Mercy is a Juggler, not a Pocket Healer

General Discussion
21

I’m going to bring up a point I’ve learnt during the very first Megathread from old forums.

Damage Boost was actually more common at higher ELO’s than at Low and Mid Tier, there was a reason for this and this is due to Damage Taken and Playstyle from TEAM MATES

What makes Damage Biost of Value is your team mates ability to land shots and to finish a fight before they run out of HP.

If they deal damage and miss a lot and take more damage in their 1 on 1 fight, then you should be healing than boosting.

The reason Mercy’s play ‘Defensively’ at pre-2.0 Mercy was because at the higher ELO, DPS had sharper aim and better sense at what to do and who to kill. So Mercy played more reserve, healing more safely at a distance and doing her best to stay alive and boost from time to time as shown by the state

Mid Tier and Lower, so the majority of the playerbase in Siler, Gold and Platinum, Battle Mercy were more common. You have to ask the question WHY?

The truth of the matter is that DPS sucks, back in Open Queue, you could be on a team with a DPS that performs worse than you. So if they can’t finish a fight by themselves, Pistol Whipping was the only choice, so the Aggressive Mercy who went about Pistol Whipping were those who would play Battle Mercy.

With 50 HPS and NO MASS REVIVE, you cannot afford to do this. 50 HPS is barely able to keep up with anything, most of the time you can’t let up on healing and usually half way through the fight, you are preping your strategy on how to escape that fight alive once your team mates dies.

One benefit to Valkyrie is that Damage Boost has a bigger value their. As long as your team mates are at 75~100% HP, just swap to Damage Boost, they will start dealing damage and picks will start to happen because you’re not boosting one person but a group. That single DPS that can’t land most of their shots will now chip off HP with allies chiming in to deliver a finishing blow.

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22

She is a solo target support

Not a healer. I hard disagree with the notion that pocketing a hero as needed is bad

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23

agree with alot of what you say BUT if mercy is only healing she is wasted just like if lucio is only healing and not speedboosting or ana is only using nades for her self. If dps is not performing it doesn’t matter that you heal them for trash damage, you might as well whip your pistol out, both will probably make you lose though but that’s just the inconsistency of lower elos.

mainly you should just switch off mercy if her kit i not getting value and use a healer who can shoot and heal at the same time like lucio or zen. just like rein has no value if nobody is behind his shield and he can’t close the distance. or widowmaker should switch of if she is not getting picks because her overall damage is so low and she has no utility to help others on the team accomplish what they are trying to do.

24

I get that yall want a Juggle healer, but tbh I think the main issue is Role Lock 222. Hectic fights arent what they used to be. You aren’t flying from squishy to squishy, saving their lives anymore. There is no constant danger, its just teamfight wars. Mercys playstyle has changed due to the format changing, not Mercy herself.
Yall arent ever going to be satisfied because you think its Mercy being bad that makes her not a juggler, when in reality its 222 Role Lock.

25

Moira, Ana, and Brig have been added so Mercy doesn’t have to do all the healing.

26

She can do both.

Shocker, I know

27

I agree, and I rarely play mercy. But I love the idea of how you describe her.
Maybe make her Healing beam start at 60 hp/s at the beginning, and over the cause of 3 seconds decrease it down to 50 hp/s or any other time/amount for balance sake. Doesn’t proc with switching dmg/heal beam, only when switching heal targets or only start at 60 hp/s after guardian angel - give some bonus for bouncing.

Addendum / second idea: Make hear healing when standing 50 hp/s, when walking on normal speed 55 hp/s, and push it higher to 60 hp/s when moving faster than standard (like lucio speedboost or guardian angel)

28

She’s both. She should focus on the low max health targets of her team (healers & DPS) because she can pump out consistent unblockable heals that top off 200hp heroes quickly, while the other healer should ideally focus on the tanks. That’s how I play her anyways. Don’t get me wrong I definitely heal my tanks any time they need it, but my focus is damage boosting & topping off squishies

1 Like
29

But the thing is, she is the living definition of what it means to be a Healer to save lives through healing and to prevent death which was why 60HPS was a game changer for Mercy.

Damage Boost, we can give and honestly we can use it, but most of us choose not to. Why? Because Damage Boost does nothing beneficial, every second we’re not healing, is a second a team mate is closer to dying. Damage Boost feeds off of the DPS’s ability to aim and make kills, they miss and don’t kill, then Mercy gets no value.

This happens more often pre 2.0 because the important thing is to end a fight, not prolong it by having the Genji play with his food to try and get that sweet PoTG Dragon Blade.

55 HPS is good in the sense it gives us back that freedom to not pocket, to choose to damage boost and to choose to Pistol whip.

Why is it important to be flexible, because it means we can assist you to finish a fight quicker. If we’re pocketing and you can’t win that 1 on 1, we’re getting out of their the moment you die. It’s not safe to res and the team needs us to heal.

Also we choose to Damage Boost or Pistol whip base on your HP levels, we know at what sort of percent of health you need to be at for us to switch to pistol or dmg boost beam. Since there no point to boosting if you die or we can’t recover you and you die.

Moira, Moira was funny enough, a hero introduce when we pointed out the flaws of Mercy during the first Mega thread. She is even built to feel similar to Mercy when playing so you can transfer skillset to Moira.

What a lot of people forget, is that Moira has to deal damage to recharge resource, she isn’t a raw continious healer and needs to actually deal damage to heal.

What ruins the fun is if she steals your kills or finishes the fight for you and you die because you couldn’t win the fight in the time it took us to heal you and our resource to run dry and because we’re choosing and picking off people we know we can counter, that means we’re doing something more critical for the team than allowing people to live and making picks on our team.

As for Zen and Lucio, you need to check and see who the sub support is. whether the team can manage to lose a healer live Mercy and is it worth swapping to have reduced healing for more damage. If the team can manage with a weaker heal then it would be better to swap.

2 Likes
30

okay you simply want mercy to be something she is not. maybe she was closer to that in the beginning but with the addition of other characters she is made what she is and if you don’t enjoy that playstyle I’m sorry that sucks. but there are other healers that flat out heal better than her so if that’s what you wanna do you need to play them.

besides no matter what how much you heal its the team who kills the most effective that wins that’s why overwatch supports has other key abilities like damage boost and speedboost. its not the healing that makes a healer carry its how much other stuff you can do while not sacrificing other people in the process

31

It’s not bad as far as the health of the game is concerned, no. But it’s also not fun. The whole reason players like myself picked up Mercy in the first place is because it’s fun to zoom between teammates and juggle beams across them all. A pocket play style completely kills that need for mobility and multitasking, resulting in a very boring and much easier hero.

Like, in the past it was considered offensive to say that “Mercy is braindead because all she does is just sit there holding down a button.” Now it’s just accurate.

Is it wrong for players to simply push for their hero to be fun?

3 Likes
32

Mercy launched with 50 hps…and McCree was a near sniper…

I don’t think she was some Moira healer everywhere.

And pocket doesn’t mean you have to stick forever to an ally.

No one is forcing that.

Imo, it’s not bad to have a solo target support because it’s good to see specifically where your team is lacking

33

And both were changed for a reason.

It’s true. You also have to consider the level of heal creep that’s been added to the game with each and every healer addition. There’s a reason why all those considered main healers are from post-launch releases these days. Mercy used to be part of that group, but was kicked out to be a pocketing off healer. Some people just want her to be back up in the group they found her enjoyable in.

True, no one is forcing anything.
That doesn’t change the fact that there isn’t much need to jump around anymore when the other healer can handle the other 4 teammates for you

Again, this isn’t a debate about whether or not it’s bad. It’s about being enjoyable.

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34

I guess imo, i preferred micro manager Lucio, and Zen, and dmg boost micro manager mercy.

Not heal beam mercy

35

But Mercy is the most healery healer that ever healered. She does nothing BUT heal. She’s a pacifist. That’s why we like her. She’s 100% support. And you’re telling her to shut up, sit down, hold blue beam on your DPS and make them a sandwich while they play the game for you.

36

… I can’t decide if this is sarcasm or not so I don’t know how to reply

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37

Thank you “Pockets”.

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38

Oh no, that was totally within my predictions. I work in gaming industry too. Cheap tricks like this tends to be a marketing norm when it comes to balancing competitive heroes.

Sometimes what you do is purposely drop them then when time is right to tweak them up and then boom publicity and people reacting to it!

Totally, but the Damage Dealer needs to finish off their opponent and if pew pew miss and dead then Mercy’s Damage boost goes to waste, she doesnt get Offensive or Defensive stats then SR goes down.

39

ez.
main healer.
devs stated such.

40

Thankyou, people need to get it through their heads that Juggling is what Mercys higher tier gameplay is, not pocket bot slaving for a DPS. You could Juggle when you had 60hps, maybe with 55 idk, too early to tell yet.

Hell if you want Mercy to be the Tracer of the healers, make her have 150hp, Im down for that if they revert to 60hps. Make her easier to kill and whatnot, she has a tiny hitbox like tracer anyway, I dont see the problem, just give me 60hps so I can JUGGLE AGAIN.

Im DOWN FOR CHANGES, IM DOWN, BUT THEY NEVER HAPPEN

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