I still assert that her kit does a terrible job of creating any difference in kind or difference in scale.
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with apologies, I dont understand the following phrase: “difference in kind or difference in scale”
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Those are two of the (I think main) ways game developers can engage their players.
Difference in scale is fairly straightforward. What that means is that something has gotten bigger in some way. There’s more enemies, the enemies get tougher, one of your abilities get stronger etc. An example from Overwatch would be Orisa using her supercharger. Nothing about how you use Orisa changes, but she gets +50% damage.
Difference in kind is less concrete. What that means is that the gameplay has shifted into something that feels different for the player. An obvious Overwatch example would be someone switching heroes. A less obvious one would be a Pharah player pushing Q, because she goes from being able to freely fly anywhere and having lowish DPS to having the highest DPS in the game and completely immobile.
If you are interested in listening to somebody who knows more about game design than I do explain it, here’s a youtube video.
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I, too, think Mercy is viable.
edit; I get the feeling this whole argument about Mercy’s balance is gonna be a meme on the us forums for a month.
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Unfortunately, it has been going on here approaching two years now…
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This discussion seems to come up quite a lot.
Is Mercy fun to play? She certainly is for me.
Is Mercy viable? Depending on how you define the term, the answer is probably yes. She fits well in certain comps, and those comps work in certain occasions.
Is she balanced? Probably not quite yet. At least not in higher ranks on PC. She’s not far from it, but she’s not there yet. You can see this for instance from the very low pick rates compared to other healers in these ranks (diamond and above), and from what the meta is.
Does Mercy heal enough? Probably not. I’ll address this claim below to some extent, though I’m happy to elaborate on it. I also don’t place much stock in the claim that 60 hps Mercy would cause the healer class to be imbalanced and zero stock in the claim that 55 hps would do so. I do think both would be healthy for the game.
Let me preemptively address the common objections to the pick rate claim:
Objection 1: Mercy isn’t meta, and since the meta doesn’t favor her we don’t see her quite as much.
This objection is mostly backwards. The meta doesn’t favor Mercy because Mercy isn’t quite good enough to support a different meta. When Mercy is relatively strong, comps that play to her strengths are strong. When Mercy is relatively weak then so are comps that play to her strengths since they don’t have a good enough support to keep them going.
Right now Blizzard is buffing damge across many heroes in hopes of making the dps class strong enough to take on GOATS. Having a Mercy and Zen as your healers effectively increases the damage of a dps by 62.5%. That’s a MUCH larger buff than any of the ones currently being tested. But it only works when Mercy is able to use damage boost often, and when Mercy is able to keep people alive. Instead of buffing and nerfing the whole cast, it would be simpler to just make Mercy/Zen a viable healer comp.
Currently the Mercy/Zen healing combo is often not enough to keep everyone alive in a comp like that, and it’s certainly not sufficient for Mercy to give damage boost the focus it deserves. It’s also not enough to fend off dps comps’ main predator - Winston. Right now in OWL for instance, if one team goes dps heavy against GOATS, the GOATS team simply switches to Winston. A Mercy who can keep up with Winston’s damage would go a long way towards helping these comps.
Objection 2: High level players pick whatever is best, so we shouldn’t expect diversity at the top. While this is true to a certain extent, it’s not true to the extent it is right now. There have been numerous times in the game’s history where the support roster was much more balanced than it is now, and every single time we’ve seen the imbalances we see right now has resulted in support changes.
Mercy doesn’t need much right now to be the hero she’s supposed to be. She’s close to being balanced and she’s close to being the enabler she’s supposed to be. All she needs is a bit more healing, either directly or indirectly.
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You wouldn’t. She isn’t a triple tank healer, and she absolutely isn’t meant to be played in every single comp like she used to be. Just like how Moira and Ana can’t be run with 5 dps, Mercy can’t be run in triple tank.
From personal experience in my diamind games, it very much so is. Even when solo healing.
Really the only “problem” is that she just got harder to play. You absolutely CAN heal your tanks. It’s not easy but you CAN if you put in the effort to learn how instead of complaining for it to be easier for you.
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I agree with the first statement, however it is undeniable that lower ranks see “dumbed down” versions of the meta in play. But yeah, it doesn’t matter much unless your m/gm
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It probably won’t make the support cast unbalanced, but I don’t think 60hps is what Mercy needs.
Considering all the benefits Mercy’s healing has (consistent, reliable, no aim, no reload, no resource management), on top of that 60hps just felt like too much. 50hps fits her much better and balances it out, and it just feels so much better than 60hps did.
With 60hps, Mercy’s healing benefits were better than the other main healers. With 50hps, the main healers are on a more level ground.
I’d love to hear what you think though!
I don’t think it’s an issue of being harder to play, in an average game, even if I literally only healed my tanks the entire game it wouldn’t be enough to sustain them reliably unless I got some help from other healers in most situations. If you’re putting in all your effort to heal your tanks, you’re not gonna be getting the most value out of mercy’s kit with how it is right now anyway, so the “hard” part comes from figuring out where to get the most value. Is there any value in putting your 50 hps on your tanks who are taking over 100 dps, or should you be damage boosting whoever’s most likely to kill the people doing the damage to your tank? Obviously I CAN heal my tanks, obviously I’ve have had games where I successfully healed my tanks and we won, but that doesn’t mean it’s common or reliable. I just personally think a main healer should be able to heal tanks a little bit better (even if their niche is to support DPS)-- it takes 12 seconds to heal a D.va fully and it takes ana and moira around 4 seconds using their abilities. My play style has completely changed since the healing nerf and I just focus on dps and dmg boosting now so I have put in the effort to learn and adapt. But this is just my opinion, so I’m gonna keep complaining lol.
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There are a few way of judging whether or not 50 hps is balanced or not. One is the healer redistribution and the other is the healer meta that followed the 60 to 50 hps change. In both cases we saw really drastic changes, both in Mercy’s pick rates (and win rates before the Valk buff), and in the viability of the comps that Mercy enables.
The benefits of Mercy’s healing that you mentioned (consistency, ease of use, etc.) are important, but they’re somewhat irrelevant since they don’t mention the actual amount being healed. The benefits would remain if her heal beam was set to 40 hps, 30 hps, or any other number. The only way to tell if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks (namely - low burst, single target nature, and lack of damage) is to see the situation in the actual game.
The same goes for how the healing feels. For me, 60 never felt too much and 50 doesn’t feel better. I think a lot of people share this opinion. I do manage to heal tanks, and I do manage to single heal (my comp account is also mid diamond), but I feel the 50 hps I think that it restricts strategy, comps, and usage of other abilities more than it should.
However, just like case of the advantages of Mercy healing, those feelings don’t matter. What matters is what manifests in the game. For the past 6 months Mercy just hasn’t made a significant meta impact, and the comps she enables haven’t made much traction. You see that from the pick rates. Those comps need a stronger Mercy to be viable. We know that they are when she has 60 hps, and their viability plummeted when it went down to 50.
Having 60 hps would allow Mercy to switch targets more often, and hence be more mobile, to focus more on damage boost, and to keep Winston at bay. Those alone would go a long way towards alleviating the current meta.
I think there’s really good reason to believe that this won’t ruin the other healers. Moira will still heal more. Other healers will still be buffed in relation to where they were when Mercy was meta. Mercy’s pick rate at the time of the nerf was already dropping.
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Mercy is viable and I’m proud to prove that point match after match in competitive 
. Nothing feels better than someone instalocking Ana (after I’ve already picked Mercy) and have them swap off later because they are unable to keep up with my healing or position correctly.
A Mercy who can stay alive and be with her team ever fight is better than a dead Ana at the beginning of every team fight.
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ahem acktually mercy is the hardest hero in the game to play and needs to meta because of that.
honestly no others have a higher output potential but mercy has one of the best utility in game. damage boost is insane and when rez is done right it’s one of the strongest abilities in game
agreed here I’m sure this is what you meant.
other than that I agree mercy is very viable esp with these ptr changes about to come around. boosting junk is crazy even after his lil nerf
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Mass Resurrect is more amazing
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Doesn’t ignore the fact that Valkryie is bad for Mercy and the game as a whole.
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Going to continue as well!
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I love Extra Credits, and they also have around 3 videos about Overwatch that was really interesting.
Viable isn’t the same as universally viable, nor does her healing format differ from half of the healing roster in terms of low aim and endless supply.
She’s fine but out of place
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Uh, no, not really. Baptiste is better and has a more well-rounded kit, I anticipate Zen or Ana to pair well with Baptiste, not so much Moira, Mercy, and Brigitte, because of the way projectiles play a huge part in their kits. Also, invulnerability drone > E-rez.