It's happening: Mercy is being Reverted

[TobiasAlec-11572]

Mercy

@GeoffGoodman

Primary fire healing beam reduced 17% from 60 HP/s to 50 HP/s.

If you recall, this isn’t just a nerf. Mercy in 1.0 had 50hp/s at the start of the game. Though this is certainly a step in the right direction, it’s not going to solve her issue, and it’s not going to stop her from being a must pick.

Why? Simple. Because there’s still a glaring ability that needs to be addressed. Ressurect. As long as her ressurect is on a 30 second cooldown and NOT in her ultimate in the form of mass res, she will stay on top of the other healers.

I’m calling it now, I think this nerf is not a completely bad thing (in fact, I doubt a lot of the mercy mains care all that much), but I believe that they are dipping their toes into fixing Mercy - meaning, bringing her back to where she was both balanced and engaging to play. I believe that this nerf will NOT affect her pickrates as drastically as people are saying. She is STILL going to outclass the other healers.

Notice though, that in this thread: Upcoming Balance Changes for Support Heroes

The other two main healers in this post are getting buffs. That’s right, both the main healers, Moira and Ana, are getting buffs. This is a GOOD thing. It seems that the devs are understanding that just nerfing mercy constantly alone won’t help the other healers, they (especially Ana) need buffs to stay viable.

Also note here on Ana:

@GeoffGoodman

That said, she has a couple disadvantages that can be difficult to overcome, such the potential to miss your targets, not having any mobility options, and having a more difficult time keeping herself healed up.

They are aware that Ana’s lack of mobility is becoming a problem. I hope this is a tease that they’re going to test out some sort of mobility buffs for her in the future as well. The 300hp on Nano boost is an amazing start, let’s hope they continue to buff her. She needs these additions the most in the hero roster.

Moira is getting some more utility as well, which is great:

@GeoffGoodman

Moira is a strong hero that doesn’t need a ton of changes. The resource change her is mostly to help her out in the situations where you’re just not able to get close enough the enemy to drain them for resources. Now if you’re team is sparring with the enemy team at super long ranges, you’ll have a bit more resources to work with to keep your team topped off.

Lucio also gets a nice buff as well, as well as a revert to his radius (was larger in 1.0):

@GeoffGoodman

We’re increasing the radius of Lucio’s Crossfade aura to allow more flexibility in how he moves while still maintaining his powerful support songs to help out his team. His ultimate is also being increased to help counter large spikes of damage. For example, Junkrat’s ultimate can deal a maximum of 600 damage, which Sound Barrier can now potentially negate completely. It is worth noting that even though the initial shield he provides is larger, it still takes the same amount of time to destroy itself.

Once again though, even though the buffs to these other healers are great, as long as Mercy has a rez on cooldown, I predict that these buffs will not be enough to lower her pickrates. They need to keep going with this and Revert Mercy, putting her ult back in Q, and thus raise her skill floor - making it harder to pull off. Maybe swap Valk and put that as the E move in it’s place, tweak both with the modern checks she has now (LOS, bunny hop, delay, etc.) and keep her vulnerable during her res.

But for now let’s wait and see. As long as they keep bringing back elements of her old kit, carefully and thoughtfully, I think both sides will be happy with the end result of Mercy and the other healers. For those people wishing for a Mercy revert and have been fighting for it for so long, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, and it looks like they’re finally starting to listen.