I see so many posts about how they should buff this or that (not her healing) to make her better, but seriously? Just give her back 60hps and remove res. There balanced. No need to compromise for a puny 55hps, no need to make complicated suggestions.
if you remove res she is back to being a troll pick outside of gold and below.
That sounds so clunky
If they change valk to be better, while removing res, or replacing it with something weak. It’ll be fine. Her healing being back to 60hps is a lot better than over complicating things.
Also she is already there, in the troll pick category.
this is the most balanced the supports have been in overwatch history. all of them are seeing playing time in different combinations. Mercy is only a troll pick if your running 3 tanks.
Right, of course. Picking mercy in master and someone immediately asking for Ana while you have a pharah on your team is not a troll pick at all yeah okay.
So is that you admitting the overreacting Mercy mains were in fact correct about the 50 hps change being too much? Because we’ve been calling that since that change got announced and have been REPEATEDLY accused of stuff like:
As a recap, Mercy mains called that a failure to fix the SR exploitability that over rewarded Rez count and didn’t reward anything else would lead to poor play that inflated Rezes at the teams expense and would piss everyone off. We got told we were wrong and got stuffed into a corner of the PTR bug feedback forum for over a month. We didn’t coin it “hide and Rez” but we did say effectively that it means the most effective way to improve your rank as Mercy is to just pointlessly inflate Rez count even if it loses the fight because even over a 1/3 win rate would be enough with how badly it was over rewarding. We didn’t want that to keep happening and it took 2 months of begging for it to be fixed, but Bliz stopped when they fixed the SR system under rewarding support play in general but ignored Mercy’s Rez over rewarding. We were right, and that unfortunately led to those that abused hide and Rez for rank, and thus spurred the entire justification for the rework.
Mercy mains said that the initial Mercy 2.0 would be OP AF. We got trolled and called idiots who knew nothing. We were again right in our predictions.
Each one of the changes we kept saying that it would make her less fun, less impactful, but no less picked purely because Rez on E is still a problem and will continue to be so until she is so trash that she is outclassed EVERYWHERE else enough that Rez on E finally isn’t worth it. Each time we got trolled and our statements taken out of context, twisted into something else, or accused of outright fallacies and BS. We were right. Each time.
Here comes the latest change; we said the 50hps would make her no longer viable enough as a healer to be used for primary healing, but she’d still be able to be a pocket boost and Rez bot so long as sniper meta was around. Hmm. Someone should REALLY pick up that phone because we keep calling it and it’s getting REALLY old a REALLY long time ago.
I know you like to believe otherwise, but a LOT of Mercy mains wanted her to be reverted to a time she was less broken because we DON’T want her to be OPAF and that was the most logical way to minimize the damage and put things back where it can be examined slower and more methodically without leaving the game balance jacked up and Mercy as some conglomeration of failures in the mean time. Read that whole sentence every time you start to reply to a Mercy main and anything related to a revert. Otherwise, really it’s just taking things out of context in order to match a desired meaning. You had choice words on that behavior I believe, so I fully expect you to call EVERYONE out on that; including people who do it to Mercy mains because lets face it, Mercy mains get strawman arguments created against them all day long all over the forums and everyone is totally cool with that, but as soon as a Mercy does it it’s a sin against existence that every Mercy will be condemned for purely because of guilt by association.
You know, just to reiterate, many of us were freakin out about the initial Mercy 2.0 because she was stupid OPAF and would break the game’s balance. We have been salty beyond belief because out of EVERYONE in the forums, the ONE community that has gotten ZERO say in this ENTIRE rework is the people who main the F’ing hero and EVERYONE ELSE has gotten more of a say in the matter. Jeff freakin Kaplan blatantly strawmaned us and our feedback in the first interview about the changes, and justified disregarding ALL of our feedback because of that. I don’t see you calling that out for the BS that it is. Probably because that was against Mercys, so it’s chill.
It has ALWAYS been everyone else’s experience that was far more important than the person playing Mercy. It has ALWAYS been non-Mercy’s suggestions that were taken over ANYTHING that was in the mega thread despite MANY attempts to theory craft and suggest MANY ways to accommodate BOTH Valkyrie and Mass Rez BOTH in ways that didn’t break the game or make Mercy OP and in many cases make her WEAKER than other supports. Yet we REPEATEDLY have been denied the consideration and the time or day.
You’d be beyond salty AF if that was happening to you and you were part of a collective chunk of the player base that asked for NONE OF THIS BLAME WE ARE GETTING for the rework happening. Then to top it all off, imagine never once getting a fair or decent response and being blown off just like you ALWAYS are from the beginning of the game. Imagine if the best you could ever hope for was a miserably misguided rework that was going to happen no matter how broken it was and no matter how much hate you were going to absorb PURELY for no other reason than the hero you had on your profile, and the overall health of the hero that you simply want to be viable and fun, and every concern you voiced amounted to a silencing pit void with once in a while events where another group of the community got a mention about your state of being and even then the best you could hope for was a pathetic piece of garbage lip service that was such grade A BS that even steers had to start looking for ways to reinvent their excrement to compete with that unrivaled level of concentrated excrement. Now imagine getting repeatedly nerfed and wrecked time and time again with the entire flow of your personal favorite hero getting evicerated and people HAPPY that your experience is being ruined and you are getting in game hate and toxicity everywhere you go.
Every where you look there are people who straight up abuse Mercy mains and always have. Thats cool. No one cares. Thats no different than ever, but not like anyone else is paying any attention or has the integrity to do so or admit to it. After ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE THOUSAND comments on the issue, after the mega thread getting troll locked for a month and no one caring and many even enjoying getting to report and attack Mercys posting in the forums for yet another thing they’re not responsible for, and after it getting sequestered into a corner and summarily every last piece of hundreds of very thought out efforts to legitimately suggest options for both the new Ult and the old Ult getting cast away like trash… and meanwhile the consideration we get can be summed up by:
I could go on, but if people bothered to read the mega thread, they’d know that WE TRIED, and all we got was trolled and discarded and endless unyielding hate and antagonism, including in game. So now you get short tempered quick to turn hostile and uncooperative Mercys because CLEARLY the alternative to that was working SO freakin well. This bed was made by a lot of peoples choices, including a LOT of people who are not Mercy mains, yet like always we’re taking the blame for all of it and no one wants to be an adult and own up to their part of the mess.
But you know, I almost half expected for a second that maybe you could understand any of that, but it’s not like you played a ton of Hog in the middle of the whole hook change debacle. And to think, I afforded that said consideration of wanting him balanced and fun to play and for his mains to stop getting hate by people who hated Hog and his mains for the instant kill combo even though it was so much tamer, yet not even one ounce of that same consideration was returned when the Mercy changes rolled around.
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You feel any better after writing that all out?
That said, if devs did listened to me, it’s because I’m pretty much one of the only people talking about Mercy, focusing on balancing the current design style she’s in.
Most days I wish Mercy mains would do that instead. But they can’t seem to get over this “total redesign, revert, or complain” cycle.
Honestly, I do feel better after getting that out, because frankly, it’s beyond frustrating that I have tried to suggest 5 different ways to rebalance Mercy, half with Rez as ult, half without, and repeatedly I keep getting lumped into “Mass Rez or bust” because of willful prejudice purely because of my icon.
How many have you done with Valk as the ultimate, and some form of single rez?
Come on, let’s be real. She’s doing poorly. She’s in a worse position than Ana was. Her situation right now in high ranks is about as bad as it gets for healers, and her situation in low ranks isn’t great either.
Honestly, with Ana’s buff being as significant as it ended up being I’m not sure a simple return to August 8th Mercy would dethrone her. People had some time with Ana now, and they were able to see just how good she is. But even if the fear that Mercy would dominate Ana again is founded (and perhaps it’s best to err in the direction of caution), there are other better ways to address it.
It’s a bad idea to play with her healing. It always was. It needs to go back to 60. Maybe they need to remove res (or make it available only in Valk), maybe they need to change self heal in Valk, or Valk chain beams, but the healing should never have been tinkered with. It was a mistake on their part, and I hope they have the courage to walk it back.
This would imply some kind of slight adjustment to Blizzard’s balancing, which they don’t seem to do too often. 
2 with Valk as the ult although significantly reworked because as it is now, it removes the main weakness of Mercy too completely and that is a problem. One Valk version with Rez as an ability, one without Rez at all in her kit.
1 with Rez as an ult but single target and charge based as an introduction to different types of ultimates that would open the door for pet type heros or summoner types of ultimates as well as a potential for how it could be used to give Sym better options for her ult should an (at the time) third rework end up being necessary.
2 with Mass Rez. One with tweaks that would have been balanced but is basically a more or less revert with minor changes and a lot of under the hood alterations that make the ability less clear to the enemy that ideal. One was a completely different implementation that gave her staying and saving power, and an actual iconic appearance that no one would mistake or be able to ignore and still with the ability to Rez but in very limited and easily stoppable capacity as well as a direct tie in with lore at the time that would have built up for a potential cinematic with all the feels.
I also did variations of 2 with direct counters built into Rez so that other heros can actively stop Rez including almost all or all of the hero roster.
The main reason why is because I loved Mercy’s design and fluidity, and I figured if nothing else having spent 2 years working on balancing character design in a small game (we got scrapped at the end because of an ugly series of creative differences between the IP owner, story writer, and the artists) and having some formal game design education would at least lend handy and potentially let me propose some ideas maybe with some options people may not have considered or could play off of.
I’m not sure if this is directed at me or not? I’m neutral and I see both sides. I was just saying that the last time that people wanted a response, it wasn’t the one they were hoping for…and got upset. 
Well, here for instance is a version of Valkyrie Ult that’s powerful but vulnerable, instant cast single rez with counterplay, and an E ability that’s very powerful but risky.
Mercy
Caduseus Staff
- 55 heals per second, up from 50.
Valkyrie
- -10hps on permaregen, with 20hps regen after not taking damage for 1 second.
- Chain beam, 40hps on chain beams, with 90hps on primary heal target
Sympathy Bond:
- Mercy blocks half of incoming damage on a teammate, and receives half the incoming damage to herself.
- Bonded teammate has a halo visual effect above them.
- Casting the ability on the same teammate twice cancels this ability
Resurrection:
- Default keybinding to Q during Valkyrie.
- Resurrects one fallen teammate, this teammate is restored to full health.
- Zero cast time.
- Resurrected Teammate cannot take any action for 1.75 seconds except for walking at 25% speed, and glows bright yellow.
- If this teammate dies within 4.75 seconds after being resurrected, they are put on their former respawn timer.
- Healing, Zarya Shield Bubbles, etc are effective on the resurrected teammate.
You’re both give a hard bargain, how about we change her pistol to healing pellets and remove caduceus entirely? That way she must aim to heal.
No, you just happened to be in that quote and I didn’t want to edit GreyFalcon’s quote to take it out of context. Especially when the quote was intended to support this portion:
The only major problem I see with that is it’s stimulus overload for the enemy and for the allies (and it might be a little too powerful).
I don’t have a link to it, but there was a point where Jeff Kaplan said they don’t want any possible confusion for the player or the enemy on what happened and that they wanted to keep things simple enough that there was nothing lost in the ability to quickly determine what is happening (which is sound game design choice).
I’ll post my prior radically redone version of Mass Rez tomorrow as well as the implications it would have had on lore; it’s well past time to go to sleep tonight.
9/15 Edit: Had to rewrite a big chunk of the proposed changes; can’t find all of the original material. It’s 2/3 complete and should be done tomorrow.
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As promised, I will post one of the proposals I had for reworking Mercy. I spent a LOT of time leading into this, so it’s going to be a book. You’ve been warned.
Before we begin, there are some considerations that must be made, and some conditions on which this entire proposed idea depends very heavily. I’ll state them here so that it makes clear sense the idea in mind, the criteria when building the concept, and while coming up with this.
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LOS, hit detection, and other considerations for abilities that include ground cover type effects are not getting fixed and have a hailstorm of unpredictability as was seen by Rein and his Shatter or Doomfist and his punch and slam. They both had far too many ways the abilities failed to do what they were supposed to do for an unacceptably long time. (I have a good working theory on why that is, but I can’t prove it nor can anyone but the devs because honestly its not any of my business of the ‘why’ it works the way it does; just that it does work the way it should). The concept implementation requires that it is blocked only by major obstacles (solid walls and structures) and not able to be blocked by things such as cars on Hollywood, lamp posts, the payload, otherwise unmovable indestructible and non-permeable objects, let alone things that should in absolutely no way be blocking anything (stairs/inclines blocking Shatter for example). There are 2 ways to address that issue, both will be included for reference.
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That there will some day be other types of ultimates that are not simply instant cast, transformation, or channeling, and that there will be other types of heros, and potentially even pet class heros with minions who can benefit greatly from this. It also may become wildly out of control OP depending on those implementations and as such this attempts to strike a balance of the intended function, intended weaknesses, reasonable return, and reasonable flexibility in game environments where 6vs6 is not the only thing that you’ll face off against.
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The ultimate ability MUST be able to be countered, negated, or denied. This must be doable reasonably easy enough by enough people or common enough means with normal hero selection that it is a very real threat the player must factor in to it’s use in game. The reason why this matters is because in order for an ability to be balanced it has to have proportionately equal strength to it’s weakness. This concept has incredible potential, and therefore it must have incredible risk and/or limitations with very real threat to get pathetic or even no returns if the user flubs it, and even the very clear potential to get you killed if you use it stupidly. The stronger the ability, the stronger the weakness must be, otherwise it’s OPAF and that is absolutely the very last thing I want it to be because it’s the very last thing I want Mercy to be.
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The notion that Mercy is intended to want to heal and save her team at all times in all situations, and as such needs to have a kit that both encourages that and encourages not wanting to let people die, but also is punishing if used incorrectly or mistimed. She has huge versatility, so she has to have proportionate limitations to remain equally viable and vulnerable. The other problem that needs to exist is that her abilities have very tangible rewards when used correctly but still be extremely easy to mechanically get the bare minimum use out of. She is meant to be an opening difficulty hero that anyone can play; her kit needs to have a low skill floor to accommodate this while having enough variance in her output that using her properly gives an entirely different feel to her than playing her poorly and inefficiently.
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As the enemy or ally, it needs to be CLEAR what is happening and it needs to feel fair when she successfully does what she does that she be rewarded for it. If you allow her to do what she does, it’s your own fault for letting her do it and the warning was very clearly there for you. Each ultimate ability has both a unique look to it, and a very clear indication of range or impact. Trans has a pretty big area of effect and has equally clear and big visuals that make it very clear what is happening and who is affected. Soldier’s Visor is clearly visible from range, even if “I’ve got you in my sights” wasn’t enough of an indication. The voice line and seeing his gun pointed at you, you know you’re going to get damaged and you know what is happening. Also, each ability both looks good to the user, is stylish enough that it stands out and is memorable as a signature in itself, and ideally is impactful enough that the player when using the Ult to it’s potential feels like they just did something big.
If all of this wasn’t enough, here are a few more nuances to those considerations. It needs to as an ability be clear enough of clutter and free enough of micromanagement that it fits the goal in game design Jeff Kaplan himself stated was their focus in the interview with ESPN Magazine in September 2017.
The way we like to approach game development is to take a game that’s pretty hardcore, and create [those] elements because we think that’s what gives a game depth and longevity. But the thing that separates Blizzard is that we try to then say: We know how to create this really fun hardcore loop in a game. But how do you open the door and make everyone feel welcome?
It comes down to simple game-design decisions. You get rid of punishing elements that don’t add to the depth. Having a bright welcoming world really attracts a broader audience. We play games to escape, and if you have a bunch of really challenging, oppressive environments, it tends to fatigue people mentally, and they don’t want to take part in the world.
The changes they made to heros can be seen to still maintain this spirit. Replacing Syms shielding ability, her recent turret change, her ult change from a deployable generator, and even the proposed Torb changes all exemplify this desire to remove obnoxious micro management. Additionally there needs to be a way for this kit to be used without leaving Mercy high and dry. She is after all the most reliable and mobile healer, but as a consequence she trades all burst impact and potential for flexibility and steady output. It would be illogical for her to have something that leaves her hanging to dry (one of the major complaints about the cast time and how bad it feels), and it’s got to give a moment to shine (another complaint about the lackluster state that Valk is in). Here is Kaplan’s words from an interview with PC Magazine from April 2015 when the game was being first marketed and demonstrated in relation to the maps and hero usage and their opportunities to use it to their benefit:
For example, at Hanamura some of our classes like Tracer or Pharah can just fly across like the back side from the second attacker spawn all the way into the final control point. But we really have to go hero by hero to make sure that everybody is represented and has a powerful moment but also make sure that they’re not left hung out to dry. So like Reaper is a good example where early on in that development the maps are usually very hard for the Reaper because there’s good areas, there’s good mobility areas but he’s a tight corridor shot kind of guy, and we have to really go out of our way to create opportunities for him. But that’s how we go about it; literally hero by hero.
Believe it or not, I actually REALLY care about the concept and design intentions behind what the OW team did at least to the extent I can parse them from their statements, and I did read each interview to see what they did and their mentality behind it. That was one of the reasons I really liked the game and consequently Mercy. Namely it was because of her flow with the environment and flexibility but that every benefit she had came at the cost of something else and that it enabled a play style that really you don’t see very often that I really enjoy; min/maxing something and strategy play to push the boundries of what is doable in a way that doesn’t rely solely on raw mechanical execution.
The SOLE problem in her kit was Rez having no method of being negated or punished in a way that it denied value once it started, but this was only the case after the invincibility patch dropped on Feb 28, 2017. The cost of her Ult before hand was that you almost always died using Rez unless you were very careful to use it only when protected and when you weren’t going to be left vulnerable. Dying when Rezing left the team in a 5v6 without their healer (at the time one of only 2 options for main healing, with Zen and Lucio being most common pairs with you and not being able to keep a 5v6 up healing wise). Using Rez was considered throwing in most cases because in most cases you would die and the team lost their healer. In fact, here’s the patch notes to reiterate that notion:
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753535162#post-3
Developer Comments: Mercy’s Resurrect has always been very powerful, but it often forces her to sacrifice herself to use it well. There have been changes in the past that attempted to help her in this area, but haven’t done enough to solve it. This change means that once she uses the ability, she will always survive long enough to be with her team again.
That sucked knowing you had to throw the sustained fight just for a shot to try to flip the tide of a short fight, so as a design concept that iteration where she had no method of surviving her ultimate was flawed in that it left her hanging to dry. The invincibility buff made the Ultimate feel amazing, and it was great in that you could use it the way it was intended to be used, but it also was a problem because it created the opposite problem it had before; it didn’t have a weakness and as such broke the design philosophy of powerful abilities having powerful weaknesses to balance them with risk/reward. It went from the extreme of no survivability to infinite survivability, and the core kicker there is that there was never any real exploration of the in between. That was a HUGE part of the traction behind the “revert” mentality; revert to just before this exact breaking point and try something else that wasn’t an all or nothing extreme before saying that because the two extreme ends didn’t work the ability as a whole is impossible to balance.
Well, the problem is that even if they did that, it would still be a problem design wise because there is no way to counter or negate Rez without it getting value. You can deny it by killing Mercy, but she’ll just come back and use her ult the next time; that’s not truly denying it’s just delaying. You couldn’t counter it because there was no way to flip the benefit to hurt the enemy team instead of help them. There was no negating the Rez once the process started either. The only option you had was kill Mercy first making the only weakness to Rez was how killable Mercy was. This is an infinitely moving target as new heros and metas are better or worse suited for killing Mercy making Rez an infinitely moving target of if it’s balanced or not based on who is present on the two teams and what the meta is. This isn’t a problem dictated purely by the concept of Rez; it is a problem dictated by an ability that lacks counters and appropriate weakness where the impact, viability, and vulnerability only exist in the extremes in that form of the ability.
This is the very thing I set out to address, and as you go through the suggestion keep that in mind along with those design philosophies mentioned above, and it will all make a LOT more sense.
So now for the actual proposed version of Mercy (there are 2 versions of this):
I’m only going to post the version based on and intended to be as close to the same as what Mercy already does as possible in order to minimize both the burden of reworking and rebalancing her, avoiding forcing players to relearn very much of her, and that keeps her kit at an entry level difficulty while still having more skill ceiling.
There is another version of this same Mercy/ult concept where the whole of Mercy’s kit gets tweaks and adjustments to give her additional potential at the cost of some of her reliability, adds ways to get extra efficiency and extra value, adds mechanical skill based components, rewards you for using it, and encourages her to get into the heart of the fight for maximum output and punishes being a pocket heal/boost bot (aka Pharmacy), and gives her flexibility to get some small burst healing. The problem with that design is that it adds a LOT of micromanagement that a LOT of people might see as too much of a chore and would in fact potentially be a higher skill requirement hero than any support currently. Watching it and analyzing it though would be very entertaining from an esports perspective.
But anyway…
Back to the proposed version of Mercy.
The things that stayed the same (relative to when I first started this) purely due to them not being of concern because they aren’t part of the problems people had with her kit:
- Healing remained 60HPS.
- Damage boost remained 30%
- Pistol remains as is.
- Self healing remains as is since it realistically wont matter.
- Angelic Descent remained the same.
- GA remains as it was.
Note: Bunny hop is optional to include. Honestly it is a fun thing to play with although it somewhat conflicts with the notion of removing chore like punishing obstacles (for most people trying to learn it anyway) and inconsistencies (since it’s highly inconsistent with what you would expect it to do until you get acclimated with it). Bunny hop adds some skill ceiling to her and I’m all for that. Bunny hop and the ways you can abuse it’s movements to reach places in ways you normally couldn’t become very opportune to show off skilled and experienced Mercys, but this would also be abusable, is a deviation from consistency, and ignores the fact that Bunny Hop is a bug turned into a feature that lacks any form of indication in game that it even exists.
For the sake of this proposal, leaving bunny hop in would net a better result with a higher skill ceiling than without, but there is a feature in the proposal that fills the role of bunny hops without it being so abstract, unpredictable, and undocumented for the players.
Essentially the goal is to start with Mercy immediately prior to patch 1.8 when she got Invincibility on Mass Rez. That patch was the transition point from troll pick with a troll ult into an ult that had the ability to swing the ult economy of the match and was no longer an outright automatic burden on the team, but it also was the patch that laid the groundwork for exploiting the broken SR rewards that dropped with the Orisa patch a month later.
At this point, the only thing left to deal with and the only thing different from old Mercy is an E ability, and Mercy’s Ultimate. (This looks far longer and complicated
E ability (call it Valk if so desired, the name is irrelevant):
Appearance and casting/usage:
- Cool down is 8 seconds and does not share a cool down with GA
- Animation needs to be different than GA but similar.
- Cast time is instant, and interruption/stun behavior is identical to when you interrupt/stun Mercy mid flight when using GA.
Effects:
- Launches Mercy 10 meters straight in the direction that she is looking similar to how GA allows Mercy to fly to an ally.
Resurrection (ultimate):
Appearance and casting/usage
- Channeling time of 1.25 seconds (Some time between 1 and 2 seconds should be good, but would need a real world test to see how it feels, flows, and the impact).
- A 25% slowdown effect to her movement while casting it, and a casting animation to both call attention to her usage of the ability, to give a similar “build up” as ults like McCree’s where the intention is to call attention and make you vulnerable and give a fair chance to shut it down if she’s not protected or uses it stupidly.
- Can be cast mid air but she cannot use angelic descent or other abilities while casting and if interrupted or stunned it still spends the ultimate while stopping it’s use just like interrupting others during activation or in the middle of a channeled ultimate.
- Yellow particle effect similar to her old beam effect (in style) is shown on the ground to make clear the outline of the effect Radius.
- While casting, every dead hero has a standing outline of their hero on their corpse.
- Effect radius is 15 meters; same as staff’s beam range for consistency. (Not opposed to a 10m range, but with the cast time, vulnerability, and ability to be shut down hard at any point, the additional range may be needed to give the necessary flexibility plus the consistency in range makes it easy for people to know and get used to their effective distance better).
- The effect goes through everything except for “major obstacles” like structure walls or things that you see an outline of your allies through if they are behind it. The intention is to prevent LOS being broken by things like lamp posts, cars, tables, benches, etc that people fall behind or get killed on randomly where the hit box and LOS detection get really flakey and block things that shouldn’t be blocked. (Honestly, this should be true of most AOE abilities. A lamp post where half your body is exposed should not be able to block DVa bomb or Trans for example)
Effect:
- After casting finishes, all living allies within range get a 200 health heal given at the rate of 80HPS.
- Any hero that is dead within the area of effect will be resurrected and starting at 0 HP will build up to 200 HP at the same rate as those still alive; 80HPS. Once the effect ends (2.5 seconds, similar to the current 2.25 uncontrollable duration players experience while being Rezed), the player is given free control.
- The recipients can be damaged at any time during this process and if their health goes down to 0 then the effect is negated on that person, and they go back onto their respawn timer as if the resurrection effect had never been attempted. continue on their original respawn counter If the Rez is stopped.
Optional if a particle effect on the people being healed by the ultimate is desired (kind of like how barriers applied to people have a visual effect, armor packs have a visual effect, harmony orb has a visible effect, etc.):
- Each affected character gets a very light mostly transparent wing particle effect that looks like a smaller version of Mercy’s wings, player sees a yellow framing of their screen with heal particles just like when Mercy is healing them.
Why all of this?
The intention of the E ability is to give Mercy some minor yet unpredictable movement that also gives her a chance to relocate to better places. We saw how hard it was to hit a free flight Mercy with Valk; thats too strong for anything other than an ultimate, but on a limited fashion or a predictable fashion it can provide some additional freedom and more choices to do what Mercy does, as well as give ways to make relocating less of moving in a predictable straight line begging to be sniped.
We also saw what AOE healing does; removes the need for Mercy players to keep as close of attention to everyones health because it puts her on complete auto pilot. Her interactivity and part of what shows an involved, knowledgeable, and aware Mercy is constantly shifting her healing and damage amp around to the target who needs it most at that moment and AOE abilities marginalize and mask the need for that and the value of Mercys that can do it thus reducing her skill ceiling.
Anything that diminishes or eliminates those requirements and aspects of her kit will feel like a deviation from her flow and like it undermines her for doing what she does, not to mention the most important part that AOE abilities also remove one of the critical weaknesses of Mercy; only being able to single target heal without any burst healing. What other weaknesses does she have? She has mobility and reliability, and the ability to reverse deaths periodically. She has everything a healer needs except burst healing. She lacks suitable supporting abilities to make her a good pick on the grounds of utility however. This means her biggest problems are a lack of burst/AOE healing, and lack of utility. Honestly, she should keep certain weaknesses to make her rely on other supports to fill in where she can’t in order to prevent the return of solo healing Mercy without also leaving open exploitable weakness. Is a lack of utility or a lack of burst healing enough to be exploitable and prevent solo healing Mercy from being wide spread again? No, in my opinion, so she should either fully or largely retain that weakness.
Having Mercy focus on healing with minimal utility means other supports on the team can lean harder on their utility and focus less on healing. This allows her to be an enabler in one way, and leaves a very clear method for her to both work with and work against teammates if both she and the team don’t work well with her. If you use Torb in dive, his lack of synergy makes him a hindrance. I see no reason for supports including Mercy not to have similar ways that using them incorrectly will clash and be detrimental and incompatible with their team comp and fellow players if they are unwilling to adapt. Retaining a lack of utility and lack of burst healing helps keep this limitation.
Lastly, her ultimate Mass Resurrection and even single target Resurrection has always had a problem with it being unable to be directly countered and with how to maximize the return. You can kill Mercy before she uses Rez but that’s just delaying it’s use and is not countering or denying it’s value overall. Having a slow cast time on Rez so there is a window to punish her just makes her feel like she’s being dragged through mud and also only adds incentive to hide when using it bringing back the hide and Rez issue. The problem with all of the implementations we’ve seen is that there either was no survivability before invulnerability or instant cast complete invulnerability following that patch, and there was nothing in between. It went from it’s mere use being a counter to Mercy’s own survival to being a get out of jail free card with guaranteed return on every use. The answer to balance is not to use the 2 extremes and then write it off like you’ve tried everything.
The answer I believe is in having a small enough cast time that it still gives a short window to punish Mercy, have a way to deny the value outside of killing Mercy, and have the ability give both a reason to use it early or later and the deciding factor be how good of output it gives. You use it early to stop a fight from failing before almost anyone dies, then it gives less output and the effect is less powerful, but it’s more likely to be completed and get value. The longer you wait, the most it does but the more likely you’ll be denied. Having a 200HP heal gives some staying power but not really that much since one Widow/Hanzo shot basically erases that entire heal, but if you have a team that just took a heap of splash damage and the off tank dies, that 200 HP heal for everyone as well as bringing back the off tank for 200 HP leaves everyone at higher than 200 HP or fully healed, and brings the off tank back to 200 HP. Everyone else has more health, and the off tank would have more health if they hadn’t gone and died. This makes it decidedly more valuable to use that when the main tank can still block, a secondary healer is still healing, and DPS are still pressuring the enemy team while you are casting, then it heals everyone for 200 and basically tops off the whole team spare for the tanks. This lets you focus on healing the tanks while being enough that it gives you some recovery power so when you use Rez it truly does swing the fight more in your favor instead of just bring up a couple folks and hope they don’t die in 2 seconds.
I could go on even further about what the reasons and even go into a list and comparison of the pros/cons, but this is probably enough wall of text for this week, and it’s SUPER late…