Just at a glance over on Omnicmeta this month. Mercy has a very high pick rate that steadily declines going into the higher ranks. Contrary to Ana who has the exact opposite effect.
Personally I feel like that’s balanced relative to the amount of skill it takes to access both of thier respective kits (which isnt to say Aiming should be the end all be all especially in a game like OW).
My question is this; Do you see this trend as a bad thing and do you see it as unbalanced for both of them, and if so why? I say both because I vaguely remember Ana being OP being thrown around here.
Mercy can also shoot confetti and will always be a choice for many people.
Even during the 3rd season it was a bad choice, yet it had a high pick rate (at low rank). It is due to its charismatic popularity of the character, but also by its easy use.
The goodness of the character is seen in his win rate. His win rate is embarrassing. Even at low rank. In practice if you use mercy in most cases you’re derank, at gm you’re throwing.
Ana does not have to be a single choice at high rank, otherwise the show OW is bad (OWL, contenders, world cup, tournaments), all 3 main support must be vital. Any main support that dominates the meta is a bad choice of game management. Main supports are not like dps, main support often directly or indirectly determine the meta of the game.
I ask, through my feedback, that all three are good choices.
Otherwise, today we talk about ana meta, tomorrow of mercy meta, the day after tomorrow moira meta and so on.
To me? It’s not toxic to some of the player base ehh idk probably everyone gets offended easily nowadays… like I’m diamond (Well hopefully when I’m finished with placements) and i would never say I understand how the game should work better than the devs.
me Too but like seriously I feel like if they understand what makes mercy good they will find out shes not that bad still. Damage boost, and res were untouched. So what if you have to run mercy with another healer now…? Is the issue that they arent getting gold healing every game now? I fail to understand.
Why? What will mass res bring to the game? How will it improve it? Currently at most ranks you can still play mercy it just requires your team to play around you. It doesnt even matter if they hid and rez’d, that wasnt a thing the higher you went, but legit, what benifits are they getting from reverting except “it will make her funner”
It would instantly shakeup the meta guarenteed, along with neglecting 900 other heroes in the game. Mercy needs to be backseated for a while… and thats ok
I’d argue that all the main healers dont HAVE to be vital. It’s more the compositions that are popular rather than the hero unless the hero is just stupidly strong like Mercy was in the past.
The meta is defined but what’s strong at the time and synergizes well. Ana can be run in goats which is very popular at the moment but it’s more likely you’ll see Brig, Lucio and Moira but on occassion Zen makes an appearance for more damage.
Zen is a great example of this balanced state. Hes in a position where comps around him arent strong but know one is against one and hes regarded as fine. Mercy is the same in my opinion. Also consider indirect buffs/nerfs. Pharah getting a buff is a direct buff to Mercy and vice versa because of thier nature synergy. Same for Hanzo and Widow.
True balance where every hero has a 50% winrate isnt obtainable but getting as close as possible is what should be done to make the game healthy. If that means a few picks are niche that doesnt make them bad and that state could be apart of power levels or simply they arent meta at the time. Which is fine.
According to Overbuff, Ana actually has a much higher overall pickrate than Mercy at the moment. Other than that, I see nothing incorrect/debatable with this statement.
I don’t have a problem with Ana having a higher pickrate than Mercy in high ranks. What I do have a problem with is Ana having a pickrate as high as she does while Mercy/Moira have pickrates as low as they are.
For example, I was fine with how healers were in season 4/5. Mercy had a very high overall pickrate (14%, in some cases), yet she had the lowest pickrate out of all supports in GM, and Jeff himself pointed out that Ana had a higher pickrate than any other hero in the top 3rd of all players.
Mercy was D-tier, and I was fine with that. That was probably due to me being thankful that “Switch to Ana” wasn’t my team’s greeting in every single game like during season 3, but I was content with how Mercy was at the time.
Looking at the current GM pickrates… Ana never forced Mercy into nonviability during seasons 4 and 5 to the level that she is now. Simultaneously, Mercy’s overall pickrate is now below Ana’s. This wasn’t the case even during season 3, when the Tank Meta was being driven by Ana, leaving us with the following explanations:
Ana is insanely Overpowered.
Mercy is insanely underpowered.
More than half of Mercy’s playerbase stopped playing Mercy because the rework killed the enjoyment in playing her.
A combination of the above explanations are the case.
Just re looking at meta shifts for the aforementioned seasons Mercy had an extremely high pick rate outside of every tier besides GM which was still fairly high.
Mercy was more than likely crowding out a lot of the other supports at this time especially at those ranks, where the majority of the population are resting at which was an indication of her rework making her OP. Ana on the other hand has been given light buffs consistantly while Mercy received quite a few nerfs.
I dont think that an of the explanations are true exactly. Think it’s more so that Ana is just better for the utility she brings at the moment in this current meta.
Mercy didn’t get reworked until season 6. Seasons 4/5 was post-invulnerability buff, which Mercy received to bring her into viability.
And no, Mercy was not overpowered during that time period. She had a higher overall pickrate than Ana, but if she really were oppressive, the high-tier players would have been playing the hell out of her.
They played Ana instead.
Let’s take a look at the pickrates of main healers in GM.
Ana: 14.87% this week.
Mercy: 1.18% this week.
Moira: 1.33% this week.
Want to know the last time we had a main healer dominating high-tiers by this margin?
The Mercy meta.
At least one of these two explanations must be the case:
And, looking at Mercy’s overall pickrates in both Quickplay and Competitive, it’s pretty obvious that this explanation is also the case:
Going off those numbers your giving doesnt that imply Moira is potentially “insanely underpowered”? Also I’m failing to see what exactly is OP about Ana at the moment.
I dont want to go to deep into the latter statement about enjoyment because ultimately that’s subjective.
Correct, although she wasn’t directly relevant so I didn’t mention her.
Incremental buffs to make a comparatively-underpowered hero match an overpowered hero tend to make said comparatively-underpowered hero gravitate to being actually overpowered when the previously-overpowered hero is finally reduced below must-pick status.
Subjective maybe, but there’s quite a bit of reason partnered with statistics to back it up. The pickrate of the most popular hero in the game doesn’t just drop to less than half of what it was without cause.