As a player, I gravitate towards simple heroes. I don’t like too much movement. I don’t like too much aim. I like simple strategies and always look for the easiest way to accomplish something. My favorite support hero is Moira, and the new Brigitte.
But one support I could never play is Mercy. She’s simply too hard.
The sheer number of decisions and the mechanically challenging movement are too much for me. At all times, Mercy needs to:
Choose a single target
Choose between heal/damage
Always look 360 to find teammates she can fly to
Fly in such a way that she doesn’t get killed on arrival
Decide whether she can rez safely, if there’s cover etc
Constantly bounce between teammates all over the map
Disorienting vertical movement all the time
It’s too much. Compare this to Moira, who just needs to sit back and spray her team, throw orbs, and fade away when under threat. Or the new Brig - just sit in the backline and defend against flankers/divers, throw armor packs to the frontline, and swing for the fences when the going gets tough.
For years now, I’ve heard “Mercy is easy”. Compared to the other supports, she is HARD! Look at my profile. I have more time on any other support compared to Mercy. Her skill cap is absurdly high.
I don’t think she is hard, but people underestimate how much gamesense you need in order to play her optimally.
She is the hardest of the easiest Supports, no doubt harder than Brig or Moira. But she isn’t harder than Ana, Bap or Zen, because they require serious mechanics.
(Just an observation: you said you like simple heroes, but have Sombra’s avatar. She’s anything but simple lol. Very difficult to get value out of).
I pick Sombra only to counterpick specific heroes like DF, Hammond, Lucio etc. In those situations, I play her very simply. Just stay invisible at the back of my team, wait for them to dive, hack, and profit. At that point, I’m not playing Sombra “optimally”. I’m just using her to negate the impact of a star player on the other team! So a fair trade I feel.
So yes, perfect Sombra play requires high skill, team coordination etc. But my ambitions are more moderate
My friend for example finds playing Widowmaker a thousand times easier than Genji. On the other hand, I can sometimes do very well as Genji against people of my own rank, but I’m totally useless as Widow.
My friend is a great Widow.
This doesn’t mean one is objectively easier than the other. Both are hard, but for some reason, Widow’s “hard-ness” is less hard to my friend; Genji’s “hard-ness” is less hard to me.
I’d say she is in fact easy, but that is dependent on how your team and the enemy team play.
Mechanically she’s quite easy. No real need to really practice your aim, especially with the size of her projectiles.
However, you’ll find her hard if your team absolutely eats damage, or doesn’t space out. That’s more an issue of playing a hero not fit for the situation, and you’re unnecessarily handicapping yourself. It can be done, but would be more efficient with another hero.
I think, at least personally, the hardest part of mercy isn’t staying evasive or knowing when to rez, but when to get out of dodge. The 50hps sometimes isn’t enough to save someone, so you need to learn when to accept the person you’re healing won’t make it, and find a way out. Similarly, learning when damage boost will keep someone alive over healing can be weird, but I think you pick that info up the more you play her.
I feel like you start to notice how hard she is to play as you climb. Back when I first started playing Overwatch she was so easy to me when I was in Plat. Suddenly, once I got to Masters/GM it was always so tense to play her.
It’s her weapon switch, I’d rather just press a ‘key’ for healing ability and a the same for buff, instead of having to switch between weapons/gun/staff.
And they aren’t exactly wrong there in saying she is easy. Heroes with mobility who want to avoid being near enemies are generally easier. Moira and Mercy are good examples.
I’d have to say that mechanically mercy is a mixed bag.
She doesn’t require much of that intensive fps aiming skill, cooldown usage or any of that, what mercy requires is finesse in execution. A very minor mistake like not canceling GA when flying to heal target often means death. Not performing superjump when it’s required means death by enemy genji blade. Extending GA with bunny hop when it’s not required means your GA goes on a longer cd and can mean death when escaping something chasing you. Doing a falling ress on someone while one pixel of your head pokes out means death against any competent widowmaker.
You don’t have much to show off with and very little abilities and hps to work with, so every move you make, every decision you do has to be perfected to gain the most value. A microsecond of wrong prioritisation healing can mean someone dies instead of survive. A microsecond of proper timed damageboosting can mean your teammate gets the kill instead of enemy player surviving.
Mercy requires finesse in everything she does, since there’s not a whole lot amazing things she can do with her kit. But all the small things add up, like bodyblocking for Dding’s pharah in OWL finals. It is just hard to perfect all the small things mercy can do, there is no aim skills to gauge your successes like dinking 6 people’s heads with widowmaker in a row. But it means everything if you managed to avoid that genji blading you to smithereens by excellent use of guardian angel.
But they are wrong in demanding she be made harder to play because they are having trouble shooting her. I won’t even get into how they bash people who enjoy playing Mercy either.
Mercy is only easy to people who have the game sense to play her. I can heal as Mercy in my sleep, but it wasn’t always this way. She has less deaths now because people are not playing her hard counters in my opinion.
Now, here is where Mercy gets hard. Utilizing Valkyrie and Rez.
Valkyrie is considered a terrible ability by most. I hated it when it came out. Felt like I was just spectating my team. But since I get it very quickly, I figured out how to make it somewhat useful other than escaping an ult. I use it to counter Pharah’s, Widow’s, and any other character who is on high ground. I have killed McCree’s trying to get the last of their ult charge. All while keeping my team alive.
How do I keep my team alive? Rez. I make sure the majority of my teammates are well healed before I take out whatever threat I need to and now that I have a second healer this isn’t as challenging anymore. However, if anyone dies during the team fight while I was preventing a flanker from ulting, I make sure I have rez.
Also, a huge thing about Mercy is prioritizing. If your DPS has an ult, keep him alive and let him ult. Chances are he will kill at least half the team. Rez is there for anyone who dies. If no DPS has an Ult, I like to prioritize my tanks. And if you ever see your second support with critical health, always heal them no matter what so your job is easier.
Also, power boost should always be used if your teammates are topped up. Always.
This strategy is the best way to utilize her. But she’s not always good for every game, so I have branched out to learning every other support. All but two I’m able to use competitively.
