STOP.
I said picking Mercy was effectively a throw pick due to her lack of damage and now lackluster healing, not that the act of picking Mercy was a throw pick Two different things. I think I made it pretty clear that this effect is dependent upon how good the player is as well, but the problem is many people maining are not good enough to overcome the characters handicaps… clearly, right now, Mercy is handicapped in terms of healing output.
there is as I said - factually - no such thing as a throw pick
I do not perceive her healing to be weak
Given that her main focus is (or should be, as I see it) healing, I personally would not expect her damage to be strong
You can think that if you like. Some characters may be so broken they are in fact throw picks as there is no way to overcome their inherent lack of power output even under the best possible conditions.
I do not perceive Mercy to be weak in any way
I have seen matches where Mercy not only carries her team, but dominates - this even before the most recent set of 2 buffs
and again - factually - there is no such thing as a throw pick
Throw pick is a designation, you can ascribe to the thinking or not, but it’s not just a question of “factual”. It is “factual” that certain characters never see the light of day in OWL because they are too unreliable or weak to use relative to others. If not metas would not exist.
You may not perceive Mercy as weak, but it doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what the larger community and Blizzard think, and right now the consensus is she was overnerfed for healing.
Nano-Valk, lemme tell ya. Now THAT is fun. Especially when you steal PotG with it.
I do not believe she was overnerfed for healing, nor do I believe she is weak
I do not know of any valid data that supports the notion that proves that those who believe she is weak are the majority - instead, I see plenty of folks on either side, but do not see a way to claim one or the other is a majority
You sir (or madam) are free to believe what you want, pick rates and numbers along with personal experience speak otherwise.
Make you a virtual bet: Mercy gets her primary healing buffed to 55 hps in the next six months.
Developers change their mind over time, so this is entirely possible.
It is, I think, slightly more possible that such a change if made would be made in a way that it applies only to PC games, and not to consoles; which would I believe speak more to differences between the devices the games runs on and less to any weakness that Blizzard perceives to be inherent to Mercy as a character
I find mercy fun rn but underpowered just cuz of her base healing
I would honestly not call Mercy balanced right now. Compared to her being OP at the start of the rework, she’s ‘balanced’. But compared to all the other Support characters after their recent buffs? Mercy is DEFINITELY underpowered. Not by a lot, but every other support character can now do pretty much everything she can do, but better. Moira, Ana, and Lucio put out just as much healing as well as a wealth of utility and game saving Ultimates. Mercy is simply playable, but the truth is that you should be playing any other support hero. The only arguments for playing Mercy are to pocket an Ashe, Widowmaker, or Pharah, and that is NOT a good enough argument to justify an underpowered character.
Mercy’s crazy mobility and having to prioritize your targets and avoid dying IS actually very engaging to me! But that all gets taken away when your evasion means nothing against characters who don’t need to aim to delete you or get 1 random lucky shot. Not to mention her Ultimate is NOT an Ultimate, its basically the same as Torbjorn’s new E ability where all of her abilties get a small boost in effectiveness. But it’s also a glorified spectator mode that takes all of the fun out of playing her.
TL;DR, No, Mercy is not balanced or in a good place. She’s barely playable and my fear is that Blizzard will be content to leave her as a sub-par hero for fear of breaking her again.
Mercy has the highest support winrate in GM and masters, and a pickrate high enough to make that more than just margin-of-error. I really think the latest buff did fix her, and her pickrate is just lagging a bit due to the meta (which is likely to shift with the Brig and DF nerfs, and the introduction of Ashe who is a fantastic damage boost buddy).
I think we’re going to see a lot of Mercy and dual sniper comps in the next season
What is inconsistent about it?
All of the above plus Ana is once again dominating. Nothing against Ana being a good and solid pick but she needs way more competition from Moira and Mercy. Alone for the fact so Blizz wont nerfhammer her again. Moira lacks utility just like old Mercy back then. And Mercy herself has utility she can barely use and drags her other parts down.
So reworking Mercys ult and e-ability plus giving Moira some form of utility could fix the sup imbalance we have.
I think also Ana is going to suffer a lot when Brig is nerfed and Genji and Tracer become playable again.
I honestly dislike this trend of comparing support ultimates to transcendence like, Transcendence is strong but thats because Zenyatta has a really low single target heal for the duration of the match until he pops it. Mercy does not. Moira does not. Ana does not. All of them have high healing outputs you cannot expect them to also have transcendence levels of burst on their ultimate. Moira comes close, but she is allowed to because she offers zero utility-- and coalescense only needs a single CC to be completely cancelled. Something Valkyrie doesn’t has to worry about.
Not to mention, all 3 of these ultimates have different roles, as Valkyrie is an offensive ultimate, Coalescense is in between and Transcendence is a defensive ultimate. I dont really know but wanting Valkyrie to be like Trans or Coalescense only homogenizes the support ultimates as defesive ultimates, leaving Nanoboost as the only offensive one.
Valking Mercy doesn’t have to worry about much, that’s the problem, which is why it’s unengaging, boring and unimpactful. However powerful it might be doesn’t really matter.
Oh please, yeah lets make Valkyrie a channeled ultimate and then watch people cry because “Valkyrie is useless because it can be completely cancelled blizz pls revert”. Not to mention, it’s useless making it channeled as there is no CC that can reach a flying Mercy.
Did I say make it channeled? No, I did not. If you want to argue with a strawman quote them.
The fact that you aren’t guaranteed success.
You aren’t always going to get a huge res, you aren’t always going to be able to get value out of it, etc.
You could even throw the whole match if you were baited into ressing and accomplishing nothing but resetting all the teams’ respawn timer.
Now, most of these apply to every other ult in the game, but valk has become so monotonous and streamlined, that it bleeds into Mercy’s already streamlined gameplay style, but not in a way that’s empowering or anything, more like turning on ez mode.