Low impact Mercy Rework

General Discussion
1

With this rework, I am attempting to shift her power to give her more decisions to make and make her feel more impactful without radically changing her power level or play style. Any items in her kit I do not mention remain the same. Full rationales behind each change will be written at the end. Also as normal, values are me spitballing. So… here we go.

  1. Mercy now heals her GA target for 15 HP whenever she uses it.
  2. Mercy’s E remains Resurrect, exactly how it is now on the live servers. However! Mercy’s E can now be used on living targets as well. When used this way, it provides the target a burst heal of 125 followed by a 100 HPs 1.75s channeled heal. During this channel, Mercy is NOT slowed by 75% but is unable to use other abilities. Both uses incur the 30s CD.
  3. Pushing E again while doing the standard Resurrect will now cancel the ability. The normal 30s CD applies.
  4. Valkyrie’s main beam buffed to 80 HPs, chains nerfed to 40 HPs.
  5. Valkyrie doubles the value of change #1.
  6. Valkyrie’s duration nerfed to 12 or 10 seconds.
  7. Valkyrie no longer increases the length of Mercy’s beam.
Change #1 Nearly every single healer in the game has a way to either apply a burst heal or increase their HPs temporarily. This is a good thing because it asks players to judge when the best time to use it is.

Mercy is the only healer who doesn’t have one. She has never had one, and this has been a problem with her since she was released.

In addition to that… Due to GA and the fact that Mercy can’t miss, she is the support who is best suited to providing triage style healing, aka “My teammate is in trouble. I’m gonna jump to that guy, heal them and save their life.” However her current 50 HPs is… ill suited to actually pulling that off. This should help.

Change #2 This change exists for two reasons.

Firstly, if you’ve read any Mercy feed back, you should know that the cast time and slow on Resurrect is a fairly massive point of unrest. This should give people a way to at least not experience the -75% slow without soft throwing by not using Resurrect.

Secondly, the thought process behind current Resurrect is actually very simplistic. “Can I get away with this Res and is Res off CD? If yes, do it.” Providing another option that is usable more often should make that decision much more engaging and less simple.

Change #3 There is exactly one other ability in the game that has a channel and has zero impact until the end of the ability. That ability is Deadeye. Deadeye can be cancelled. Why can't Resurrect?

Also the ability to end the cast in a fast pace game like Overwatch, where you can literally go from perfectly safe to in serious trouble in the blink of an eye is… nearly required.

Also this will stop Mercy players from just mentally checking out for 1.75s since they nearly can’t do anything for that amount of time after pushing E.

Change #4 One of the main skills Mercy has is answering the question "Who needs which beam right now?" or Beam Priority. Since chain beams have the same output across the board, Valkyrie kind of kills that and it really doesn't need to. This should bring back beam prioritization for Mercy players without completely removing chain beams.
Change #5 So one thing from the initial Mercy 2.0 that was really good and should be brought back was how the multi resurrect charges heavily encouraged Mercy to swoop in and out of the fight. Now that was broken, but cool.

This is my attempt at incentivising that same swooping game play in a much less broken way. Frequent 30 HP burst heals is useful, but should not be game breaking.

Change #6 So far this rework has added some power overall to Mercy's kit and this is my attempt at reining it in.
Change #7 Let's be real... with Valkyrie giving more free flight and more GA range, Mercy does not need this bonus.

All this does is incentivise Mercy players to not move around much (because they don’t need to) and do her best kite impersonation (because she can and because it is safer). Nobody needs that, so axe it.

Other Notes There is a reason why I am not giving Mercy 60 HPs and instead are giving her that GA heal instead.

Mercy has 3 mutually exclusive “firing modes”. At the moment heal vs boost vs blaster feels roughly equal in power, which is good. At 60 HPs, it felt like you should be healing at all times unless literally no one needs healing. So… GA heal gives Mercy a bit more max healing output while also not upsetting the balance in firing modes.

Edit: Forgot to mention this when I was building this post. This rework was somewhat inspired by Megadodo’s rework idea and our discussion on said thread found here .

Workshop Stuff Code: SH2TD

Feel free to test this and let me know how it goes. I was going to try to get a test game going on the PTR… but I haven’t had time to do that.

Change 1 and 5 are in place though I ended up raising them to 25 and 50 respectively because 15 felt anemic.

Change 2 is in there and working. At some point I might need to add a UI item to show how long until you can Rez/Burst heal again… but it does correctly show if it is on or off cool down.

Change 3 is… mostly in there. Directly cancelling the Rez isn’t a thing you can do. So instead of E to cancel, it’s Shift to kinda jump in the direction Mercy is facing. The jump is powerful enough to get out of Rez range every time… unless you jump into a wall or something.

Change 4 has turned out to be somewhere between insanely difficult and impossible, so the Workshop setting has code that attempts this, but it’s turned off.

Change 6: Went with 10 seconds because I buffed #1. I know that it is slightly clunky… again, no direct way of lowering the duration or cancelling abilities, so what the code does is kill and insta revive Mercy.

Change 7: This change isn’t in there and I’ve not really attempted to make it. However, this change is honestly the least important of the 7.

10 Likes
2

None of your suggestions fix the issue of literally not having to move to get impact while in Valkyrie.

1 Like
3

If you don’t move at all, you won’t get the 30 HP burst heals attached to GA. Sure you can still get the majority of Valkyrie’s value without moving, but it is still better than what we have now.

2 Likes
4

I think it might. I like these changes

  • I like how #2 gives you the option for preemptive use, or to actually keep someone alive rather than undoing their death. I feel this may increase the skill-ceiling of playing Mercy.
  • I like #3 but that should really have been in the game since they added a cast-timer to rez.
  • I like #4 because then target prioritization matters and there are more things to do while in Valkyrie mode, more decisions to make. I think perhaps the numbers might need to be tweaked slightly to be balanced.
  • I kind of like 5, but would request some additions here… I think maybe if you remove free flight (keep the super-jump ability that Mercy apparently has) and if you remove the uninterruptable regeneration, then there might be room to reduce the cooldown timer on GA by 0.25 or 0.5 seconds… Then suddenly there is a strong incentive to stay mobile, to use GA, as it is one of the primary ways you’ll stay alive during Valkyrie. Combined with #7 I think this will increase the skill-ceiling a bit too…
  • I’ve been advocating for a shorter duration of Valkyrie (#6) for some time. I’ve been saying 5 seconds previously, but considering the other changes you’ve made to Valkyrie I don’t think Valkyrie mode would be such a bore and I’d be fine with 10 or 12 seconds.
  • #7 yes definitely. While I can see how some would dislike taking away the long beams during Valkyrie I do think it forces a more active, in the midst of it, playstyle for Mercy. I think the current Valkyrie provides very few incentives of actually playing actively. It does not prevent it, there just isn’t any reason to. I would like a reason to play actively, and I would like my skill at doing so to be rewarded by surviving and performing role efficiently.

So, if you agree I would add “remove free flight”, “Reduce cooldown on guardian angel during Valkyrie”, and possible “remove uninterruptable regeneration (just regular regeneration)” during valkyrie. I suppose neither of my additions make any significant change, I just personally find Guardian angel a lot more fun than free flight. Free flight just takes away a lot of the need for great positioning, and guardian angel is just so satisfying to use that I’d happily use it more frequently during Valkyrie, especially if it heals a little bit too…

1 Like
5

Well, removing the longer beam range is a step towards that. If this is combined with removing free flight, and maybe reducing the cooldown timer on GA I think you’ll find a lot of skilled Mercy players zipping around between team members and perhaps even getting into the midst of the fight with her gun knowing she’ll get some burst healing if she has to escape…

6

An interesting set of changes that could potentially make Mercy more interesting to play as, less of a chore and offer a little more potential impact if used correctly.

8

I will say that I’ve heard that remove free flight and just significantly lower the CD of GA during Valkyrie idea before and I do like it.

However I do think it is slightly outside of what I’m trying to do with this rework. I’m trying to make her better without “upsetting the apple cart” as it were. Without either wild play style changes or wild numbers changes.

Fully agree with you there. Back when that change first got put on the PTR, I ran into a situation where I wanted to cancel it on my first or second game.

9

Fair enough. I do like your changes though…

10

this rework seems, uhm, somewhat familiar to me :slight_smile:

11

They are somewhat inspired by your changes, our discussion in that thread, and a few extra ideas.

If you want I can edit the initial post to mention that fact. I’m not trying to steal your ideas.
Edit: I’m going to do that anyway, seems like the right thing to do.

12

no need, just giving you an undue hard time here :slight_smile:

the dodo rework is pieced together from ideas I have heard from others that grew on me over time - they are not mine, and I stated such in the OP :slight_smile:

13

Too late. It’s up there already :stuck_out_tongue:.

May I assume that you don’t have any strong objections to my additions?

14

I dont need, want, or deserve credit - the ideas really arent mine, but you should feel free to credit or not credit as you prefer. I was just giving you a undue hard time :slight_smile:

15

Yep! That is essentially what I was going for.

16

Perhaps I’m missing something, is the burst heal solely for Mercy, is it for just the target, or is it for both of them?

If it’s just for Mercy I’ve got to say a 15 HP burst heal is… nothing whenever you constantly regenerate 20 HP/s anyway.

17

It’s for Mercy’s GA target. Rereading that change, that is ambiguous… let me fix the wording there. Edit: Fixed it now.

18

I was implying keeping Valkyrie in its current state but simply designing it much better. For the brief period where the slow reduction for revive was removed on the PTR I found myself actually wanting to move and use it to get that value.

Infact even doing that might be enough to solve my personal issues with it, at least for now.

1 Like
19

For the dodo compromise rework v2, I am leaning towards having the rez-on-living-target do some cleansing in addition to some healing.

20

mmm. I personally am a bit wary of putting cleanse effects on heroes. They’re just very hard to balance because in some matchups they are 100% useless, and in others they are incredibly powerful. Cleansing antinade is no joke, but a cleanse doesn’t do anything at all vs Moira.

21

I understand it has to be approached conservatively, and thats my intention…but then again, given that I want to keep the cooldown the same for simplicty’s sake, it can be a fairly potent power, even with some of it being healing