Mercy is in a bad position, and here's why! #ReworkMercy #MercyIsWeakestHealer

[FFirebrandd-1844]

You sure you want to go down this route? Cause oh boy can I go down this route.

@FFirebrandd-1844

Hello everyone. I thought I would share with you all the reasons why I think Mercy needs another rework. I’ve broken this down into what’s wrong with each part of her kit. You’ll notice her blaster and GA aren’t on here. They’re fine. They need zero changes.

Her healing.

The problem with this is threefold.

Firstly, like all main healers Mercy cannot use both her primary healing and primary damage at the same time. However, both other main healers have short cast time, decent duration CD abilities that allow them to kind of do more than one thing at a time. Mercy doesn’t. If she’s healing, she’s only healing and nothing else.

Secondly, Mercy is the only healer in the entire game who does not have a consistent way to either significantly increase her healing output or provide a teammate with a burst of sustain. Moira has her Orb and Ult. Ana has her bio nade and ult. Zen has his ult. Brigitte has armor pack and rally. Lucio has amp and ult. Mercy has to rely on Resurrect or face tanking damage so regen starts but neither of those methods are consistent in the slightest.

Thirdly, despite the previous two points, Mercy’s base healing per second is ridiculously low. Like seriously… It’s only 20 higher than Zen’s, Lucio can hit E to (nearly) match it, Moira can kick out triple Mercy’s healing in an AoE, Ana can nearly put out twice as much and has 2 burst heals as well. It’s… bad. It’s real bad.

Her damage boost.

It has the same problem as her healing’s first problem. If she’s boosting, she’s not doing anything else. Beyond that… 30% damage boost is trash and has been pretty much forever. Almost no heroes can hit the DPS needed for it to just be more raw damage than her blaster. There are very few guns in the game where 30% more damage actually lets them hit important breakpoints. Why? Because most damage values where 30% more would help against a 200 hp target can one shot with a headshot or two shot body shot Tracer. The devs don’t want to invalidate her… so damage boost is stuck being terrible on most of the cast. It is useful on some burst damage abilities and is somewhat useful for helping a teammate get their ult faster… but… it’s still not useful enough. Side note, I realize that Ashe is coming out and damage boost is great with just about everything she does. It being good with one or two heroes doesn’t make it a good ability.

Resurrect.

This is her most powerful ability. It’s on E. She’s the only hero in the game where her most powerful ability is not on Q, which is the designated Ultimate Spot. That’s a problem.

The other problem is the cast time and slow. In case you couldn’t tell… Mercy is supposed to be very mobile and very consistent all the time. That’s why she has GA. That’s why she doesn’t need to aim her healing. Using Resurrect brings the rest of her kit, the rest of what she’s supposed to be good at to a screeching halt. That’s a problem.

Valkyrie.

Mercy’s kit is not very mechanically challenging. For some reason they decided that they needed to take Mercy’s easy kit and give her an ultimate that makes it even easier. What? Now that makes a certain amount of sense on a DPS. Soldier’s ult makes it easier to use his kit. Difference here is that even good Soldiers get on average 50% of what they could out of his kit… so tac visor represents a 2x power increase. Not so for Valkyrie.

Valkyrie gives AoE healing. There’s a problem with this too. AoE damage works because oh hey, you get 3 targets in the AoE? Congrats, you got 3x the damage. Even if you get all 5 teammates in Valkyrie’s chain healing… how much are you actually healing? You can’t heal uninjured targets. If only one guy is taking damage, Valkyrie isn’t helping.

Valkyrie is a wild departure from old Mercy’s play style. When Mercy is in Valkyrie mode, one of the most impactful things that I’ve found to use in for is… kinda pretend that she’s a tank. Hang out in enemies’ sight lines, get them to waste their time, bullets, and sometimes ults trying to shoot you down and use Valkyrie’s mobility and regen to not die. That’s… weird to say the least. Most healers want as little enemy attention as possible. That went double for old Mercy. New Mercy though? Not so much.

Lastly… it is a game designer’s job to make the most fun way to play the game also the most effective way to play the game. Valkyrie is an absolute failure in this regard. The most fun way to use Valkyrie is definitely to pull your blaster and throw hot plasma at fool’s heads. However… the most effective way to use Valkyrie is probably either chain heals or chain boost and hold space so you are much less likely to get your “ultimate” interrupted… but that’s boring. Seriously… that’s boring, but arguably the most effective way to use Valkyrie. That’s a problem.

Conclusion:

Honestly Mercy’s first rework has turned into an absolute mess. No amount of numbers changes is going to fix this. The problems are way to widespread and deeply rooted into Mercy’s current kit to just be ironed out. She needs another rework.

@FFirebrandd-1844

There’s a whole lot of things going on with Valkyrie that make it bad and uninteresting to use. Let’s go through them shall we?

1. Valkyrie is 15 seconds long.

That makes it tied for longest ultimate in the game. An ultimate that is that long cannot be particularly strong, otherwise it would be ridiculously overpowered. Picture a 15s long Tac Visor or a 15s Dragonblade, yeah that’d be broken.

So if a long ultimate cannot rely on its raw power to be interesting or fun… what can it do? Well it has to rely on what’s known as a “Difference of Kind”. The best example of this I can give is Nidalee’s ultimate from League of Legends. Her ult actually has infinite duration. How is it balanced and interesting? It literally swaps out her entire kit. In human form she is a Poke based Mage and in cougar form she is a melee range assasin; her ult allows her to swap between the two… nearly at will. Which form is better? Well… that depends on the situation, raw power wise, in theory they’re balanced. Yeah… Mercy’s ult doesn’t do that. At all. You’re still doing the exact same thing you were doing before.

2. Valkyrie “enhances” Mercy’s current kit.

Now, you can make an ultimate that is an empowered version of your normal kit. Problem is you are hamstringing yourself as far as making it interesting through providing a different experience for your players. You can include some difference in kind as part of the enhancement but it is potentially still a problem.

So… how do you make an “enhance” ultimate fun to use? Short answer, make it short and punchy. There’s actually another example of this to be found in League of Legends. The champion Karma has an enhance ultimate that works. How does it work? You activate your ultimate and then your next spell cast and ONLY your next spell cast is empowered. All of the empowered spells have significant improvements to the abilities primary use (usually over double the power) PLUS they add an extra thing that isn’t in the base ability. In short, Karma’s ult provides a short punch of extreme power with a bit of extra spice thrown in. Again… this isn’t what Valkyrie does in the slightest. Valkyrie pretty much provides zero spike of impact because it just applies her normal heal and boost to everyone.

3. Valkyrie’s primary draw is supposed to be the chain beams which are basically an aura.

This is a problem for 2 reasons. Firstly, auras barely feel better to use than that same ability as a single target ability. Why? Because you rarely can see ALL the effects your aura is having. If you’re lucky you can see… maybe 2 of your targets. Also the AoE nature of it makes how useful it is incredibly variable. “How many people are in range?” “How many of those people actually need this effect right now?”. However… AoE does without a doubt make the thing stronger… so it couldn’t possibly actually have the raw power of the single target version. Add that up and you’ve got Auras generally feeling worse than their single target versions even though they are close to the same strength.

The second problem is that… Mercy’s Auras are healing and damage boost. Trans and Supercharger exist… so that limits how powerful Mercy’s aura’s can be because hers are more flexible… and if the more flexible ult is close enough in power to the non flexible ult… why would you ever use the inflexible ult? You wouldn’t. So Valk’s auras have to be kept weak to not overshadow Trans and Supercharger.

4. Flight and Beam buffs.

So Valkyrie gives both Flight and a range and AoE buffs to Mercy’s beams. This is a problem. Flight is great… it gives Mercy the ability to get wherever she needs to go much quicker than she can in normal form. Range and AoE buffs to Mercy’s beams make it so she doesn’t need to move as much. With a 30 meter range… how likely is it that there’s actually someone out of range? How likely is it that that other guy who needs healing you aren’t currently healing isn’t within your 10m chain range?

Do you see the problem here? Oh hey here’s a cool new mechanic that lets you get wherever you need to go. Oh and also some buffs that make it so you… don’t actually need to go anywhere at all. Yay? Did anyone think this through?

So yeah, those are my reasons for thinking that Valkyrie cannot be made into a fun and impactful ult without rework levels of changes.

tl,dr:
Valkyrie is a long, kit empowering ult which cuts it off from being able to be interesting either via impact spike or feeling different to use.
Valkyrie’s “primary use” is an aura… auras are nearly impossible to make feel impactful.
Valkyrie giving Mercy unrivaled mobility and removing any reason to use it is just mean.

@FFirebrandd-1844

Valkyrie has a different fatal flaw. It’s flaw stems from language.

Language is incredibly important. Like… ridiculously so. I seem to recall an instance where Blizzard implemented an exp penalty for being logged on too long and players complained. They renamed it to bonus rest exp and… everyone liked it. Same mechanic, framed differently, completely different response.

Valkyrie is Mercy’s ultimate. What does the word ultimate mean? Well if we pop over to www.merriam-webster.com, definition 1-c seems to be the most applicable to our situation. It reads “the best or most extreme of its kind”. Does that description fit? Well let’s look at the things it does to try to answer that.

Valkyrie does AoE heals. Is it the best at that? Trying to claim that Valkyrie is better at AoE healing than Transcendence is a very very hard sell.
How about Team Damage boost? Orisa’s super charger does 20% more.
Flight? It is debatable whether Valkyrie’s flight and Pharah’s flight is better.
Diving people? Dragon blade and Pulse bomb are better at that. Even DVa flying in with all guns blazing is probably better.
Getting back to point to contest? The entirety of Hammond’s base kit works way better for that.

Valkyrie is not “the best or most extreme of its kind”. It just isn’t. Players expect it to be though… because the game is calling it an ultimate. It also cannot be buffed to be ultimate in one of its current use cases because that would invalidate a different ultimate in the game.