Mercy is Balanced but Boring!

General Discussion
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EDIT: my wording seems to be the thing to upset most people here, Also while I respect everyone’s opinions let’s keep it constructive and not rude to one another. These were just suggestions I was thinking of could be used in SOME capacity.

“original post”Current Mercy is balanced, and since 2-2-2 entered the game I think she does pretty well, but even 2 years after her rework something is missing. Her ultimate is still bland and sometimes it’s easy to feel like all you’re there to do is resurrect every half-minute.

She does not need a rework, but some changes to make her less one-dimensional/stake

For the record I LOVE Mercy but the point of this post is I feel she leave something to be desired

My ideas are:

  1. Reduce Damage Boost from 30% buff to 25% buff

  2. New Ability: Doctor’s Order

  • Bound by default to the “reload” button when Mercy has her staff out
    -Not usable if pistol is out
  • Has a 15 second cooldown
  • When healing or damage boosting an ally, Mercy can use this ability to “transfer” her staff’s ability (damage boost or healing, whichever is selected at the time of activation) to allow for an ally to receive a 5 second buff (5 seconds of 50hp/s or 5 seconds of 25% damage buff)
  • This would allow mercy to capitalize on her best trait, mobility, and leave an ally to go rescue or boost another
  • The 5 second buff would not stack with Mercy’s beam if Mercy chose to stay with the ally she used it in (I.e. 25% damage buff would NOT stack to 50% nor would 50 hp/s stack to 100hp/s
  • However? Mercy could use the ability to heal an ally with the buff and then damage boost the sane ally or vice versa
  1. Ultimate
  • Extend “Valkyrie” chain healing from 10m to 12.5m
  • Make it so Valkyrie does 50 hp/s BUT ALSO 25% damage boost at the same time
  • New “Doctor’s Order” ability would not be available during her ultimate
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I really enjoy playing Mercy as she is now, and never find it boring to play her

As such, I would be against the changes suggested here

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I respect that. She’s not always boring, but something has always felt a bit off in my opinion.

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The fun for playing Mercy with me comes from using GA to different allies. Popping Valk to heal several Critical members, pulling off a risky Rez, or going full Battle Angel.

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While I can understand where you’re coming from I dont think the changes you suggest would work out too well in both a balance and fun aspect I feel like it might backfire massively

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Changing a hero based purely on your subjective feeling of “fun” isn’t a good idea.
What about everyone who enjoys current Mercy?

Also these suggestions are a overall BUFF.
QOL would be changes that dont impact the balance of a hero.
Adding 25% boost to valk by default and extending the chain is a buff regardless of the 5% nerf to boost. On top of that you want to add a what seems like a very strong ability on top of her already powerful kit.

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That’s a personal issue. For me, I find her to be far and away the most fun hero in the game. Definitely not a good justification for changes.

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I mean you are right… Changing a hero because of feelings is not a good idea…
Mercy’s rework is after all the best example of that, cutting her player base in half, dividing the entire community, resulting in something which is just plain bad design in the center of generally good design and so on.

But i have to say… everyone which likes Mercy now would like her even more if certain things are changed/removed from her.
Like throw Val out (and replace it with any burst based Ult) and you already increase the focus on everything players like about her massively as well as reasonably increasing her skill ceiling. (one of the biggest issues she has… her skill floor is higher than her ceiling)

But yeah… the suggestion in the OP is… not really good since it brings her close to the too much power while being too easy mark again.

15 Likes
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Sigh, Mercy was not reworked due to feelings (I knew someone would say it)
They made it very clear they wanted to get rid of a certain play style that developed (regardless of how efficient/inefficient it was). They could of done it other ways, but they decided to get rid of the root cause of the problem.

They did it badly though, while being too stubborn to scrap whats been tying her down every since the Rework.

They need to either put Res back on ultimate (ONE RES ONLY, no multi-res) or scrap it all together.

What about players who actually LIKE valk? shocking I know.

1 Like
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You’ve just figured out why Mercy mains fought so hard against her rework back in 2017.

The foundation of Mercy 2.0 - Valkyrie and Rez as a single-target cooldown ability - are fundementally flawed, bland abilities. No amount of buffs or nerfs will be able to make them more interesting to play with.

Classic Mercy’s appeal used to come from being an homage to RTS games, where every choice you make has a lot of nuance, and every action has a ton of branching possible outcomes.

But then the 2.0 rework came along, drastically oversimplified Mercy’s gameplay and then watered down what was left even further.

E-rez is as simple as “if you have Rez and can use it without getting killed, do it”

Valkyrie is pretty much Mercy’s base kit on easy mode for 15 seconds, or if you want to be really generous it can be called a horrifically overhyped movement ability.

I really, really miss Rez as an ultimate…

Mercy’s old ult challenged her gamesense and strategy skills with a wide range of possible outcomes, from “game saving” to "backfired so horribly that it actually sabotaged Mercy’s own team"… And all of these outcomes was mainly determined by the strategical prowess of the Mercy player themselves.

The 2017 rework removed the lychpin of Mercy’s chess-like playstyle, and it hasn’t gotten a comparable replacement ever since.

If you want Mercy to be less boring, you’ll have to start with removing rez from Mercy’s E ability. Either move it back to Mercy’s ult or delete it, but E-rez takes up so much of Mercy’s power budget that she can’t even have main-healer levels of healing anymore.

E Rez has to go, so Mercy can have nice things.

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My biggest issue with Mercy is how one dimensional her playstyle is.

She can attack, heal, OR provide utility. Every other support can do two or more simultaneously.

Every time I play Mercy, I feel like I’m not contributing enough to my team. I keep seeing opportunities where I could contribute, but I can’t because she can only do one at a time.

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why would you be against them tho? you could just not use the ability and it wouldnt much change how she plays at all

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As long as mercy has rez she will never be balanced, rez type abilities are just broken no matter the game

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If you think she’s boring now, you always thought she was boring. The only difference mechanically is that she’s no longer praised for pressing q.

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He claims to play Mercy for the sake of always going into Mercy threads to repeat the same overused meme as if it still has any semblance of importance.

It’s almost as if our fun is just as important as everyone else’s fun but according to him, and a bunch of other people, that isn’t the case.

They fail to realise that if we were to follow this ridiculous line of reasoning, no change would likely ever happen.

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anyone who says they like mercy more now is lying or didnt play much of old mercy. back when she had mass rez you had to keep the whole team up all while getting chased down by the entire enemy team. If you saw the fight was losing you would want to keep everyone at the same health level where they would die roughly at the same time so you could get off bigger rezes.
Her game play is basically the same now except the enemies ignore you a lot more than they used to, youre less impactful overall, you can stand still for 2 years while you hide and rez someone, and then ult and just float around lol.

Rez is a boring E ability and impossible to balance and still be fun (that ridiculous yet necessary cast time is such a snooze fest) and her ult is sooo boring you just sit there. Most people say they like mercy’s mobility and bouncing from teammate to teammate. valk just removes that and lacks all the oomph of mass rez.
Its so sad :frowning:

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I firmly believe that Rez can be balanced… But only as an ultimate. And only if it has an acceptable amount of counterplay so it doesn’t feel cheap to play against.

It would actually go a long way to making Mercy fun and able to Have Nice Things while still being balanced: a reliable, versatile kit demands a risky, situational ult to balance it out.

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What are you on about? She was given a whole new moment, her best ability was put on a CD with a dozen restrictions and her healing output was nerfed.

People who claim that Mercy hasn’t changed that much since her rework need to really play her before saying anything. :roll_eyes:

And it’s funny you highlighted “mechanical skill” when focusing on that has no significance… what’s so ever…

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pressing Q was fun, and being hunted down by the enemy team made playing her way more difficult bc you had to keep your team up while avoiding all that. Now she’s basically ignored bc of her nonimpactful ult and pitiful base healing. Only time anyone calls to focus mercy is to keep her from rezzing or when the other healer is already dead lol (or if shes just out of position and is an easy pick but that doesnt really count)

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Mercy isn’t balanced. She’s the worst support in the game right now especially since the TTK of the game has increased considerably. She lacks at least 10hps worth of value in her kit to be even considered good. The devs are keeping her in bottom tier intentionally though because they think that considering lower tiers with her balancing is a good idea (spoilers: it’s not)

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