Mercy is a bad character

General Discussion
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I am not using pickrates for Mercy, because she has the largest fan base in the game. This means her pickrate will always be inflated and not an accurate representation of how she actually performs. To address her win rate, in lower tiers, she has a negative win rate, and in higher tiers, she has a positive win rate because she is only being played in favorable situations. Like old Symm and Torb.

She isn’t used in the pro scene, unless she is tied to another character, which says something directly about how good she, and the hero she is paired with are.

Res is around 3 times the cool down of anti, yet Ana can have the best support ability on a pretty low cool down.

She is extremely unclear as to what role she is supposed to play considering she doesn’t do enough healing to consider her a main healer, yet lacks the ult to be considered an off healer.

Her ult frankly is boring and this is because it makes her brain dead. She doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore. There is not target priority. There is no flying around for survival. She is possibly the easiest hero in the game while in Valk and that is an issue.

This won’t sway anyone’s opinion who think she is “fine”, but I will repeat what I said in the beginning again. She is only played in high tiers when she is in a favorable position, and that is why she has a positive win rate. Same reason Symm and Torb had a positive win rate, when they were trash heroes. Her pickrate is irrelevant, she is the most popular hero in the game.

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I pretty much dont agree with any of the above, but that said, would BigMainLittleChains help with your overall perception of Valkyrie?

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I wish there were some number changes in Valk, and possibly a cooldown reset as well. Cut Valk’s duration for a stronger main beam (like higher hps and possbly 40/45% damage boost-reminder Orisa’s ult provides 50% boost, so if people cry “that’s too strong” Mercy would be single target while Orisa’s is the full team and includes herself) and weaker chains (like knock them down to 40/35hps with 15%damage boost) and let rez’s cooldown be reset (but nothing more).

Knock down the duration to like between 8-12 seconds depending on the numbers.

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That is a very brave title lol

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Damage boost is the only thing of Supercharger. Valkyrie shouldnt be nearly as powerful in Damage boost. It should be kept under 40%

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Again Supercharger provides for the entire team at 50%, the up to 40-45% would be one target while the others get a weaker ones.

Also Supercharger has a larger radius.

Also also, Orisa can use the damage boost as well.

Mercy is unable to boost herself-alsox3 Mercy would need to choose if healing or boosting is more useful.

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Fun fact: That is true of literally every hero in the game, and Mercy is statistically better than over 50% of the hero base in both scenarios.

:blowfish:

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mercy is a pretty reasonable character, actually. it’s just that she isn’t supremely overpowered like ana or baptiste.

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I think thats pretty bad considering its already a downtime of 3.5 seconds from healing that’s a potential of 150 healing lost, plus Mercy has always had problems survivng resurrect even when it was instant and aoe.

Just look at this:

July 19, 2016

General

Hero Balance Change

  • Resurrect
    • Ultimate charge cost increased by 30%
    • Movement is no longer prevented during activation
    • Guardian Angel instantly resets upon use

Developer Notes

Mercy’s ultimate is one of the most powerful abilities in the game; however, players would often fly into the fray and die while using it. With this update, Resurrect will now take a bit longer to charge, but Mercy will be a lot safer when activating the ability in the middle of combat.

So originally despite not having a cast time it would stop Mercy’s movement for less than a second and that was problematic. She was still dying so they did this change next;

September 1, 2016

Hero Balance Update

  • Caduceus Staff
    • Healing Beam
    • Healing-per-second has been increased by 20%
  • Resurrect
    • Resurrected allies will be able to maneuver after 2.25 seconds (reduced from 3 seconds)

Developer Comments

Resurrection now allows teammates to jump back into the fight more quickly, which should help Mercy survive after activating her ultimate. Mercy’s healing is also getting a boost to solidify her role as a strong, single-target healer.

Mind you this was a time when Resurrect was INSTANT and the amount of damage in the game was no where near as high as it is now.

Even so, Mercy’s were still dying although I think it was fine, if you wanted to get a big rez there had to be some risk, but the developers felt that apparently Mercy should be able to bring everyone back and not suffer the consequences of resurrecting in front of the entire enemy team.

Thankfully, they seem to have realized the problem with this but theyve made current resurrect have the exact same problems as before by nerfing it even harder even though the behaviours they disliked about the ultimate still exist and are forced upon Mercy.

The last change was the most controversial and has led to the most problems because it created an uncounterable ultimate:

February 28th, 2017

Hero Updates

  • Resurrect
    • While performing a resurrection, Mercy now becomes temporarily invulnerable along with the allies being revived

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.

It was only OP because of the Resurrect refreshes and charges that Valkyrie gave.

Had they removed that altogether and just made it so Resurrect was always a static 30 seconds as it is now, it would have been fine. They never tried it though and its probably not going to happen.

Best thing to do is either remove Resurrect altogether since it can’t be balanced as an ability without destroying the other element of mercy that is defining (her mobility) and reintroducing the same problems of the past that led to many buffs.

Resurrect does not need a refresh, it already goes unused in the only time it can really change a fight and thats right in the middle of one.

Doing so and you’ll likely end up dead, have the person you rezzed end up dead again, have the person you rezzed and yourself die (which comicallly leads to a potg triple kill a lot) or both of you plus someone else that died while you were resurrecting.

It needs to go, its not iconic to Mercy anymore. Its an ability that is used less than most ultimates including Mercy’s over the course of a game.

The same argument that was made about Reaper’s Shadowstep can be said about Resurrect.

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While I do see your point, it’s more of Rez in Valk, when it was instant and lowered CD was shown to be fairly broken.

We have yet to try this though. Rez right now is seen as both enhanced and not enhanced by Mercy players. Some say it is with the lower movement penalty, while other don’t consider it (example, Niandra doesn’t consider Rez as enhanced while in Valk).

If improvements need to be made then let them-however I would just like to see how this change would affect on how Valk is used then. Getting an extra Rez through either a cancelled rez, or an ally being taken down as you perform it could help bring a bit more “impact and power” to Valk that it’s currently lacking.

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Or just remove chain beams and let Mercy use some target selection.

Increase her skill cap for once.

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I don’t even think it was that, it was primarily the way resurrect interacted with Valkyrie that made it overpowered. They went straight from introducing a cast time outside of valk and keep valk with 2 charges when I think they shouldve tested having instant resurrect at a 30 second cooldown that is static.

Problem is I’m sure it wont be tested because people will just call it op, but when the devs first reworked her and Kaplan talked in the dev update, he said that it has a long coooldown of 30 seconds specifically so that she wont be resurrecting people often, and while that wasnt true because of how it interacted with Valkyrie, it could be tried.

I think the best buffs Mercy could get that dont affect her balance at all but rather make her better in the hands of experienced players is the ability to cancel Resurrect and Valkyrie (which i think should be extended to all heroes with a transformation or channeled ultimate).

I understand that, but it goes against the wishes of the developers to keep Resurrect seperately from Valkyrie. Although like the changes to Mercy pre-rework that mindset may have changed seeing as how they went completely backwards on Mercy survivng resurrect and buffing it even when it was instant and aoe.

I just don’t think its what she needs.

If you’re interested in a more detailed read, I made a post a while back that for the most part is still relevant to my current opinions except that I would probably remove chain beams in valkyrie

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/yet-another-mercy-thread/355676

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Ah yes, remove more from a glorified ability that does almost nothing in a team fight

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Yes, lets remove what covers for skill and give something skillful instead.

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or you can make the main beam do more healing and damage boost so that we buff her instead of absolutely kill her off :slight_smile:

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Oh geez you’re a genius, who would have thought that removing chains beams would be a way to buff the main beam.

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I meant keep the chain beam and make the main beam stronger , thanks for calling me smart :slight_smile:

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You’re not smart if you think chains beams are fine.

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well that’s a little rude now isn’t it , I could say the same to you. chain beans are the only thing that make Valkyrie good other than that it’s a glorified spectator camera with no impact on the fight whatsoever. it’s supposed to be offensive and unifying. making the beams chain is what gives it the offensive power it needs

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You set the tone of this conversation with your amazing sarcasm.

Chain beams are the biggest part of what makes Valkyrie a glorified spectator mode.

The entire point of getting rid of such horrible skill-covering bullcrap powers is to inject impact back into the players hands through skilful powers.

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