Mercy + Ashe = Death (?)

No I mean the entire rest of my post that is not related to Hog or OWL

The lack of response is indicative of a lack of rebuttal

People on this forum be like “We want other DPS in the meta, so nerf Mercy” even though she’s the only support with much direct synergy to damage heroes. All the other supports work much better in tank centered teams.

Maybe instead of nerfing Mercy we address the actual problem, that being Ashe getting way too many buffs in a single patch (To the point where she sent the formerly meta McCree to the shadow realm) while barriers got nerfed multiple times. And to add salt to the wound they buffed Hog so he not only chunks squishy heroes harder than before but makes other tanks look like a joke too.

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Exactly this ^^ You’d think with all the Mcree mains crying about their hero being worse than Ashe now people would make the connection

Your whole point was Geoff saying balance is done around OWL/GM

I showed you changes (and you confirmed) that were made and had NOTHING to do with OWL/GM whining.

Which means Geoff’s statement is wrong, and your statement is wrong.

Facts > Words.

One would think that when ashe first came out and the synenergy between mercy and ashe not immediately shooting them to meta status, that people would figure out that continuous buffs to ashe as damage dealer and removal of barriers is the reason mashe is a strong combo.

And not because damageboost is suddenly OP lmao. The synenergy was always there, but it only became stronger because ashe buffs, not because mercy got… 5hps buff rofl.

Brigitte from month ago making mercy useless says hello.

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No, it wasn’t. Go re-read:

None of that has anything to do with OWL. Try again, you’re getting closer.

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You wrote that. Not me.

Again, ignoring my entire two paragraphs I linked

Zzzz this is getting tiring

I’ll just take this as you have no rebuttal

Neither of them are problems. Both heroes are balanced.

Do you ever wonder why this has never been an issue for as long as Mercy has existed, or even for the past 2 years that we’ve had Ashe? What changed was we absolutely neutered shields, and yet some of you are still wondering why you’re suddenly getting shot at more.

Buff shield tanks to actually have usable shields.

  • This helps directly limit sight lines on snipers so they don’t have as much free reign
  • It helps closer range DPS be viable alternatives
  • That then also means you’re a much more immediate to Mercy when she tries to Res, ultimately diminishing her value with your mere existence.

And don’t even get me started on the change in Road’s effectiveness when he doesn’t constantly have direct access to your front line.

Every single “problem hero” we have right now is fixed when we bring back shields, because they were literally balanced around the generally safe assumption that shields would usually be around to keep them in check. There is absolutely no reason to kill balanced heroes just because everyone else got too butchered to stop them.

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The problem really don’t lies in there. But sure some changes are needed on the way the heroes can use those abilities(mercy amp could provide less than zen amplification). Because of this:

Affecting the target vs affecting the source. Have 2 main differences
1- target amplified means everybody including herself deals more damage on that target. But barriers and any source of damage mitigation negate that benefit all times, also debuff removers.
2- damage on source, means that source it’s target agnostic, so can deal increased damage in any target, barriers included, only removed if the source of that damage amplification dies or stop to provide.

The problem with overwatch, without barriers or lesser barriers it’s a balance with 4 pilar things.
1- Damage, the way that damage is made
2- Fire rate, ratio per sec
3- Ammo, the downtime of effectivelly doing damage
4- Abilities that complement that

On damage side, if you got too many damage in a single shot. Means that to balance you need slower firerates or less ammo or both.
If you got a lot of “mini” shots on that, means that you need balance the spread, fall-off, their individual damage or their numbers (shotguns mostly)

High damage in a single pellet = less ammo or/and less fire rate
High damage in multiple pellets = more spread, less damage per pellet, less ammo or/and less fire rate
Low damage in a single pellet = more ammo or/and more fire rate
Low damage in a multiple pellets = more spread, less damage per pellet, more ammo or/and more fire rate

It’s just math and mechanics. Some heroes have more burst shots than others even dealing the almost same damage per sec. The problem it’s how that damage it’s made, if you find the root of the problem you solve the issue. About DB the problem lays the way they can be done and what kind of downside they represents. From mercy we got 2 downsides(can’t attack, can’t heal) and 3 upsides(can move freely within range, can hide, barriers don’t make difference on the damage) , so the problem with mercy lays on the range, damage increase % or like some said (cooldowns), she has low risk and high reward doing that, reducing the reward means more balance. Take zen by stance, the got high risk and high rewards in his orb, he needs keep line of sight and also that target needs be exposed (without any kind barrier or damage mitigation). So 3 downsides(line of sight, don’t have barriers in the way, bad mobility) to 3 upsides (damage amplification from all sources on target, can heal somebody and can attack).

Mercy most of the time was picked because her less risk and good rewards, also because her mobility and rez. So overall she have more “safer play and good rewards” against zen who have “riskier play and high rewards”. On “pick” perspective, most of the time the choice would be done on “safer play”. Because of that barriers dominated too much time.

About ashe, her abilities are not that well balanced at all. Her dynamite it’s too strong to be a ability, like rez. So higher cooldowns could solve the issue or just reducing the damage done like 75 explosion and 50 burning. At least all heroes can survive the blast without receiving any additional damage. Her scopped shots are ok, maybe less firerate or less ammo or both can solve(like I said) or just increase her damage and make her shots fewer and slower like widow and hanzo.

So are we forgetting that Ashe got like 7 consecutive gun buffs that immediately skyrocketed her into the meta DPS position over already powercrept Mcree even before the shield nerfs?

No? Ok

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Naah that can’t be, it’s always support fault when dps becomes meta. :joy:

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Are we also just going to conveniently ignore the fact that that none of those buffs effected her ability to one shot, which is specifically the thing people are finding annoying?

I’m sorry for actually offering a solution to the problem people have that doesn’t involve changing the aspect that’s been consistent since her release.

Like, I’m literally looking at the patch notes right now. The only thing that can actually effect her scope shot was a slight magazine upgrade. Everything else was mostly to help with unscoped spam, which does half the damage anyways.

Also not sure why people keep crying “she got consecutive buffs.” Definitely seeing a few nerfs too, such as to her dynamite and spread.

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I 100% agree with the OP Mercy. Would be the problem if other heroes were also boosted this way by Mercy, say a junk nade was 200dmg with Mercy, or a pharah direct hit, or a full Reaper body shot. None of these become one shots when you add Mercy, It’s just Ash who also gets a huge ult bonus from DB dynamites.

Meanwhile in the past DB Hanzo went from 80-104 dmg on storm arrow meaning it went to a 1 shot headshot. It was promptly nerfed. Junk got a PTR dmg buff that never went live as it was too OP when dmg boosts were applied. The prescient is to nerf the dmg, not the boost.

Further proof is Mercy has been maybe not trash but meh for ages, so much so it would have taken a lot to make her into a problem and is not really used without Ash. Ash meanwhile has been meta much longer than Mercy at this point and still works decently without the Mercy.

This one is obvious people, it’s clearly Ash that needs the nerf. It doesn’t even need to be a big one to get her below the 200 mark. make 75 max dmg and your clear.

My only problem with nerfing mercy is like- the rest of her kit isn’t that great? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t at all think she’s bad, and her mobility is unmatched. But her healing is kinda low, res is kinda situational, and valk is good, but most of that power comes from the chain damage boost.

Nerfing the other heroes is not the way to go about this, but straight nerfing mercy isnt a great option either.

If damage boost is getting changed, I’d like her power to be shifted around a bit. Maybe trade damage boost for some more healing or something.

We need more heroes with more reasonable RANGE limits on their abilities. Ana can literally bounce a Biotic Grenade off of the skybox. Hog can throw a hook way too far, and Ashe can toss her Dynamite halfway across the map.

Cut their throws down to short range like you’d expect these items to be and their power is controlled by getting in range of actual danger to hit the ability.

Or just buff McCree’s flashbang to travel 20+ meters so we have some consistency…

Change the formula for how Damage Boost is calculated when dealing with criticals when it comes to Snipers (Widow and Ashe)

Right now the formula for Damage Boost and Critical Damage looks like this

Damage = (BaseDamage * 1.3) + (CriticalDamage * 1.3)

But all we would need to do is this.

Damage = (BaseDamage * 1.3) + (CriticalDamage)

This was a idea brought up by GreyFalcon, so i don’t take credit for it, but this would solve the issue with Ashe one headshotting people.

Ashe while damage boosted will bring up her headshot to 208, but with the new formula it would be 184.

I would suggest checking out his post about it, it also goes into detail about Widow aswell.

But as of now, with the recent damage nerf, i think she can’t one headshot people unless they were sneezed on by alittle bit of damage, which is the same case for Zarya when dealing with a Damage Boosted Widow.

Ashe can no longer get instant kills with DB from long distance honestly she isn’t the problem it’s Mercy who enables most of the hitscan heroes

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Ashe had potential to oneshot while damage boosted when she launched, but she was not a monster then. Pocketing Ashe just so that her headshots can oneshot squishies is literally just investing two entire players into creating one knock-off widowmaker. It really doesn’t make sense unless Ashe is also able to do a lot of work with her other abilities.

Ashe became a problem because she was given unnecessary buff after unnecessary buff. She is obscenely strong even without a Mercy pocket, in between the long-range two-tapping, the mobility, the CC, the dynamite and having Bob 140% of the time. You could simply delete Ashe’s headshot multiplier and she’d still be an excellent pick.

Yes, she is literally only DPS-oriented support we got left. But DPS players are known for shooting themselves in the foot, so it won’t surprise me if she gets nerfed once again.

Just so DPS again ask “why no one heals us”.

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