Mercy is too team dependent

General Discussion
1

Mercy is a fairly passive hero, aside from maybe taking out a widowmaker, a lot of her kit is reactionary and dependent on her team. The biggest thing to do as mercy is stay alive and pump out massive heals/damage boost and rez when you can. It can have a lot of impact, but because her raw healing power has been really cut from the DPS passive, I feel it relies on damage boost and rezzes which can be hard because it takes so long to heal, no time for damage boost, and rez is on a long cooldown that can be cancelled and get you killed.

Comparing her to someone like lifeweaver, which I think is her most similar counterpart, maybe Moira too, they can make plays a bit more indecently and have a lot more safety when making their own plays (higher hp, mobility, and self-healing not reliant on healing their team). LW’s abilities is also more active, rather than reactive, to set up plays and get the timing right.

I considered what could maybe help mercy be more of a decision maker is instead of rezzing dead allies, she places like a ‘protection buff’ on one team mate that lets them revive with half hp on death. It’s safer and she doesn’t need her team to die in order to get value.

Another could be making her ultimate more active, instead of a massive chain healbot. You could swap her ult for her e and make her ult a team wide revive on death buff which lasts a few seconds.

I’m not sure changing her healing values will help as it can easily push her into being too strong so I think focusing on her e and ult and allowing mercy players to make choices instead of reacting to what has happened and trying to undo it.

TLDR; Make mercy more independent on her E and/or ult. Idea 1: Replace her E with a ‘revive on death buff’ which she casts and lasts a few seconds and when an ally dies they revive with half hp. Idea 2: make her ult her e and make her ult into a ‘revive on death buff’ for all allies that lasts a few seconds, and again, they revive with half hp.

2 Likes
2

Mercy’s E actually used to be her ult (it was an AoE revive), and it encouraged a much more active playstyle.

It tied Mercy’s playmaking potential to her ultimate (in a fun way): the really good Mercy players healed/boosted their entire team in order to quickly farm ult charge for tempo rezzes, while pocketing was considered throwing (due to it being the slowest way to accumulate ult charge).

5 Likes
3

It encouraged the least active playstyle and got it removed. Once the Mercy had ult they would go hide in a corner till the rest of their team died to try and get a 5 man rez off.

4

A team-dependent hero in a team game where the devs balance purely around team play? I am outraged!

1 Like
5

Geez, not this again.

“Hide n Rez” was a throw strat, you literally had to throw fights in order to do it. Only trolls used it…

Hide-n-Rez is right up there with cliffside Symmetra teleporters and Mei abusing her wall to trap teammates in spawn when it comes to how “helpful” it was.

11 Likes
6

just keep telling yourself that, one day it’ll make it true.

pretty much this, it was also a way to rank up easily due to how that worked at the time. it was never a winning tactic.

9 Likes
7

Nah give Mercy an assault rifle. Battle Angel.

2 Likes
8

Mercy’s “thing” is that she relies on her team, and no, the new dps passive does not invalidate mercy for heaven’s sakes. The dps passive is only really prominent for flankers, front line dps heroes still need healing.

9

Both styles are bad, rez is just bad design. 20 characters.

1 Like
10

:-1:

Since the ability to “thumbs down” posts have been removed, I’m doing it manually for McMercee’s post directly above me.

1 Like
11

And I would be so happy with Season1 Mobility, like make the character enjoyable to play, and leave everything else just as is; but this changes are super OP xD

Mass Res was extremely broken

But adding another form of invulnerability at low risk in exchange… that’s hard

I don’t think Mercy will get anything new in the upcoming months, and specially with having Space Ranger around ther corner

Devs need to tune her kit first with live servers data, before doing anything with Mercy; wich is trash, yes. Bue we can’t have, potentially, 4 flyers in every game

This has already started with the Pharah rework

She can’t hover on rooftops without limits anymore.
And Mercy limits are based on present allies at a certain range.

With that alone Devs have already set the way for Space Ranger as a new high mobility Support

Once we see her on Season 12, we’ll know what buffs can Mercy receive

And I don’t think the 3 day trial from pre launch will do.
This one is going to take tons of collected data; like a lot more than just 72hs of everyone insta picking Ranger, Echo, Pharah, Mercy

So I wouldn’t expect anything new coming for Mercy until S13

Or maybe the desired gameplay from Space Ranger, has enough room for a mid season patch that can help Mercy stop being a throw pick

1 Like
12

Hide n Rez was a viable tactic in pug ladder because no one was coordinated enough to time their ults or consider Mercy in the equation.

In competitive, it’s still broken simply because Rez had no downsides to it at ALL and even gave her invulnerability.

13

That’s exactly the point of the hero.

These are good ideas for new heroes.

I think Mercy is iconic as she is now, and people play her because of her current identity.

14

Mercy is fine you are just bad

15

Almost like you have an ult worth farming it will incentivise you to farm it fast by healing everything and everyone but no lets nerf her mobility. Thatll certainly prevent her from sticking to 1 person all game

2 Likes
16

I wish they would just remove rez and release mercy from sombra jail.

17

It was but I think it should have remained an ultimate. I’d love for them to rework her in this way where rez is an ult and then focus on her mobility and another ability that can be used more frequently. I think it would even be cool to have valk as her new E and give her free movement and a quasi AoE heal/dmg boost on a shorter cooldown.

18

The problem with it, is not the ability alone, or in itself, but the gameplay it creates from it

Back when Mercy had Mass Res, she was just hiding the entire match; and that’s terrible for Any character

Because the impact from Mass Res was so huge, that there was no way of thinking Mercy as we see her today; flying from one place to another

Why would you risk of losing such ability?

The exact same problem happend when the Beta from Overwatch 2 tested the 75% damage reduction orb for Moira

… players just wouldn’t use it

They would keep the ability for disabling incoming threats.
Because with those single 4 second application, you could literally stand in middle of any Ultimate from the enemy, and survive

Reaper, Pharah, Soldier, Cassidy

Players were even able to survive a D.Va bomb xD

So not only the players started to safeguard the ability for critical moments, but Devs started to see a lot more Moiras in every comp, along with much more devensive behaviour for the engagement towards the match itself

19

I think more along the lines of a single target rez as an ultimate. How would that work? For starters it would probably have to be instant. From there idk where it could go right or wrong lol.

20

Mercy has nothing she’s good at, she has no niche.

Even her pocketing ability is only ever useful if ur dps is already diffing the enemy team, she just majes them diff more.

  • She has bad healing.
  • She has bad survivability for a support who’s mobility is their only real option of survivability
  • She has an absolutely useless ultimate, it does literally nothing.
  • Her ult costs too much for how little it does, especially with the dps passive
  • Resurrect is so situational it gets used less than ultimates atp.

She has nothing, thatakes her the best choice for any scenario.

1 Like