If you look at the top 500 leaderboard for support you see that out of the top 30 players and their top 3 most played, Mercy appears 9 out of 90 times. This is 10% even showing up when she’s crutching in at all because of Soujorn.
Meanwhile 29 of the 90 slots are Kiriko. Over 3x the representation Mercy gets right now. Before the Souj nerf Mercy had only 1 person in the top 50 players and it was a one trick.
She’s not in a good state so these are buffs I suggest could be nice for her.
Longer tether range on her beam she’s highly mobile but has to break it a lot
Ability to use a lesser form of GA without a friendly lock on target that puts her ability on a longer cooldown
She should be able to do a barrel roll. Ok this one isn’t a buff but I think it’d be fun and neat.
Her heal could briefly linger on a target like Moira’s so she can actually bring out her gun a bit more and still top people off, this would also allow her to twist damage boost and heal and provide a bit more benefit
Up her hp/s by 5 to 10, or give her something to heal tanks faster she heals them back to full so slowly and it bogs down her ability to be proactive in a lot of situations.
Everyone always talks about how the top is all that matters. So this should settle anyone with that argument.
I made a post about it back then you can go look at it if you want.
I just counted it myself in the client, it’s definitely correct. Top 30 players you count how many times each character shows up. It’s not very hard to double check.
You’re right in that you’ve got the correct facts, but you’re not analyzing them correctly. Kiriko has a dominatingly high PR in high SR. The answer isn’t to buff other supports to bring them up, it’s to nerf Kiriko down, as she is still too strong.
But on the other point, you’re also right that Mercy is only viable right now because she is pocketing OP Sojourn. That also does not mean buff Mercy. It doesn’t even just mean ‘Nerf Soj’, because you’re not solving Mercy’s problem, which isn’t that she’s weak, because she’s not. It’s that her kit is built entirely around being fully beholden to pocketing DPS -even more so at higher SR-. And, in particular, around slightly overtuned, ranged DPS -the ones that are difficult to counter in the first place. Therefore, Mercy makes slightly out of tune heros into sort of mini raid bosses, and she had her own mobility buffed recently so she herself is difficult to counter or kill -even in GM.
The issue here is that Mercy has virtually no agency or upward skill expression. You’re rolling the dice playing Mercy that you’re going to a) have the appropriate DPS on your team to pocket and B) that they’ll be good enough to get value through pocketing them. If those conditions are met, Mercy feels almost far too strong -really through no effort of the player or her own kit-. If the conditions are not met, Mercy feels almost totally useless. That’s a fundamental design problem with Mercy’s kit that needs to be addressed. She does not need to be buffed; she is almost too strong when in her ideal scenario…but she is also way too weak without it. She’s feast or famine; she’s infuriating either way; when she’s got a hero that she makes obnoxiously strong, people are livid with her kit, and when a hero like that isn’t popular or available and Mercy still gets played, people are livid with her uselessness. These are really legitimate concerns about her kit that just are never looked at, because the dev team refuses to look at Mercy with a critical eye.
I’m down to talk about it in this way, but most people around here don’t support balancing for the top 500. So how you wanna address it? Wanna just talk top 500?
If you posted it before post it again. Why do I have to go sifting through your post history?
Look up the info. I’d give you a direct link but I don’t have the privilege to do so on this forum cuz I get suspended a bit too often.
I play a good amount of her and I think she’s in a good spot. I don’t want them to touch her anymore, they seem to ruin her every time they try
The only changes she needs IMO is damage presence from her kit (maybe her beams hurt enemies who pass through them, and the beams can be a little longer when she’s on foot)
and tone down specific dmg beam interactions with specific heroes
imo her main problem is her ult does too many things for you team. Damage, reload rate, move speed, and then indirectly boosts all of your teams ult charge. And it can win a teamfight by itself.
according to another thread there was a guy who went to GM maining each char and Mercy took the longest to climb with out of all the support.
I think that speaks to her weakness as a support. If it’s harder to win consistently she is weaker.
I disagree with that, her mobility, and her decision making and her positioning are all critical. Also her ability to be able to duel if needed.
It’s mostly because we don’t have any other data to go on, overbuff is not accurate right now and blizzard isn’t very generous with data. It is something though and it is an indicator of the meta and strength of heroes.
I can dig and find it but it’s going to just be what I said about mercy and counts of which heroes are in the top 50 most for support.
I can google it later but I wanted to play a bit before bed so it will probably be tomorrow. I just don’t understand how they get the data if no one else has it?
You’re right. It’s the only honest data we have unfortunately. Outside of OWL, contenders type matches etc.
Specifically it’s taking the data of the top 500, which is available to everyone, and presenting it in a way that’s easily digested. We have no other concrete data.
