W ad hominem. I do not care to interact with you.
He seems upset about mercy being a peel support and being really exceptionally good at it.
Then blames flex supports…. Who are currently pretty well balanced against each other right now. Ana, bap, zen…. Kiri can play as both but isn’t as good as mercy at peel support.
I think he wants mercy to be a flex support?!
She already kinda almost is with dmg boost.
Zen peels and does Mercy’s job better.
Brig peels and did Mercy’s job better. (But OW2 royally messed up her balance in lower ranks)
Lucio peels and did Mercy’s job better. (But OW2 messed up his synergy)
Kiriko peels and does her job better.
1 Like
ngl but the only reason why OP sees Mercy as the most overpowered support ever is because the yellow beam is easy to see so it makes mercy easy to blame for losing a 2v1.
Despite Mercy being barely a middle of the pack support.
3 Likes
Hey media! I appreciate your input. 
but I have a different opinion.
Brig does peel better. I agree. But she lacks dmg amplification and cannot contribute to poke.
Zen I’m going to have hard disagree. Zen can dmg amp like mercy. But he needs protection. Zen actually instantly makes whoever he plays with the peel support. His life is so fragile. Even if you pick ana you have to understand you are peeling for zen… he isn’t peeling for you.
Kiri doesn’t peel better than mercy. Yes kiri can frag…. But she doesn’t have the same potential to kite and pocket at the same time… mercy is very good and pocketing while simultaneously kiting.
Lucio is better for a team playstyle… but he doesn’t have enough healing to keep vulnerable supports alive like Ana and zen. It’s good if the whole team want to move with him…: but not the same for individual targets
Cause she literally deals damage at a higher rate than Mercy?? She’s able to damage and heal at the same time. She’s able to mitigate damage and CC now? She can heal flanking DPS with repair pack. She has whip shot for a very slight range damage.
Sounds like a better trade off.
Not necessarily-unless you’re just a bad Zen and get kill hungry. He’s always been a peeling support with his ability to heal, discord and damage without needing to really drop any of them.
He’s now got his dumb yet hilarious knock back ALSO with no cooldown.
Which is a form of peeling my friend. Thanks for proving this. Again able to provide more without needing to dedicate to one specific part of her kit.
My dude, LucioZen was the OG Dive meta cause of his damage and utility. With the knockback mitigation Lucio has lost some of his synergy and peeling potential.
Also-side note where are you getting these numbers of Mercy’s winrate?
Cause for this month Zen and Brig have higher winrates than Mercy in bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master, and grandmaster.
Lucio has a better winrate than her in silver and gold. Bap beats her in grandmaster.
And for most Kiriko, Ana, Moira, Bap, and Lucio are all like less than 1% from her.
Zen’s is literally higher and Mercy only is 0.45% higher than Ana… be calm
3 Likes
she’s actually the weakest support at the moment - in her weakest state ever
This is a bit long, but it always bugs me when people massage data to give them the answers they want. I’m aware it’s feeding a troll, but I still like to try to shine some light on this sort of thing for people that read it and feel something’s wrong, but don’t quite understand what.
When you look at all the player data as a whole (all skill levels, both Quickplay and Competitive,) there are literally only two heroes in the entire game with higher than a 5% pick rate: Ana and Mercy. Ana has an 8.61% pick rate and a 49.46% win rate, while Mercy has a 7.02% pick rate and a 50.03% win rate.
Consider that Reinhardt is, in this data set, the most picked Tank with a 3.83% pick rate. And he has the second highest win rate out of the Tanks, 52.2% compared to Junker Queen’s 52.4%. So the most popular Tank, with the second-highest win % that is 0.2% behind first place, doesn’t have a 5% pick rate. That’s how disqualifying needing a 5% pick rate is.
The median pick rate is Roadhog, coming in at the 19th most picked hero. He’s at a 2.08% pick rate. The average pick rate is 2.67%. Neither of these are anywhere close to 5% when you look the range of pick rates. 13 of the 37 heroes in OW2 have a pick rate higher than the average pick rate: Ana, Mercy, Genji, Cassidy, Kiriko, Hanzo, Moira, Reinhardt, Widowmaker, Soldier: 76, Zenyatta, D.Va, and Lucio. Again, out of all those heroes, only 2 in this data set have a higher than 5% pick rate.
This is definitely a case of finding the assumption (“Mercy is too good!”) and then presenting data in a way to support it. But things aren’t that simple.
Here's some of the nitty-gritty numbers for those interested.
In Quickplay, Mercy tends to get picked a lot in the low and high ranks: she’s the most picked Support in everything except Platinum and Diamond, where she’s replaced by Ana. But some of those tiers are very close: in Gold she’s only ahead by .07%. In fact the only tier she’s more than 1% away from Ana is in Grandmaster, where she’s ahead by 1.01%.
But in all of those tiers? She’s picked plenty, but doesn’t win a lot. She has a less than 50% win rate in every tier except Grandmaster, where she finally gets to a 50.19% win rate. Meanwhile in Grandmaster, Moira has a 4.45% pick rate and a 50.91% win rate. Zenyatta is chosen a bit less, with a 4.17% pick rate. But he has a 52.49% win rate, the second highest of all Supports. In fact, in every tier of Quickplay, Brigitte, Lucio, Zenyatta, and Moira have a win rate higher than 50%. Those are the only 4 Supports to have that. And while some may be more of a niche pick such as Brigitte, Supports like Moira and Zenyatta get used plenty in all those tiers as well. So in Quickplay, Mercy gets picked a lot, even though she only wins at the Master and Grandmaster level. And her pick rates aren’t that much different than Ana’s.
Competitive, though? That’s another story. Mercy isn’t the most picked Support in any tier. She also isn’t the Support with the highest win% in any tier. In bronze she’s outpicked by Moira, and in Silver and Gold she’s outpicked by Moira and Ana. In Platinum she finally hits the second most picked Support at 5.86% pick rate, but that’s compared to Ana’s 9.31% pick rate. In Diamond that jumps up to 8.52% pick rate for Mercy and a 15.38% pick rate for Ana. In Master Mercy is at 10.59% pick rate to Ana’s 19.68%, and in Grandmaster they’re at 13.43% and 21.89%. Ana is, without a doubt, the most played Support at high levels.
And when you look at which Supports are winning in Competitive? Mercy is beaten by Zenyatta and Brigitte in literally every. Single. Tier. And she loses to Lucio in Bronze and Silver, then loses to Ana and Baptiste as well in Grandmaster (where she has the 6th highest win rate of the Supports.) In Grandmaster, Mercy has a 51.95% win rate, but Ana (who is picked 63% more often than Mercy) has a 52.84% win rate, a difference of 0.89%. In Masters Mercy technically beats Ana, 52.13% to 52.11%, or a difference of 0.02%. In Diamond the gap does widen a bit, with Mercy winning 51.67% and Ana only managing a 51.12% win rate. So she’s picked 80% more often than Mercy (almost twice as often,) but Mercy’s win rate is only 0.55% higher. (Compare this again to Grandmaster, where Mercy is picked 53% as often as Zenyatta, but Zenyatta has a win rate that’s an entire 1.7% higher.)
Depending on the mode and tier, there are heroes with higher pick rates than Mercy, and higher win rates than Mercy. By taking this aggregate of data that isn’t very helpful (the different playstyles between Tiers matters: Tracer is meta in top level play, but doesn’t do much in the lower ranks,) the OP found an arbitrary cutoff to give the answer they wanted. If you consider any hero to have a pick rate that’s just equal to or higher to the average hero’s pick rate (2.67%,) you get 13 heroes to pick from instead of 2, and that includes Lucio, Zenyatta, and Moira… who all have a higher win rate than Mercy.
Even if you instead focus on the average Support pick rate of 3.98%, that still leaves Moira with her pick rate of 4.06% having a higher win rate than Mercy. The criteria may as well have been "Which Support that comes from a country with an “e” in the name and also a “y” or a “z” has the highest win rate?
TL;DR
It was a completely arbitrary call that was made to find a hero (and data set, since as I said before the combined aggregate over both QP and Comp across all tiers doesn’t show much since there’s so many heroes that only show up or win at certain tiers,) that Mercy had a higher win rate than, then find out how to exclude every Support that has a higher win rate than her.
Not to say Mercy’s not doing okay. According to Overbuff at least, she’s not really winning in the lower tiers, only having a win rate over 50% in Quickplay if she’s in Grandmaster. And only in Platinum or higher in Competitive. Probably do to her being so team-dependent, and trying to get value from damage boosting a Gold player can be a fool’s errand. But she’s by no means the “Highest win rate all tiers?!”
According to this, every hero in the game other than Ana and Mercy are “niche.” 13 heroes are picked above the average pick rate of all heroes, but for some reason 11 of them don’t count as not niche? Are all Tanks and DPS niche picks? Literally every single one?
Pick rate is NOT an arbitrary stat. Having a high winrate and pickrate means your character is very versatile and good in a lot of situations. Having a low pickrate and a high winrate means your character is more niche, but is good in the situations where they shine. The former is objectively stronger than the latter.
yes, let’s nerf her now
it isnt incorrect, and particularly not in an objective sense, actually
any assessment of Mercy’s (or any characters) ability level is purely subjective
I ask that the personal attacks cease
cuse you cant do anything with her gm immune to all area controle and boop abbilties and here passive regin that wont be interrupted
The issue isn’t comparing pick rates, it’s by setting the arbitrary line at “Among Supports with a 5% or higher pick rate, while looking at every player in both Quickplay and Competitive among all tiers.”
There’s 2 heroes in the game with a 5% or higher pick rate under those conditions. That’s why it’s cherry picked. Genji, Cassidy, Kiriko, Hanzo, Moira, Reinhardt… none of them break the 5% pick rate under those conditions.
Yes, if a hero had a high win rate but a terrible pick rate, it can be caused by things like them being niche so they’re strong but only in certain situations. But we’re not talking about completely niche supports.
If you look at just the support pick rates, the average pick rate is 3.98% and the median pick rate is Zenyatta’s 3.46%. (Note this data is odd, since it’s still listing a Support’s pick rate in total, not with respect to their roles. Which means if you add up all the Support pick rates you actually only wind up getting 35.82%.) There are 4 Supports that have a higher than average pick of Support heroes: Ana, Mercy, Kiriko, and Moira. And among them, the one with the highest win percentage is Moira, at 50.55%.
Moira has a pick rate just over 4%. Which makes her, in this data set, the 7th most picked hero. In a game with 37 heroes, of which you take 1 of 11 Tanks, 2 of 9 Supports, and 2 of 17 DPS, it’s just not possible to have all of the Tanks and DPS have “low pick rates.”
So no, pick rate isn’t an arbitrary stat. Needing to qualify the data with “a 5% or higher pick rate” however is an arbitrary choice, made specifically to exclude the other still often-picked Supports that have a higher win rate than Mercy. Because remember, in this data set, with those qualifications, literally every hero in the game aside from Ana and Mercy are considered “niche/low picked.”
Mercy has been the biggest problem with this game since it first launched. An unmirrored Mercy makes the game easy mode for her team. No one has any fear of being dove or shot at when they have a Mercy pocket. One shots become the only threat.
1 Like
No it can be objective, when the character is flat out used more than the other characters.
ESPECIALLY in the highest rank in the game… where people flat out play meta (a.k.a what is strongest) 90% of the time. She is all over the top 500 leaderboard and if you wanna be an Overbuff Oliver, she’s 2nd highest pickrate in GM.
To say she is the weakest support and even while she is used more than the other supports consistently across all ranks, makes it wrong. Objectively.
You can say she’s weak, that does not make it remotely true at all.
Especially when no one who even SLIGHTLY understands the game would say mercy is worse than lifeweaver, lucio, bap, or moira.
Maybe, just maybe, we should have left her as she was at the end of Overwatch 1 instead of trying to add in all these changes and rebalances that have put her in such a state?
2 Likes
I see what you mean now. Thanks for elaborating.
1 Like
Hey, I’m glad I could help. Thanks for spending the time to read it, I know I can be a little wordy.
And you’re right, pick rate can be just as important as win rate when you’re trying to balance things. People overlook it a lot of time, which is unfortunate. But yeah, this one was just more about that arbitrary cutoff for pick rates, when it’s much more useful to be comparing similar pick rates instead of some pre-determined cutoff.
1 Like