aim itself is one of the most demanding skills in the game to refine successfully.
Mercy not requiring one of the most demanding skills in the game sets the bar drastically lower than other heroes, and not only that but most of the time she is entirely reliant on her team to do well, if her team is constantly dying, there is no possible way she can carry.
She comes in at a close second.
I wouldn’t say no skill. But low skill? Absolutely. I used to main her, 350 hours on the character