"Needs more Nerf? OK!"
With 11 nerfs under her belt since the rework, Mercy is arguably the most Nerfed hero in the game and the most nerfed hero with a rework in general.
"This was a huge success!"
Despite her rework being created to solve the problems with her being a must-pick due to the âHide and Resâ myth as quote âbreaking the game.â Her rework resulted in her having both way higher pickrates and way higher winrates than she did in 1.0 (Mass Res + No Invulnerability). To clarify, Mercy did not turn into a must-pick until after she was buffed with invulnerability - since her ressurect was so difficult to successfully pull off.
"Yes, The Past can hurt, but you can either run from it, or learn from it."
In the past, it was well known is that part of the reason as to why Mercyâs Mass res was removed was due to advice being taken from the pro players as being âunfun to play against.â Fast forward to now, and some of the pros are now admitting that Mercy was in fact better back then than she is now. There is also evidence of Jeff making the claim of âWe can put the argument that Mercy is being reverted to rest.â Some months after that statement, both her voiceline and healing output have been reverted, the latter being seen as a âbug fix.â
"I donât hate Mercy mains, I just hate when people main Mercy."
Due to her popularity, Mercy has enjoyed a fair amount of hate, and unfortunately, that hatred has extended to anyone who chooses to play her for extended periods of time. In her early days, Mercy players were hated on due to the belief that picking her was considered a âthrow pickâ, similar to Symmetra or Torbjorn at the time. Now, that hatred has exponentially evolved into blaming her for basically⌠Everything wrong with the game. Heroes made unviable? Mercyâs fault. We lost the game? The Mercy main caused it. etc. During the beginning stages of the rework, the hatred has gotten so bad that there has been witchhunts against Mercy mains exclusively within the community - something not done at such a large scale with any other hero. Reddit anyone?
"With Great Power, comes Great Responsibility." Ever since her rework, power creep has been a stubborn problem with the hero. Due to having her ressurect ultimate, the most powerful ability in the game, on a 30 second cooldown, sheâs been the de-factor healer when it comes to Support. Even though I feel the need to state that even the devs have admitted multiple times that Mercy is INTENDED to be the âgo to hero for healingâ, having her ressurect ability on a fixed cooldown has reduced the risk of a formerly powerful ability, causing her to consistently out-compete other healers and forcing them to need buffs to stay viable.
"Peek a boo! I see you!"
Mercy 1.0 was in party changed due to the preconceived notion that âMercy mains keep hiding, making it hard to play against her resurrectâ when the source of the problem was in fact, the fact that she had no LOS and that res was instant. Instead of addressing those two minor problems, the devs gave in to the pressure of what was popular (Calling her broken due to hide and rez) and made her truly broken a hundred fold for 5 months. Itâs good to note as well that even if they didnât fix those two issues, the fact remains that the âbrokennessâ of using Mercy in competitive was more due to the SR exploit (that was patched after she was reworked) than solely because of her mass rez.
"It was good for me, wasnât it good for you?"
Thereâs been a controversial debate going on since the rework regarding who actually benefits from this rework to the hero instead of just fixing those problems back in 2016. Some say that it makes Mercy more engaging, and others say it fixed a problem on her being unfun to play against. I say, since a lot of people who wanted her to be reworked, are still calling for nerfs today, and the other group who wanted her to be engaging, are now saying that sheâs âboring to playâ, that the rework didnât accomplish what it was trying to achieve on both fronts. Thereâs always exceptions of course, but buy and large, most people (and even the devs themselves) arenât happy with how she ended up.
"Your Feedback is important to us, we read it every day."
Collectively over 47.4k posts have been read by the devs so far. There are over 100k posts regarding Mercy Feedback. That would mean that the devs read less than half of the posts in the Mercy Feedback thread, and then, that would be optimistic, since that would be assuming that the devs only are reading Mercy feedback specifically. The number is a lot smaller.
"One of these things are not like the otherâŚ"
Mercy is a popular hero. She was always a popular hero. Because she is popular, she is picked often. Using pick-rates alone isnât a good way to measure if a hero has a balance problem, and in Mercyâs case especially so, since she was popular even when she was seen as a troll pick.
"Opinions matter, agendas donât."
Since the rework, there hasnât been so much anti-mercy propaganda and toxicity being spread since. Past actions like allowing media coverage that expresses opinions against the hero (The Mercy Patch notes Skit by OWL for example) donât help this, and only add more fuel to the fire. Itâs the communities job to pick a side and choose the heroes they want, and be passionate about them and want the best for them, it becomes a problem when that passion turns into stepping on the passions of others through mocking a hero and indirectly, itâs playerbase. This type of alienation of a player-base has small repercussions in the short term, but are merely seeds being planted into growing hatred later on in the long term. If the rework never existed, such agendas against the hero and her fans wouldnât be as socially acceptable and / or volatile as it is now.
Thatâs all for now, do you agree with this list? Maybe you disagree. Post your thoughts below, and thanks for reading
What kind of reachâŚ? You know damn well what Jeff meant by the term ârevertâ (because nobody was actually spamming the forums for healing reversion).
And how many of those people are asking for something the devs have had to reiterate multiple times is not on the table? Literal definition of âuseless feedbackâ.
Anyway⌠itâs time to stop. Let it go. Come up with something else that isnât Mass Rez for Mercy to do, because the rest of us are sick of having to mute these kinds of posts ad nauseam.
And you complain in tons of Mercy threads about other people complaining. So its not like you can learn anything either. Plus if the devs ignore all feedback from the get go people tend to repeat it because they want an answer for the issue at hand.
Yet what they say and what they do are two different things. They say if it doesnt work out they will go back then we get an OPAF Mercy for months on end without them ever going back. They say they want to let Mercy rest and still keep nerfing her so maybe the devs just lie over and over.
It is not like I just want a revert but this version of Mercy has to be the worst we ever had in the game. So reworking her again would at least be an option for the issue.
At this point I have no idea what they want or think tbh. In my opinion they have no idea what they are doing.
I think of they want to make the vast majority Mercy players happy, without significantly redesigning Valkyrie or putting back Mass Rez, in a way where Mercy pickrate isnât crazy high in Plat-GM.
Thatâs not what they said. This was a response to the outcry after the last time Mercy got nerfed (this was the âgetting rid of instant rez completelyâ patch) because the reaction to the nerf was so extreme, with everyone saying that sheâd be unplayable, and some high profile Mercy players saying that she was literally worse than Torb.
The context was "If she is too weak, we will bring her back (ie. weâll buff her). Not âweâll reinstate the mechanic that weâve gone to great lengths, on multiple different platforms, to spell out how unhealthy for the game it wasâ.
They did let her rest. For over seven months. For a while she did look balanced, hence no balance changes were needed. Then eventually the healer meta stagnated to literally just Mercy (not even Zen) and it was obvious that she was still doing way too much.
Donât kid yourself. If Mercy gets reworked again and it doesnât involve Mass Rez in some platform people will still throw tantrums, regardless of what it is. Because a lot of people here donât like Mercy - they like Mass Rez, and everything else about her kit can go stuff itself.
They also wanted to make it so Mercy wasnât so oppressive as the single main/devoted healer of the game. All the other supports are hybrid DPS-healers with their own quirks mixed in, whilst Mercy was the one support that dished out higher amounts of healing than all of them. Add that, plus an incredibly easy ultimate like Rez and she was insanely repressive; pre-nerf Valk only added to that, with her not only buzzing around the map with wings but also rezing sometimes up to 3 people before anyone knew what was going on.
Now that she isnât a required pick anymore (for the first time in the game), all the Mercy mains and one-tricks aiming for ez t500/GM are getting nettled.
It would be alright if Mercy gets worse the higher you climb and Ana gets better like it was in earlier seasons. But making players happy by nerfing the character over and over again? No thank you if something is so terribly wrong try something else please.
Which shows that after continous nerfs she was/is still to good. So maybe if the super cool rework doesnt work out make another one and think it better through this time? Maybe look at the actual constructive feedback you gathered? No? Ok.
You seem slightly biased about the topic. Alright I will leave you alone with this assumption. Bye!
